November 3rd, 2019

I was walking along a flat stretch of the Norte route of the Camino de Santiago, an ancient pilgrimage trail across the northern coast of Spain. Since 1500 the Catholic Church has claimed the Camino as the Way of St. James, but long before Catholicism or even the birth of Jesus spiritual seekers trekked across the north of Spain to the rocky western beaches they believed were the end of the world. The earth was flat back then, and pilgrims walked for months to watch the sun set into nothingness. Now the Camino ends just short of the western coast in Santiago de Compostela at the huge Cathedral. There are over 40 official Camino routes and they all end in Santiago, leading to the saying all roads lead to Santiago.

I took the northern route, along the northern coast and then a sharp left turn south, first beaches and then mountainous national parks. The mountains are not as gigantic as the Rockies but more a never-ending up and down like trying to walk on choppy ocean waves. Sweaty and out of breath, I was relieved to have hit a brief break in the rolling hills. Up ahead on my left was a man repairing a fence, and to the right of him a cow walking quickly down the center of the road. I heard the fence-repairer yell and thought- an escaped cow! Finally, my Ohio-upbringing, my being married to a farmer, comes in handy. I walked directly toward the cow, waving my arms toward the fenced in corral, in a calm voice encouraging him back home. The cow looked confused and tried to pass by me, but I was insistent- come into this filed, buddy. The fence-repairer yelled something in Spanish, I figured some sort of appreciation, but when I looked over he was tipping his head at me in the universal gesture of “what on earth are you doing?” and I realized that the cow wasn’t his- a whole heard was coming around the bend ahead, with an old farmer bringing up the rear. I had tried to move the farmer’s lead cow into another man’s pen.

This isn’t the first time I have misunderstood a situation, sure I was helping out a stranger but actually adding to the chaos. And it happens even more when visiting another culture. In the rural farmland of northern Spain cows are allowed to walk down the road. Who knew?

My attempt at cow herding wasn’t my only error on the Camino. Walking roughly fourteen miles a day, from the cliff-framed crescent beach of San Sebastian to the green eucalyptus forest of Santiago 12 days later, I had plenty of chances to make mistakes. But it was someone else’s turn the day a fellow Peregrino, or pilgrim-that’s what they call folks who walk the Camino- expressed sadness for all the dogs along the road. Some of the Camino trail is through cities, some is on dirt trails in the woods, but most is along rural roads, a single paved lane cutting through towns of four or five homes, surrounded by farms or pasture. These rural Spaniards yelled Buen Camino- or good journey- at we pilgrims while they fed animals or repaired a barn roof or chased children. The farms were small and tidy, but there were dogs everywhere. All mixed-breed mutts, looking well-fed but lacking in collars, all wandering along the road, nosing in bushes, never barking. These dogs mostly ignored us pilgrims, but we worried- why were there so many stray dogs? Shouldn’t they be in a house or at least a yard, out of the constant rain?

A pilgrim shared her concern with a café owner in a big town, all of twenty houses, one of which had a make-shift café where pilgrims could buy espresso and baked goods and shelter from the downpour. This café owner was shooing away a puppy for the thousandth time, a little cutie who kept sneaking in and looking for scraps on the floor. “These poor dogs,” the American woman said. “If only someone cared for them.” The café owner looked at her and said, “Poor dogs? Poor dogs? Poor dogs in American, where they are stuck in the house all day. Where they are fenced in some little yard. We love our dogs, and we think it’s cruel to keep them from roaming. We don’t have traffic, and we know whose dog is whose, so they roam all day and then come in for dinner and snuggles at night.” She slammed down the woman’s coffee and stomped back to the kitchen with a stream of Spanish that meant something like “American’s think they know everything well look at their country now” and some swears thrown in.

So many assumptions, and so many chances to be wrong. I was especially glad that I’d decided to walk in silence that day, as I did most days. Reduced my chance of putting my foot in my mouth. But these mistakes, this assumption errors, reminded me of Johanna Macy- do you remember her? Johanna Macy is an ecologist and Buddhist philosopher who brings a deep spirituality to her work for a healthier planet. She is also a translator and interpreter of the poetry of Rilke, who these days is my favorite poet, his wonder, fear, and mysticism twining together to help me see holiness in new ways.

Johanna Macy talks about the great misunderstanding that we had with our planet. We thought it was an unending resource, Macy says, that since the industrial age we’ve thought of the planet as a supply house and a sewer- people felt like they could extract endless minerals, endless oil, endless coal- and dump waste into the water, air, and soil. Forever, with no consequences. The earth seemed that big, that impersonal, and that indestructible. Remember that the first photo of the earth from space wasn’t taken until 1946- before that the everyday earthling had little spatial understanding of the size of the planet. That was only 70-something years ago, a nanosecond ago in geological time. And Johanna Macy, who turned 90 this year, is saying that just in her lifetime we have realized that the earth isn’t bottomless oil and never-ending waste basket. And that brings up a tremendous amount of grief, as we come to terms with the impact our actions have had on all the earth’s creatures, including the potential of ending human life on earth.

How do we deal with that deep grief? How do we reimagine our relationship with this earth? As I walked in silence on the Camino I felt my connection to the wild grasses, the tall eucalyptus trees, the sturdy mushrooms. As well as the domesticated beasts- endless red-gold cows, annoyed-looking chickens, and beloved dogs, all creatures who have had the wild-ness breed out in order to better serve humans. All creatures who are unlikely to survive if we humans can no longer survive. How can we cope with the uncertainty and sadness? Many people find they can’t look at the reality of climate crises. When I brought it up with other American’s on the Camino it was like I tried to talk about sex during grandma’s birthday party- people looked appalled and changed the subject. But flying to and from Spain from the west coast had a significant environmental impact, and I wondered how other travel-lovers were coping and perhaps reducing travel in reaction. I didn’t want to make people feel guilty but I wanted to talk through the grief and frustration that comes from finding a sacred home on a ancient pilgrimage trail in place far from home, that requires environmental damage to get to. How do we balance the deep longing of the soul for greater meaning, greater connection with the 2000 years of pilgrims who have walked the Camino, with the international flight that pumps heat into the atmosphere? But no one could go there.

Johanna Macy sees this avoidance all across the world. We have no training, no history to learn from, as we face the end of the world as we know it. We are feeling terrified and so we avoid thinking about the climate at all. But Macy says that while this is a natural reaction it is ultimately unhelpful. She says, “Say you’re taking care of your mother, and she’s dying of cancer. You won’t say, ‘I can’t go in her house or in her room because I don’t want to look at her.’ If you love her, you want to be with her. When you love something, your love doesn’t say, ‘Well, too bad my kid has leukemia, so I won’t go near her.’ It’s just the opposite.”

What we need is to fall in love with this world, with this planet. This is perhaps feels like an odd metaphor initially but Macy says we should think of the world as lover. Being in love is terrifying, wonderful and awful and everything in between. But when your lover has cancer you don’t turn away. You are more fierce in your love, you are fierce with your compassionate defense. When your lover is ill you don’t refuse to think about it. You demand caps on fossil fuel emissions, you advocate for political candidates who will keep us in the Paris Accords. You grieve while you are fierce.

For Rilke and Johnna Macy there is no separation between God and earth. In their communion with nature all dichotomies have faded away. This is an understanding I felt on the Camino- as Unitarian Ralph Waldo Emerson said, I realized that I was part and particle of God, as are the chickens and the mushrooms and the eucalyptus trees. This is the God-essence that is not beyond or above us, not greater than us, but as process theologians write, is in co-creation of this reality in partnership with every living things. Rilke writes “We must not portray you in king’s robes, / you drifting mist that brought forth the morning.”

How does this change our thinking on God? For Macy it brushed away all the anger and frustration she felt at the patriarchal God of her Congregational upbringing. For Rilke it released him from the bloody crucifixion of the Jesus God of Catholicism. For me it makes spirituality and green activism inseparable, but more importantly it allows me to feel my grief at all that has been lost, all that will be lost, without needing to turn away and deny our species massacres. Because it is not hopeless. God, which is every living thing, which is the vast earth organism, will never truly die. Humanity might end- the fingerprints of Beethoven and line dancing and the wheel and sliced bread fading from God’s skin as time passes. But life – this great organism that is everything- will continue on. Stars and ocean and probably cockroaches- nothing kills cockroaches- will live on. So while last month I got to walk the precious earth, falling in love with God as embodied by cows and waves and my fellow pilgrims, even when I am gone, even if all humanity is gone, the earth will continue.

This is what it means to live in a fearless communion with our living world. During the ritual of communion Catholics believe they incorporate the actual body of God, through Jesus, into their own anatomy. They bring God physically to reside inside of them. Communion with our Living World means incorporating, at the cellular level, that you are part and parcel of the universe, no more or less than every living creature, inseparable from the earth that is God. It means not hiding from the sorrow of climate crises, the anger at large corporations and politicians who abused this holy world. It means accepting that being in love with the natural world means both joy and grief, as we fiercely defend our world-as-lover.

Next Sunday we are going to talk more about Johanna Macy, and about environmental karma- how can we preserve this holy planet for the next 100 generations? Even if they aren’t human? How do we preserve hope as the seas rise and species die? So stay tuned. I’ll close with my favorite poem from Rilke, one that has spoken to me throughout my different life stages since I first read it in high school and thought: what?

“God speaks to each of us as he makes us, / then walks with us silently out of the night. // These are the words we dimly hear: // You, sent out beyond your recall, / go to the limits of your longing. / Embody me. // Flare up like flame / and make big shadows I can move in. // Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. / Just keep going. No feeling is final. / Don’t let yourself lose me. // Nearby is the country they call life. / You will know it by its seriousness. / Give me your hand.”