The Road to Santiago de Compostela - 4 Months Away

There is a road that leads to the mortal remains of the apostle St. James. He was buried in a field where a shepherd had seen a bright star. Legend says that not only did St. James, but the Virgin Mary travel here shortly after the death of Christ. This place known as Compostela, Spanish for the star field, has been one of three major pilgrimages for Christians for over 1000 years. This summer I will travel the last 115 kilometers of the road to Santiago de Compostela with twenty youth and their leaders from the church I work at in Memphis.

Something is stirring inside of me that draws me to this place. Every summer thousands of people walk this path with scallop shells around their neck all on their way to the Cathedral in Santiago. As I have been preparing for this journey, I wonder even now what it will feel like as I gather for the pilgrims mass with others who have taken this sacred walk. Destination is what I am concerned about four months before I get on a plane and fly to Madrid.

Yet, would I feel the same way about Santiago and being in the Cathedral if I didn’t take the walk? Would the pilgrim's mass be as important if I was invited to attend it without first taking the walk? Sometimes in my life, I focus so much on the destination that I forget about the beautiful journey that leads me there.

I have become I cycler over the last year and half and even bike the six and half miles to work sometimes. Moving so much slower than before, I begin to notice the wonderful sights that I take for granted each day as I stare straight ahead on my way to work. I miss the beautiful houses along Tuckahoe, or the students quickly crossing the street to get to their classes on time at the University of Memphis. And then I find myself lost in memories of my college days at Purdue and rushing to class across Northwestern Avenue. I see people working in yards and the care and love it takes to have a beautiful yard, and the enjoyment I get from someone else’s hard work.

All of this I miss when I drive to work. The journey is beautiful, and when I finally get to work I am ready to embrace the day and once again fall in love with my work. As I prepare for my little hike along the Camino de Santiago, I am trying to pay more attention to the journey that I am already making, because without a journey, arriving at a destination is not nearly as meaningful.

Life as a Musician

I think of myself as a musician. I love playing music. I have been playing piano for almost twenty years, guitar for fifteen years, and I attempt to play every other instrument my hands touch.

So I was watching this sermon by Rob Bell a few weeks ago called Rhythm. In the video, a symphony is playing in the background and he starts to talk about how he believes God to be like the music of the world and that it is our job to listen, hear the song, and play in harmony so that we can grow into the person that God has in store for us. As a musician this rang true and I have been thinking about this metaphor ever since.

But something has been bothering me for these few weeks as I think about this metaphor and as I try to better articulate my understanding of God. I believe I have been making the same mistake in my spiritual life that I have been making with music. Since I started playing piano and guitar, I have been focusing on getting faster, learning more complicated rifts, and learning fancier scales. When I played in bands in college, often I found myself playing too many notes and trying to do too much. I only listened to music that was theoretically complicated and never would have caught myself listening to simple songs such as I enjoy listening to now.

Something has shifted in the way that I hear music and my hope is I find that same shift in my spiritual life. I am listening a lot to a band called Iron & Wine which their early stuff is played on guitar alone and is very simple. To me their music is absolutely beautiful. What I am beginning to realize is that there is nothing wrong with sitting down at the piano and practicing for hours and hours, and for many years, until I can play complicated jazz or classical music. In fact until I do that, I won’t be able to. But the point is even at my own skill level which is closer to the level that Iron & Wine plays, I can make beautiful music. I can play in tune with the songs and in rhythm and do things that other people find more beautiful than any fancy jazz tune I might be able to play down the road.

This gives me much hope. Let us go back to Rob Bell’s image of music. God is playing a song and it is our job as musicians, or more importantly as humans, to stop and to listen to the song and to play in harmony. For any of us who have played any instrument at all even if it is the recorder in your third grade music class, we know that we are not always going to play in perfect harmony. But at this moment, wherever we are on our spiritual journey, we have all the gifts and skills to play a beautiful masterpiece. There is nothing wrong with wanting to get better at this thing called life, to practice and practice and maybe one day we will do something extraordinary, but it doesn’t mean that right now we can’t change the world. It doesn’t mean that a single and simple random act of kindness towards someone won’t be a beautiful masterpiece that changes their life.

For me this image has transformed the whole way that I embrace ministry. I don’t worry anymore about building some big, super youth program at the church I work. And it’s not that I don’t try to learn more and get better at my job, but I have embraced that sometimes less notes on a scale sounds wonderful. When I meet someone new, that single encounter might be more important than anything I could ever say in a sermon at a church or school or to my youth group. Sometimes the simplest actions we produce can lead to making a beautiful masterpiece and if we are aware of this, we can be better prepared when it happens.