By Donald Schell
From the bowl filled with large colored I took one that said, ‘Walk Humbly.’ They were like political buttons of various colors. Other buttons in the bowl quoted other bits of the prophet Micah’s saying, ‘Love Mercy,’ and ‘Do Justice.’ The buttons were hospitality gifts from the Crossroads Chaplaincy at the University of Washington, which I was visiting last month as a council member with Associated Parishes for Liturgy and Mission.
Today I’m walking the Camino de Santiago with eleven other pilgrims. It was knowing I’d be back walking the Camino again that made ‘Walk humbly’ speak so compellingly to me. ‘Walk humbly’ was what the Camino taught me the first time I walked it. I took the button expecting Micah’s words were guiding my return and the re-learning that it’s bringing.
On first walking the Camino my mind was filled with expectations, devout imaginings and a huge effort to “ do it right.” Ten years ago my daughter Maria had just graduated from college. When she said she was going to make this month-long pilgrim’s walk after graduation, I asked if I could come. Later she told me that she’d wanted to ask me to walk with her but was afraid I wouldn’t be able to say ‘yes.’
When we walked through the medieval gate of St. Jean Pied de Port in France, and began our first day’s hike over the Pyrenees, I was determined to be an authentic pilgrim. Maria was simply hoping she could go the whole distance. On our first day we got lost, wandered through stinging nettles, and were besieged by swarming insects. I made myself imagine what a medieval pilgrim might have thought of such trials. That day’s walk is the biggest vertical climb and descent of any day on Camino. Maria’s simple focus was finding the path again so we could reach Roncesvalles on the other side of the ridge in time to get beds in the pilgrims’ hostel. It took me some days of walking to catch up with Maria’s simplicity and leave imagining ‘how we should walk’ behind us. As our days unfolded whenever we got discouraged we’d say to each other, ‘Well, we climbed the mountain and made it to Roncesvalles.’ Walk humbly.
A friend on the Associated Parishes Council told me that Louie Crew discovered the 1979 Book of Common Prayer misquoted the Micah passage. Writer or printer error, we don’t know but instead of ‘Love mercy,’ and ‘do justice,’ the Prayer Book Catechism on p. 847 reads, ‘Love justice’ and ‘do mercy.’ Those reversed verses are a serious problem. Louis gives his simple, clear argument for correcting the book on his website ‘Do Justice.’ My own understanding of why we should love mercy and do justice comes from walking the Camino.
Advocacy work tempts us to love justice. My own attachment to ‘doing it right’ and fierce desire to be right make it appealing to love justice. But without mercy toward other people and our own reluctant humility, loving abstract justice turns itself into idolatry. Humble walking and a deep love of mercy slows my eagerness to condemn and marginalize other people for the injustices they do. Humble walking and a deep love of mercy can draw me and the neighbors I’ve judged through and beyond conflict into a partnership to make the world we love more just. Walk humbly.
Checking with Louie Crew to credit him properly for discovering the misquotation he insisted that acknowledgment belonged to fellow Diocese of Newark Convention Deputies Geoff Curtiss and Marge Christie and that Verna Dozier, the lay theologian from the Diocese of Washington, had pointed it out to them. But it was Louie who submitted a resolution to General Convention to fix the Prayer Book’s misquotation. Louie’s simple resolution D007 never made it out of committee to the Convention floor. The error still awaits correction. D007 reminds us that our church has got work to do. Walk Humbly.
I’d like to tell you some fancy things about the spirituality of walking. I enjoy thinking I’ve become an expert in humble walking. I cut several paragraphs where I tried to deliver the thousandth (and best) lecture on the cultural and religious importance of the Camino, the path that made Christians a pilgrim people and taught us to image our faith as a journey. You don’t need the lecture. Walking is simpler and humbler than any fancy spirituality. We do need to walk, daily and literally. For our good and our neighbors good and for the life of the world, we need to get out of our cars and put one foot in front of the other as we move on God’s earth – humbly.
Micah is a powerful book but brief enough to read at one sitting. The prophet’s vision begins with God seated on a heavenly throne looking down on the earth and seeing that things aren’t going well. God angrily leaves the throne and heavenly pomp to set things right, but walking up and down on the earth (startlingly like Satan who walks to and free on the earth in Job), God who came to earth to set things straight changes. It began looking like it might go badly for us humans, but walking turns God’s exasperation to compassion. And it’s God’s compassion and patience that change things. The book that began with a threat divine wrath and retribution takes a different path as God’s own mercy makes turns our judge into our divine companion. The prophetic vision that began in heavenly pomp follows God’s own walking path a journey’s end in the familiar invitation to walk with God and in God’s steps, loving mercy, doing justice, and walking humbly.
Walking simplifies us. It strips all kinds of things from us. The more days we walk, and the further we walk, the clearer that stripping away becomes. On the Camino our own eager passion for ‘doing it right’ only makes for anxious, competitive walking. But ordinary, humble walking, step by step wears down judgment. Walking quickly reveals that there’s too much in our backpacks. After a week’s walking, Maria and I mailed extra clothes and my two books home. Walking also leads us to mercy for the other person’s blisters, the other person’s hope for a dry bunk at the end of the day, and eventually finds its way to pleasure in other person’s delight in the Spanish countryside, the other person’s tears at a pilgrim mass, the other person’s generous offer of bread or bit of Serrano ham. Each day’s walking leaves less room for judgment of other pilgrims and helps us let go of even the comparative judgments we make of ourselves, perfectionist assessment of how we ‘should be.’
Each step walking takes us further from the hope of walking the pilgrimage ‘right’ or having the ‘right’ pilgrim experience. Each day’s steps are simply themselves, one foot in front of the other – whether it’s painful or exhilarating, full of energy or exhausted or somewhere in the infinite range between. Walking lets the body teach the spirit that joy is joy and discouragement is discouragement and either or both may appear at any time. Elation and blisters come as they will; their order or timing is unpredictable. Walking is inevitably humbling.
Loving justice can be an ego game. But walking strips justice of pretence and vanity saturating it with luscious, delightful mercy. The ordinary humanity of walking quietly teaches us to extend the same forgiving mercy to a fellow pilgrim that we know sustains and blesses us. The mercy of walking gives us enough simplicity to do justice.
So, here I am again, letting walking strip me of credentials, cherished stories of accomplishments, my sense of rank and my own place in some pecking order, even hope of something outstanding I might accomplish. I’m glad to let them go. Day by day the community of pilgrims, companions on the Way matters more. Day by day the community of villagers and townspeople who support the Camino, tend it, and feed and house pilgrims matters more. Day by day, humble walking reveals itself as a holy mercy, simple, and in Micah’s vision, God-like. Only a companion can do justice, and a walking companion will do restorative justice, the justice that makes people whole. Walk humbly.
The Rev. Donald Schell, founder of St. Gregory of Nyssa Church in San Francisco, is Creative Director of All Saints Company, working for community development in congregational life focusing on sharing leadership, welcoming creativity, building community through music, and making liturgical architecture a win/win for building and congregation. He wrote My Father, My Daughter: Pilgrims on the Road to Santiago.