Tales from the Trail #24: The demons in the Divine …
With my spirits truly soaring (having just received a ride through the very portion of Indianapolis that my broken feet were least thrilled with having to navigate), I began to hobble along Michigan Road, and smilingly flowed along smoothly enough until I come across a 7th Day Adventist bible study meeting in session at the local Hope Tabernacle. For any pilgrim walking in the United States, an open church on any day other than Sunday was always an unexpected blessing, and so it didn’t take any prodding at all to get me to walk right in and introduce myself (only after being asked to do so, of course); softly letting the congregation there know about my Walk and its Mission. I then overheard that the days’ lesson was on Ephesians – specifically the portion of Ephesians that spoke of choosing to commit wholeheartedly to Jesus’ gospel of offering selfless Service to others & showing unconditional Love to all (“Lace up your sandals in preparation for the Gospel of Peace ” ~ Eph 6:15) – and I naively assumed that the leader of the group would fluidly (and quite logically) incorporate my faith-soaked Walk for Peace into the day’s conversation. And yet even though I was indeed warmly welcomed during our initial greeting, both my person and my pilgrimage were completely ignored thereafter by everyone else in attendance. And so it was that, after only sitting there listening to them speak one after the other about properly disciplining their children &/or appreciating their own blessings, I quietly & respectfully rose, gave a gentle nod of gratitude to the leader of the group, and made my way back out onto The Way …
I was admittedly slightly disappointed when I left them (after all, my 2011 peace pilgrimage from Chattanooga to Miami had been regularly sprinkled with opportunities to speak to various church congregations, and Good Fruit indeed had always been born of the same), and yet I didn’t have to walk far before those same spirits were re-lifted. For diagonally across the street was the Santa Monica Catholic Church; a church that was closed at the time, and yet a church that was opened early for me & me alone by two lovely acolytes with whom I was able to briefly chat in the church parking lot. And to their great credit, “chat” was more than a bit of an overstatement, seeing as how they both spoke essentially only Spanish, and my Spanish skills were exceedingly poor. And yet despite my humorous attempts to let them know what I was doing and why, they got enough of the message to motion me to the front door of the church and opened it up for me to enter and take refuge. And this was indeed a significant act for me, for in all my many days of walking so many miles across the United States, never once had a Catholic church – in stark contrast to their European counterparts – opened its doors and allowed me to find solace inside. And the fact of that admission, along with the powerful symbology that graced the main sanctuary’s walls, hearkened me vividly back to my walks through Spain along its hallowed Camino de Santiago (first in 2008, and then again in 2019), and I instantly got teary-eyed & Soul-glowed as a result, before then departing after a time to continue my Walk awash in both nostalgia and gratitude.
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