We Will Walk with You

Sweaty, smelly, and wholly stripped of artifice, one day last June I found myself in the Galician cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, surrounded by pilgrims. Legs stiff and blisters throbbing, our small group of twenty or so souls had found space to cluster between two pillars just before the beginning of the Mass, in sight of the altar but not of much else other than the vast array of humanity around us. There were no chairs available, but after our six-day, seventy-five-mile walk on the way to this place—our pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago—we were grateful even to rest ourselves on the cold stone floor.