Day 39 or Saint James, Field of Stars

Notes on Day 39, April 3, Arco do Pino to Santiago de Compostela

Here's an amusing little thought I have meditated on during the Camino: the meaning of my name. My Dad had told me years ago, and Corina confirme that my last name means a little calf in German. My first name, Kristin, is a derivation of Christ, and so means "anointed one."



I will spare you the details of my walk today; you have heard it all before. But my mood on entering the city was hard to pinpoint. At first I was glad to be walking alone. I didn't want to be with anyone else when I entered the city and saw the Cathedral. I wanted that experience to be solitary and personal. And my guidebook suggested I create an air of detachment so as not to be irritaed by the droves of tourists and school kids that might be making the one day trek into the city.



But I was so successful at creating this detachment, and so focused on my intentions of solitude, that I was actually bringing myself down. When I passed Mount Joy, so named because it is the hill that overlooks the city and gives the peregrina her first look at the Cathedral towers on her way into town, I didn´t feel joy at all, and I didn't even walk up to the monument to take in the supposedly wonderful views of the city. I was too weary and too ready to be arrived already.



I ran into a German guy, obviously a pilgrim, but without his pack, who saw me and said, "You are almost there. Only 30 minutes now and you are finished," and he walked on. This news was heartening. But then he doubled back a few minutes later and offered to show me into the city. He told me he was staying at a great little pension, literally across from the Cathedral, for only 15€ a night. He could show me this place, if I wanted, and where the pilgrim office is so I could get my Compostela (certificate of pilgrimage completion). So I said OK and Eduard, my new tour guide into Santiago, chatted merrily about how he was glad to help out and how he had been helped so many times along the Camino, how he had arrived a few days ago and had already been to the coast (Finisterre) and ritualistically burned some of his hiking clothes.



His energy, which was vibrant and positive (no doubt owing to the fact that he had already arrived and was no longer humping a 15 kilo pack) rubbed off on me, and I found my excitement growing as we entered the old quarter and I was happy not to be alone afterall. We rounded a corner and I had my first view of the Cathedral from the lonely northern portal. I felt the lump swell in my throat and the pricking feeling at the corners of my eyes. But I barely had time to take it in we were moving so fast.



We descended the steps under the Archbishop's palace where a street musician was playing a haunting tune on bagpipes (again a traditional instrument for this celtic area), and emerged out in front of the famous west facade. I had just enough time to look in wonder, even as I followed Eduard quickly and dutifully across the square, before we turned the corner again and he showed me the pension and the pilgrim office. And then he left me with instructions to come back to the pension in the afternoon when the hospitalera arrived.



So now I had the time, even though I still had my pack on and I stank and wanted to shower and just sit, to return to the church and take in this bold statement that is the Cathedral of Santiago.



I walked up the dramatic stairwell and entered the church. There are some rituals you are supposed to perform upon arriving. You are supposed to place your hand in the Tree of Jesse, the marble carving of Christ's family tree in the base of the Portal of Glory (the masterwork of Maestro Mateo begun in 1168). Eight centuries of pilgrims have worn finger holes in the marble.



You are supposed to knock your head against that of the stone efigy of Maestro Mateo, hoping that some of his genius will transfer to you in the knock. But you can't do either of these at the moment, because they have erected a barricade around the Portal of Glory and are preparing to restore it.

You are supposed to climb the altar and hug the medieval statue of Saint James and then descend beneath it to see the silver reliquary holding "his bones". These I figured I would return and do later without my pack. It was close to noon, mass would be starting. So I wandered the nave and transcepts of the church, taking its austere gray Romanesque interior, simple and bare, except for the ornate and shining gold gilt high altar and baldacin (canopy).



As I circled the interior of the Cathedral, heavy with my pack, I noticed a few confessionals open and priests occupying the booths inside and suddenly I felt this overwhelming need to confess. I have not confessed in, I don't know, decades, and I didn't even remember how to do it. But the moment I knelt in front of the priest, with his black robes and royal purple stole, the tears that I had been holding in check since my first view of the Cathedral with Eduard, began to flow freely.

He began in Spainish. I explained I don't speak Spanish. He asked me if I was German, "No, Americano. Ingles por favor." He didn't speak English, but he switched on his little light and pulled out a laminated card that said, "Suggest the following themes to the confessor." And a list of twenty or so questions followed:

"Have you kept the Sabbath holy by going to mass on Sundays and Holy Days?" (uhhhh...well see, church is pretty boring...and ummmm....well...no.)

"Have you honored your father and mother?" (You'd have to ask them, but I think so.)

"Have you commited sins of the flesh?" (uh, thank God, yes).

"Have you beared false witness by telling lies?" (I think my problem is I tell too much truth).

"Have you blasphemed or taken the Lord's name in vain?" (Well, shit, this whole blog is pretty much one long cuss).

"Have you induced abortion?" (Had to answer no to that one, but really, is that anyone's f'ing business?).

But even as he fumbled through the questions in English and I nodded or shook my head or inclined it in a "maybe" sort of answer, I still sobbed. Because these questions he was asking, and the answers I was giving, were not really what I was confessing anyway. I wasn't confessing about adultery or telling lies or cussing and not going to church. I was confessing to being human, and to being sorry for the whole clusterfuck I had made of my life simply by not honoring myself. And I think that priest knew, he must've known, that I was not confessing to any of these mundane, silly, obligatory sins mentioned on that shiny laminated card, that something else entirely had got hold of me at that moment. He was patient with me and he looked kindly on me and he extended his hands over me, and spoke softly in Spanish, and I remembered that this must be the part where he says "I absolve you of your sins in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit." And he told me my penance was to say two Our Fathers (Nuestros Padres) and come to church on Sunday.

"Really? That's it? Two Our Fathers and come to church on Sunday? Oh, did I get off light."

I've always thought the idea of confession was a bit lame. I always questioned a priest's power to absolve someone of their sins in God's stead and give them some silly little slap on the wrist token penance as if that made things better. But for the first time, I understood confession. You already have God's forgiveness. You always already had it. The priest is just the conduit to let you know that. And the penance really is just a token, because there is nothing you really need to do to be forgiven, except be sorry. And I was. And I already knew I was forgiven, I just wanted to hear someone else say it, and a Spanish priest in Santiago de Compostela is as good as anyone.

After my official absolution I went to my hotel (the pilgrim mass at noon apparently didn't happen today for some reason). I gratefully slid off my pack for the last time of the Camino, showered, opened the doors of my balcony to hear the noise of the busy alleyway below: the clinking of glasses at the cafes in the Rua de la Raina, the noisy chatter of locals and tourists, the languid guitar music from the musician working for coins around the corner at the Cathedral, and let these sounds lull me into the longest three hour siesta.



Later in the evening I set about exploring this pearl of a town, the old quarter near the Cathedral, and I window shopped for the cheesy souvenirs I had every intention of indulging in buying. I saw Uber German Peter sitting in an outdoor cafe with his friend and he invited me for beers with a group of people. We were to meet at 9:00 in front of the Cathedral. So at 8:40 I wandered over to the Praza d'Obradoiro and sat on the stone plaza. Somewhere nearby a street musician was playing a lyrical, lilting harp. I sat and just contemplated the glorious facade of this cathedral, now bathed in orange electric light from the square.



The facade was constructed in 1750, rather late, and basically enrobes the original 11th century Romanesque cathedral. But the facade looks much, much older. It is haunting and ornate, encrusted with a tangerine colored lichen, with weeds and flowers growing out of the crevaces between stones. I hope they never clean it.

I love the translation of Santiago de Compostela: Saint James, Field of Stars. It makes the ethereal earthly and that moment was exactly that, ethereal and earthy all at the same time.

By nine o'clock I was in such a serene and solitary mood. I didn't see Peter and his crowd in the square, which was just as well, because I felt like celebrating, but not like partying. So I took myself to Rua de la Raina and picked a restaurant with all the lobsters and crabs and octopuses and cuts of meat displayed in the window, went in and ordered sopa de marisco and scallops (because scallop shells are the symbol of Saint James and the Camino don't ya know) which were swimming in green oil with carmely brown onions and pink Iberican ham. I drank white wine and congratulated myself on making it to Santiago, on walking 798 kilometers or 496 miles.

Well done, Anointed Little Calf.