(It’s also the longest post! ☺️. I’ll post pics later but honestly there’s no way I could capture the Cathedral on my cell phone.)

The last day of walking into Santiago was the longest, the farthest day of the whole Camino.  Nineteen miles exactly my Fitbit tells me.  In the rain.  

The sight of the Cathedral is just like everyone says it is.  It might as well have been Oz. Getting there was not easy, and the final bit…the most maddening.

It was the same feeling I had when we were looking for the Grand Canyon on the Northern Rim.  A date-vacation my husband and I had taken before we were married.  

“I mean it’s the freakin Grand Canyon!” I said, exasperated, “How can we not see it?!”

We were lost, driving in the woods within a mile of it.  When we pulled in the parking lot to the Lodge and I still couldn’t see it.  “It can’t be that big,” I said, meaning it.  

When we walked into the Grand Canyon Lodge at the North Rim, with its stories high plate glass windows overlooking the canyon at sunset, I set my bags down in the middle of the lobby and a tear rolled down my cheek.  Humbled.  By stone.  

"I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh,” the prophet Ezekiel says (36:26-27).  It is a broken heart in the best of ways, and beauty shoots the arrow.  

I remember a feeling, or was it a dream, while we were at the Canyon… I don’t remember the particulars, but it was symbolic of work and the stress I was under, the frantic futility of it all.

That was nearly 40 years ago, have I really lived my whole life this way? Had I not learned the lesson yet? I remember calling my mom and describing the epiphany all those years ago.

Standing in front of the billions of years old canyon you can’t help but feel like a speck.  On a frog.  On a bump on a log, as the song says.  There’s a hole in the bottom of the sea!!! Nothing else matters.  Relax.  It will be what it will be.  Daily life, put in the perspective of eternity, simplifies things really fast.  

Flash forward almost four decades.

“Where is it?!,” I asked to no one in particular as we all stood in the middle of the city of Santiago.  For two weeks I had been last in line as we walked.  Which isn’t to say that people didn’t walk with me, just that they had to slow their pace to do it.  

We stood huddled together, finally  at our destination, and lost in the middle of a bustling city that felt a bit like Hogsmeade from Harry Potter.  Muggles everywhere!  Just kidding.  

But it’s kind of true, tourists were all over the place, moving in and out of restaurants and shops, laughing and talking.  They bumped into our large backpacks as they parted around us.  

It was crowded enough that you couldn’t see walls even if there were yellow arrows on them.  

Epic fail, I thought to myself, about whoever organized this pilgrimage thing.  How do they have markers the ENTIRE way and then somehow when you arrive in Santiago you’re on your own?!  Figure it out.  Welcome back to the “real world.”  No more arrows.  Life is about to get more complicated, busier, noisier.  Get used to it.  

We had joked many times about a Camino suggestion box.  Ideas we had to make it better.  Rounded bunkbed steps that didn’t cut into your feet as you climb in and out of bed, bunkbed curtains that don’t wake everyone around you when you use them, shower mats so you don’t slip and break a leg.  Surely we could improve on a pilgrimage that people have been doing for more than a thousand years.

There could be people to greet you and guide you in, I thought to myself, as I stood bewildered in the center of Santiago.  Local churches could have volunteers walk you in.  I’d be on that committee!, I congratulated myself.  

“There are no Oompa Loompas to greet you,” someone who had done it before warned us at dinner the previous night. I didn’t understand at the time.

We spun around in several directions, several times, walking this way and that, trying to follow GPS; a satellite system that was just as lost as we were in these narrow granite lined alleyways.  

“There’s a map,” Len said as we walked past it, apparently not yet ready to give up on technology.  We turned back and walked past the map again.  

“It might be this way,” Pam and Barry announced pointing off to the right.  “Or we could look at a MAP,” Len said pointing to the large framed city map on the side of a road that branched in multiple directions, and not at right angles.  

“That’s a plan!,” I said excitedly.  “A map!,” grateful to finally participate in getting us there.   

“You are here,” Len announced as he pointed at the universal yellow arrow.  

Even with a map I wouldn’t have been able to find it.  Was I really that dense?  It felt like my brain was mush.  It would not work.  The synapses were wet, tired, hungry.  They had been starved and tortured with lack of sleep.  No!  They said as I stared at the map and tried to orient myself.  I took my place at the back of the line and waited for everyone to figure it out.

I don’t remember which way we entered the square for the first time, it was like we were simply and suddenly plopped down in front of the cathedral.  

My first reaction was that it reminded me of those sand castles I used to make as a child.  The kind where the sand is wet and all drippy and you funnel it through your hands like a master cake maker pushing icing through a piping bag.  They were my favorite kinds of castles to build. 

Except the cathedral was made of granite and marble and had the detail of real master sculptors.  Two of the massive statues on top of the cathedral held giant feathers for crying out loud —a shaft with vanes of individual hairs carved out of stone.  I couldn’t stop staring at them.

The detail and scale are staggering and leave you standing speechless in the square.  It’s a phenomenon.  I could sit there all day and watch the wonder on people’s faces as they see it for the first time.  It makes me cry just thinking about it.  THIS.  This is a lived well led, I thought to myself about Master Mateo, the artist who was commissioned to build it.  

He must be in a special room in heaven, looking down at the impact he’s had on humanity.  Drawing people here, to this place, to turn their gaze toward heaven in awe.  To queue up for hours to enter, to experience Mass in such a place.

There was a Pilgrim’s Mass at 7pm and I wanted to go.  We had just arrived in Santiago and it felt right.  Plus, they might use the botafumeiro, or “thurible” as people “behind the curtain” refer to it back in the states.  Or incenser as I have called it for years.  It’s only writing this that I have learned the correct word is “censer”.  

The word botafumeiro translates to “smoke expeller.”  It is probably the reason I am standing in Santiago, thousands of miles from home.  It is what inspired me to walk more than six hours a day for more than 12 days, to sleep and share bathrooms with strangers and eat food I don’t like.  

A two minute scene from a movie I watched 14 years ago started  this whole thing.  A scene that is so beautiful, so mysteriously mesmerizing it can stir people to do all of this.  I am not alone.  

Almost half a million people walk to Santiago a year, from all over the globe.  After Spain, the second most peregrinos come from the US.  “Many of them mention that scene,” someone told me along the way.  A censer. 

People can and do become positively incensed about the censer back in the states.  “Bells and smells!,” many lament.  “We don’t need ‘em!  It is a thing of the past.”  My husband is a deacon in the Catholic Church and has been on the receiving end of these vehement complaints.

Grant you, this particular censer in Santiago, the “Botafumeiro” in Spanish, is over 5 feet tall and weighs more than I do.  It takes 8 men to hoist it in the air on rope pulleys and swing it through the cathedral.  Legend says it was necessary to be this big to cover the stench of the pilgrims.

A friend of mine was blessed enough to see it as a tourist when she spent a day in Santiago.  I do not begrudge her.  She has the most amazing prayer life.  You’ve heard of “prayer warriors”—this woman is fierce, she will not give up.  If you need prayers, this is who to go to.  She will storm heaven.

“I lost it,” she said describing the experience to me.  “I wasn’t feeling it at first,” she said, “with the crowds and the noise.  

“Until the censer,” she said.  

I am convinced God granted her this blessing so she can see her prayers rising to the throne of God.  To know that he hears her.

What is it about it?!  I wanted so desperately to experience it.  To watch the smoke rise through the ornate cathedral with the prayers just offered.  To breathe in the same scent as those who have gone before me. 

It is widely believed that our sense of smell is, evolutionarily, the oldest sense we have.  Even single cell organisms have it.  And unlike sight or sound, smell goes directly to the brain, without going through a relay station.  It is the sense most closely associated with memory.  There is definitely something to it.  Mystery.  History.  Beauty.  The physical and spiritual swirling and mixing together.  Breathe it in.  Deeply.

There is no schedule to see it.  It is all chance.  We met someone who has been seven times and still not seen it.  I had already informed my friends that my husband and I would be going to every Mass while we were there.  The vigil on Saturday after we arrived, and every Mass on Sunday.  Were there four or five? 

“That doesn’t leave time for anything else,” my friends observed, making sure I understood what I was saying.  My husband side-eyed me cautiously as if to say, are you sure about this?  “Well if we see it, we won’t keep going,” I said to him.  Adding, “obviously,” to clarify to my friends that I’m not totally crazy.  I prayed they would use it the first time we went so we would have the whole next day to enjoy the city. 

We checked in the albergue and left our bags there.  Backpacks are not permitted in the Cathedral.  This is where we parted ways, a rare occasion for the two weeks we had been together on the Camino.  

Our friends left to get something to eat, to settle into the city, and I can’t blame them.  It had been a very long day and we still had tomorrow to go to Mass.  My husband and I got in line for Mass an hour early on the vigil of the Sabbath.  

It’s such a bizarre thing to say.  There is a line.  For Mass.  And not everyone in line will get in.   Imagine such a thing, everywhere around the world.  

When we lived in Roanoke we sometimes went to a small ethnic parish is the city.  “Last Chance Mass” everyone called it.  It was late on a Sunday afternoon and if you had not been to Mass yet, it was the last chance to fulfill your Sunday obligation. “You will be at your Father’s house,” our mother church says.  Every Sunday.  It is how we interpret the commandment to keep the Sabbath holy,  

The small ethnic parish had many immigrants from Africa.  “They walk miles to get to Mass!,” someone once told me.  Imagine.  Blessed are the poor.  

The queue for the Cathedral moves quickly and soon we are in!  It’s like Black Friday at Target when the doors open first thing in the morning.  Everyone scatters to find a seat.  We’re in! We’re here!  We did it.  It felt like getting my degree—no one can take it away from me now.  I felt accomplished and an incredible sense of relief.

We were lucky enough to get two seats together in the very last row of the center aisle in the nave.  The massive altar looked small and far away but I had my seat with my husband next to me.  All is right with the world.  

Mass began with a litany of names and places and I found myself getting agitated.  The Mass was in Spanish and I couldn’t tell what they were saying.  It was taking forever.  Alright already, if they would just start the Mass I would know what was being said and done, it is the same everywhere around the world.  

Every small church and big cathedral in every country on earth would be gathered together around the altar to hear the exact same Scripture this Sabbath.  Same Testaments, Books, Chapters and Verses.  

I know the order of the Mass.  

I can participate in my own language with people from Germany, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Israel, Canada, Australia, Netherlands, Malaysia, Bulgaria, the US and the UK.  And that’s just the people we met along the The Way. “China, Japan, South Korea…” the priest went on and on.

My husband would later explain that they were listing all of the different Ways people took to get here, and from which countries they came.  It took a long time.  Impressive, I thought after I understood what was being said.

We pulled up our phones and followed along with the Scripture readings in English.  The only part we didn’t get was the homily,  I occasionally caught words like “peregrinos” and “camino.”  He was talking to us, about us.  

By the time the Liturgy of the Eucharist (Thanksgiving) began I was starting to get emotional.  I had not thought about the censer once.  It occurred to me that it didn’t matter if they used it or not.  

"The longest journey is from your head to your heart" Thich Nhat Hanh.  

I was about to receive the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ, God in the flesh.  “Lord I believe, help my unbelief.” Mark 9:24.  What more could I ever want?

I sat exhausted and empty on a hard wooden chair at the back of the Cathedral.  There was nothing left in me.  I had nothing left to give.  I was fully spent.  I had been here once before, simultaneously and paradoxically empty and overflowing.  

I felt like the woman at Jesus’ feet, wiping them with her tears.  I tried to contain my emotions but they bubbled up and over.  My shoulders started to shake and I worked to contain myself as my husband reached over and put his hand on my back.

It was our turn to get up to receive Communion.  My husband and I got in line and walked toward the altar. A priest walked past us to the back of the church with a ciborium full of hosts.  Lead me Lord.  We turned back to follow.  They were bringing Communion to us.  

“The Body of Christ,” he said as he held up the Blessed Sacrament and I cradled my hands to receive Him. 

“Amen,” I said—it is so, I know this to be Truth.  

I searched the priest’s eyes for any recognition that he could see the mess that I am.  I was so emotional I was half afraid they wouldn’t allow me to receive the Eucharist.  There was a nun to his left making sure people consumed the host.  Yes, it’s a thing.  

What we say and do at Mass is a mystery.  There are so few left. I lifted the Unleavened Bread to my mouth, “where heaven meets earth like an unforeseen kiss,” David Crowder sings in one of my favorite songs. “Oh, How He Loves Us!”  It is such an intimate experience that I prayed for a veil to cover me, to cover us in this moment.  

I went back to my seat, got on my knees and prayed the Anima Christi like I do every time I receive…

…Soul of Christ, sanctify me.

Body of Christ, save me.

Blood of Christ, inebriate me.

Water from the side of Christ, wash me.

Passion of Christ, strengthen me.

O Good Jesus, hear me.

Within your wounds hide me.

Permit me not to be separated from you.

From the wicked foe, defend me.

At the hour of my death, call me

and bid me come to you

That with your saints I may praise you

For ever and ever. 

Amen.

I have been walking this way for a long time.  And I have been blessed more than I deserve.  I waked back to my seat as contented as I could be.  What more could I receive?

And yet, I grinned as I offered up one last prayer in the spirit of St Theresa of Lisieux who chose all, Lord, it would still be great if tomorrow…

After Mass we texted our friends to see where they were, hoping to catch them for a drink.  They had had a nice dinner just the two of them, and were settling into bed.  Pam was actually already asleep.  “Did they do the incense?,” Len asked.  “No but it was very moving,” my husband texted back.  

My husband I went out for the biggest meal we had eaten yet.  Wine, appetizers,  main course with side salad, followed by dessert and hot tea.  Yet somehow it felt unfulfilling.  

Somehow it felt like those early date nights of our young family life when we were finally alone together and didn’t know what to say to each other.  We had eaten every meal, breakfast, lunch and dinner with our dear friends for two weeks and we missed being with them.