If you’ve been following since the beginning, you may remember that I referred to “a particularly stressful event” that happened at the end of our Camino.  This is my story—the good, the bad, and the ugly…

As per usual, I hadn’t gotten much sleep.  In addition to waking with my personal, metaphorical batteries not charged, I also woke with my cell phone battery not charged either.  

Most bunk beds have an outlet for charging.  The really nice bunks have a shelf to keep your phone on while it charges.  This bunk was not a really nice bunk.  So that meant sleeping with my phone attached to a cord that dangled from the bottom of the upper bunk, where the outlet is.  You might guess what happens next.

At some point while you’re sleeping peacefully, you inadvertently pull on the cord and down comes the rather heavy power adapter plug.  In your face.  

Great.  Add that to the bruise on my forehead from sleeping on the plane, the “sympathy” sty on my lower eyelid to match my husband’s, and the split lip I had from dehydration.  Not to mention two geriatric zits: one on my cheek and one on my chin.  Those are gonna make for some nice bucket list photos for all posterity.

I decided not to fight with it in the middle of the night.  If I hadn’t already woken everyone with the falling adapter, turning on my light to plug it back in would surely do the trick.  No, let sleeping chargers lie.  I’ll worry about it tomorrow.

Not that we weren’t all waking up intermittently, when the next unsuspecting person’s phone charger came crashing down on their sleeping head.  It sounded like torpedoes dropping all night as they bounced off the sides of bunks.  

“Do you think it’s alright to leave my phone charging on the bed?” I said to my husband as we prepared to go out for breakfast in the morning.  It was the first time in weeks that we were sleeping in the same spot two nights in a row!  Praise.

“Yes,” my husband said, “it will be fine.”  I tucked it under a pillow so not to lead anyone into temptation.  

We asked the host where we might get a big breakfast.  “Ahh..an American breakfast. “

She steered us right.  We ate eggs and bacon and waffles, cappuccino and, “a smoothie too?,” the waiter tilted his head and shrugged his shoulders as I placed my order.  Okay.  This is why you don’t lose weight on the Camino.  

By the time we left we were stuffed and satiated.  It was an hour before noon Mass and our friends said they wanted to attend.  Yay!! 

The line was already across the front of the Cathedral and half way around the right side of the large building.  “Do you think we’ll get in,” Pam asked after we joined the queue.  “It’s pretty big inside,” my husband said, “I think so.”  

“But you never know,” I said, not wanting to be Debbie Downer but feeling the need to keep it real.

“They have to cut it off somewhere,” I said pragmatically.

We started imagining different scenarios.  “What if they cut it off right before us?!,”  I said, drawing a line with my hand after the people in front of us. “We call that Welch luck at our house.” 

“What if they cut it off after you and me?,” Pam said, leaving the guys behind in our imaginary scenario.  Who says worrying doesn’t work—everything I worry about doesn’t happen. 😉

The line moved quickly and we found seats for all four of us in the transept on the right side of the Cathedral.  We couldn’t see the large baroque baldacchino  but we had a perfect profile view of the altar. If they used the botafumeiro we would be directly along the path of the swinging incense.

We had almost an hour before Mass and I had given away all of the rosaries I brought from home.  I wasn’t doing well praying on my fingers.  Holding a rosary is a spiritual tether to the task at hand.  Without it I drift in and out of prayer, often not realizing I have stopped for long periods of time.  Besides, “holding a rosary is like holding the hand of Mary,” a parishioner once told me.  I love that.  

I have loved Mary since I was a little girl.  I still have the pastel porcelain statue of her that was in my childhood bedroom.  

If you come to my home now you will see evidence of my love for her.  Statues, paintings, rosaries.  Some well meaning Protestants might be concerned it borders on worship but it is not.  “Never be afraid of loving the Blessed Virgin Mary too much,” St Maximilian Kolbe says, “you can never love her more than Jesus does.”

How often we try to divide love like a pie when it is really the yeast.  As though loving the moon takes away from loving the sun.  

Yes, I definitely needed a rosary.  And maybe some extras for gifts…

There was a small gift shop on the other side of the transept and I told the group I was going to get one.  The church was getting crowded quickly.  The woman in front of me stopped to talk to someone in front of her and I went around them to enter the gift shop.

I started picking out rosaries but decided I wanted my husband’s opinion so I turned back, just a few feet from the spot where I had  entered a minute or two before.  A guard was standing at the entrance and I noticed a sign to his right, was it in Spanish?  

The words said something like “no paso,” in bold red letters.  My heart skipped a beat.  I put the rosaries down quickly and started across the opening.  “No,” the guard said stopping me and pointing to the sign.

“But I just came from there,” I said, pointing to the other side, “I just crossed over.”

There must be a mistake, I thought, I belong over there.

“No,” he said firmly, pointing again to the sign.

My stomach dropped.  Like literally.  Something shifted inside of me and I felt sick.  This can’t be happening.

“But my husband and friends are in there,” I said, pointing across the transept.

“No.”  He was militaristically firm.  He meant business.  I started to panic.  

“I…I don’t have a phone!,” I said just realizing it myself. 

“I have no way to get ahold of them,” I explained, “to tell them what happened to me.” In a rush of blood to the brain I also realized that I had no idea how to get back to the hostel we were staying at…what was the name of it again?! 

More panic.

Surely he would relent under the circumstances.

He pointed to the sign.

I seeeee the sign now!!! I wanted to scream.  I obviously didn’t see it when I came in the store less than two minutes ago.  Where were you then?!  I remembered stepping around a woman who had stopped to talk to someone, the guard? Ugh.

An interior thought taunted me, of course you would miss Mass at the Cathedral of Santiago because you were shopping.  Like a one-two punch it was quickly followed by another thought…and they will probably use the botafumeiro.

“Don’t come across here,” I started to warn people who were coming in.

“You can’t get back in the Cathedral if you come in here,” I said loudly.

We had JUST read the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus at Mass the weekend before, it was the first Sunday Mass we attended on the Camino.  I couldn’t help but recall it.  “Moreover, between us and you a great chasm is established to prevent anyone from crossing who might wish to go from our side to yours or from your side to ours.” Luke 16:26

I’m the rich man!  I don’t want to be kept from heaven and my loved ones!  

All I wanted to do is get ahold of my husband and friends to tell them what happened but they are on the other side of the transept. A great chasm.

I was weeping openly now.  A couple of young men came into the gift shop from the Cathedral and asked me what happened.  I explained it to them. 

“Calm down,” one of them said as he stood close to me, shielding me from the guard while his friend talked to the guard in Spanish on my behalf. 

“You’re not helping,” the young man close to me said.

I tried to pull myself together.  I had no idea what was being said but some things don’t need translation.  Come on, mister, his tone said to the guard, cut her some slack.  You can make an exception.  He came back to me agitated mumbling something about the guard, “Sorry,” he said, “he’s not gonna budge.”

A beautiful, kind lady walked over to me next, from the church side of the rope separating us. 

“What do you need?,” she asked.  

You could tell she didn’t speak much English.

“I need to get over there!,” was I yelling now?  

“No.,” the guard said. It is not going to happen.

“Tell my husband and friends,” I asked the woman.  

“Where?,” she asked, “what do they look like?”  

All I could do is point frantically, my eyes like lasers burning where they sat.  “They are right there!,” I must have said more than once.  Why don’t they turn to look?  

“My friend has long hair in a ponytail,” I said, pantomiming it when it became clear she had no idea what I was saying.  I willed my husband to turn towards me but he didn’t.  God bless her, the pretty, kind lady walked up and down the aisles as I waved her on manically.  “Farther over!,” I gestured across the transept… “up more!”

It was so exhausting. 

Finally.  She bent over and talked to my friends.  My husband stood up and looked my way.  At this point everyone was looking my way.  

He seemed amused at first, and then he saw the panic on my face.  “What happened?!,” he said as he came closer.

“Don’t come over here!,” I yelled, “you can’t go back.”  

“But I’m not staying here,” my husband said, “not without you.”

“Do NOT come out,” I said, “you are my eyes and ears.  PLEASE.  Stay for Mass.”

“What are you going to do?,” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Meet me back in the store after Mass,” I said, resigned to my fate.

I started crying more as I walked outside.  The line for Mass was long now.  I would never make it back in, the Cathedral was surely almost full.

I walked like someone on a mission to the front of the line and asked urgently, “does anyone here speak English?!”

I must have been a sight.

If anyone did, they seemed a bit reluctant to admit it.

“I do,” a tall man with a salt and pepper beard and kind eyes said after a pause.  I joined him in line, looking back apologetically at the people behind him. They seemed just as bewildered at my sudden and emotional arrival as I was. 

“I got locked out,” I said, wiping my nose on my shirt.  Did I have snot bubbles?

“What do you want?,” the kind-eyed man asked.

“I want to be in there with my husband and friends,” I said, “ I don’t have a phone.

“Do you want to call them?”

“I don’t think he’ll answer,” I was agitated.

The kind-eyed man pulled out his phone.

I didn’t even know how to make an international call.  How do you get the plus sign to appear?

“It’s okay,” he said, touching my arm as we moved closer to the entry. “God has gotten you this far,” he said calmly and with conviction, “he won’t abandon you now.”

“What do you need?,” he asked me after my husband didn’t answer the phone.

“I need to get back in.”

“Well, come in with us,” he said as plainly as though it were the simplest thing in the world.

“But what about the people I jumped in front of?,” I said, “it’s not fair.”

“Nobody cares,” he said.

Is that true?  I wondered how I would have reacted if I had been behind this man, if I didn’t get in the Cathedral for Mass because of someone in my situation.

“Where are you from?,” he asked.

I didn’t want to tell him.  Americans don’t have the best reputation internationally-loud, demanding, spoiled. Check, Check, Check.

“The United States,” I admitted and quickly apologized to everyone within earshot, “I’m sorry!”  I’m a terrible ambassador.

He and his friend laughed out loud.

And we were in.

“Sit with us,” I said, “we have room.” At least we did when I left to buy rosaries.  I looked to where my friends were and the seats were full. My husband saw me and started toward me.

“What’s your name?,” the kind-eyed man asked me, extending his hand.  Didn’t he know I was a snotty mess?  I searched his eyes as if to say, really? He didn’t flinch. 

“Allison,” I said taking his hand.  “What’s yours?,”

“James,” he said.

“Of course it is!,” I laughed out loud and it felt so good.  

Santiago.  

Sant-Iago.  

St James.

“I’ve been praying to you for months,” I told him and we both laughed.  St James, pray for us.

I gave James a hug and he disappeared into the crowd.

“What happened?!,” Barry said when he got to me, clearly shocked to see me back in the Cathedral.  “How did you get back in?”

“That man let me get in line with him,” I said, “Saint James!”

My friends were relieved to see me.  They had been sitting uneasily since I left, not wanting to stay without me.

“I’m so glad you did,” I explained, “I would have felt so much worse if you had left.” 

There was barely enough room on the pew for me, so I sat uncomfortably and gratefully on the edge of the hard wooden bench.  Pam asked me if I had enough room.

“Yes, I said, “I like to live on the edge.”

“Yes you do,” she said, smiling with relief and putting her arm around me.

As we waited for Mass to start, my husband read Morning Prayer, the Liturgy of the Hours, while I tried to pray the rosary on my fingers.  He leaned over to show me the reading for this morning.  From the book of James.  You can’t make this stuff up.   

“Always speak and act as men destined for judgment under the law of freedom. Merciless is the judgment on the man who has not shown mercy; but mercy triumphs over judgment. “ James 2:12-13.

“The Bible is alive, it speaks to me;“ Martin Luther is believed to have said, “it has feet, it runs after me; it has hands, it lays hold of me".  Amen and alleluia.  

I wish I could say that I prayed for the merciless guard when I read it.   Instead my initial reaction was more like James the Greater, believed to be buried in the Cathedral just a few feet away.  I wanted to walk over to the guard and shove the Scripture in his face. 

“Lord, do you want us to call down fire from heaven to consume them?,” St James the Greater asked Jesus after they had been treated inhospitably.  Luke 9:54

No, Buttercup. 

I tried to offer a prayer for the merciless guard and mean it.  

It is perhaps the most important and challenging aspect of the Christian walk; to extend mercy to people who don’t deserve it, haven’t earned it.   It is the definition of grace, “an unearned gift.”  It is what we have received and what we are commanded to share it with others.  

To be on the receiving end is humbling.  It is also responsible for much conversion, causing many to fall from high horses, to shed the scales from their eyes.  

How and when to extended mercy?  Jesus was asked this question.  Way more than you can imagine, his reply, again and again, without counting, fully, perfectly…and in particularly stressful events.  Mt 21:18-22

St James, pray for us.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us.

Our Lady of Pilgrims, pray for us.

P.S. The only one incensed at Mass was me. 😉