Sunday, June 23, 2013
Hello, and welcome to my blog about the Camino Ignaciano (Ignatian Camino) pilgrimage walk!
I will be participating in this journey (as a University Ministry employee) from July 14-28, 2013 in Spain through the University of San Francisco (USF) with staff, faculty, and trustees of USF. I look forward to getting to know the other people in my walking group and know that we will have A LOT of time to get to know one another - walking, eating, woshiping, praying, joking, and more. There will be fifteen people my group, about half of which are from the University of San Francisco. I will be blogging about my reflections, experiences, revelations, and more in this space when I can. Because I will have very limited access to technology during the actual Camino (if any internet access at all), many of my posts will come after the walk. I look forward to sharing this experience with the reader and to learning more about my God and myself.
HERE is the link to the Camino Ignaciano webpage, which will tell one all about the details of the Camino.
HERE is more information about St. Ignatius of Loyola, with insight into Ignatian Spirituality read HERE.
This is the logo of University Ministry at the University of San Francisco. Where is your center?
These two amazing images are on the door of my dad's office at Silver Lake College in WI. Enough said.
Gandhi, thank you for this powerful, relevant quote; I think it quite fitting for this Camino and life in general.
With three weeks until the Ignatian Camino (Camino Ignaciano) pilgrimage walk, I am feeling excited, humbled, and in awe for what is to come on this spiritual and religious journey. In the past couple weeks I get flashes of the pilgrimage scenes to come in my mind, glimpses that fill me with curiosity and peace. I have my tickets purchased, Euros in hand, and a handful of items purchased for the trip so far, such as a hiking pack, socks, hiking shoes, quick dry leggings, books, and a Nalgene. The sight of my new Nalgene makes me sentimental for my college years, which is when I first started using one as a camp counselor and continued to hike with it after that, such as during my time studying abroad in Wales. Just the sight of a Nalgene represents nourishment, hiking, and adventure to me, all of which I believe the Ignatian Camino will involve.
I am no longer in college though - now I am guiding and leading college students on their own journeys through my work in University Ministry at the University of San Francisco and taking an entirely new journey of my own on the Camino Ignaciano. Amongst other things, the Camino represents a time of recollection, renewal, and re-application (I love to use alliteration as much as possible!!), and it is during a transitional period in my young adult and professional life. I look forward to walking and living in community, to learning more about the life and landscapes of St. Ignatius of Loyola (who started the Jesuit order), to breathing in the culture, to physical challenge, to practicing Ignatian Spirituality, and to visiting (religious) communities. I am incredibly grateful to be able to participate in this pilgrimage and am looking forward to being abroad. I can only imagine what I will have to reflect upon at the end of each day and will use The Examen, as read below.
1. Become aware of God’s presence.
2. Review the day with gratitude.
3. Pay attention to your emotions.
4. Choose one feature of the day and pray from it.
5. Look toward tomorrow.
I believe that the following prayer by Teilhard de Chardin, SJ can describe where I am at in this phase of "Camino anticipation." As I move forward in this prayer, I will mull over Jose Gonzalez' song "Crosses," which I have loved since college and an amazing Jesuit I worked with used during a student retreat.
"Patient Trust"
-Teilhard de Chardin, SJ
Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something
unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through
some stages of instability—
and that it may take a very long time.
And so I think it is with you;
your ideas mature gradually—let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances
acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.
Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.
Here's my new Nalgene for all my hydration needs!
This poster is at a local Goodwill-owned cafe I love and used to work at with youth and young adults. I think that the poster message at hand is vital and want to make this blog space out to be a "liberation space."
A week ago I bought my new Keens for the road.
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| Here are my new hiking/running leggings, which I also bought in pink. Let's hear it for dry fit clothing in humid Spain! |
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| My dad bought this Rosary for me for the Camino. |
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| I worked with the St. Ignatius Institute living-learning community at the University of San Francisco for two years. |
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| Here I am. |
Here he is - St. Ignatius of Loyola.
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| My spirituality and religion in the world as a woman are very important to me, and this image speaks to part of them! |
