by Ailsa Piper
The Australia Business Arts Foundation (ABAF) have approved the project and confirmed that my supporters can make a donation to ABAF’s Australia Cultural Fund. ABAF will provide you with a fully tax-deductible receipt, and send me your ‘sin info’.
Here are a few of the outgoings to which the pilgrim will apply her walking wage. All amounts are rounded from euros to Australian dollars …
Feed a pilgrim for a day on the road: $35 (forty days needed)
A week in pilgrim refuges: $120 (six weeks needed)
Journals for the journey’s words: $25 (six required)
Maps and guidebook for lone pilgrim: $70
Airfare Rome to Granada (I can’t walk it!): $210
Muchas gracias!
Thanks so much for considering the request. If you are still with me here, you will hopefully be with me for twelve hundred kilometres of dusty Mozárabe road.
Now I just need to get to Santiago.
With your indulgence …
2
Doing the Crying
The first financial donation was generous, from a friend with no spare cash to throw at pilgrims. I’d hoped she would contribute reflections, maybe even a sin with a small pricetag. I called to say she had given too much and I couldn’t allow it.
‘It’s not your business to allow or disallow. You’re not the boss of me, my friend.’
‘No, I know that. Of course. And I’m really grateful, but I don’t think it’s—’
‘That’s right. Don’t think. Just say thank you. Go and walk, and don’t assume you know what’s best for me.’
I’d been brought up sharp by a sin of my own.
Pride.
I’d always valued an idea of myself as someone strong—the one who ‘can do’ when a need arises. Had that led to an unwillingness to accept help from others? Or an idea that help had to be given on my terms? Could it be that I was intractable? Only content when I had the upper hand? Pride-full?
I wrote to my friend to address my sin, but it was the beginning of a lengthy dialogue with pride. It’s one of the Seven Deadly Sins, and topped the list when I transcribed them into my journal:
Pride
Anger
Greed
Sloth
Lust
Envy
Gluttony
I wrote my name beside Pride. A confession, though I had no idea to whom I was making it. A hotline to heaven, to the great forgiver and wish-fulfiller, remained elusive. I hoped the sin-walk might help me embrace humility, the Contrary Virtue to pride.
I was becoming quite the expert on sin.
The Contrary Virtues come from the Psychomachia (‘Battle for the Soul’), an epic written by a Christian poet called Prudentius, around 410ad. Practising them is supposed to protect you against the Seven Deadly Sins: humility against pride, patience against anger, liberality versus greed, diligence versus sloth, chastity to counter lust, kindness for envy, and abstinence against gluttony. They’re a spiritual insurance policy and useful if you know your sinning tendencies.
It turned out I was pretty conventional in mine.
A Vatican report from 2009, carried out by the Jesuit scholar Father Roberto Busa, stated that pride was the sin most commonly confessed by women. It was followed by envy, anger, lust then sloth. Men had most difficulty with lust (or at least, they confessed to it most frequently) followed by gluttony, sloth and anger. The Vatican also admitted that almost a third of Catholics no longer went to Confession, and ten per cent actually believed it to be an obstacle to a relationship with God.
Most surprising was the Vatican’s list of modern sins. Among them were genetic modification, causing poverty, environmental pollution, experiments ‘on the person’ and the taking or selling of illegal drugs. They gave me an insight into the thinking of the contemporary Church.
Current thinking about sin from outside church walls was reflected in responses to my letter:
Being a total atheist, I have a little intellectual problem with the concept of ‘sin’, but being an atheist is not anti-theist, so I can handle the idea of sin as either part of a person’s belief system or as something ethically or morally wrong. Always though, sin is in the eye of a sinner, it has to be self-recognised to become a sin that can be expressed to the pilgrim.
That implied an inbuilt moral compass, something ‘natural’ to tell us when we veer off course. I wondered about that. I had managed to go a long time without staring down my pride.
I have great trouble with the word ‘sin’ and the whole framework that goes with it. I wish it would disappear from the language. I think there’s clarity and knowledge beyond that word. It holds us back, I think, from seeing ethics and morality as rules that allow this group of animals to prosper.
Words. They persist for a reason, usually because they are necessary. Sin wasn’t going anywhere. When I googled it, there were 1,250,000,000 results! Difficult to argue that sin was irrelevant in the digital age, even if definitions and interpretations varied.
I love it. And I want to help. But I’m uncomfortable about the idea that it might be ‘worming my way out’ of my own responsibility. Would it make me somehow a bigger sinner to attempt to offload it onto you? I am already judging myself for even contemplating allowing you to shoulder a burden like that on my behalf. In fact, I am already imagining others judging me for it, too … What kind of friend could I be to let you take it on? And how could it possibly make me less guilty in my own eyes? In fact, the thought of attempting to on-sell a sin is making me writhe in shame …
People gave me plenty to digest.
And yes, people gave me sins. From the first day, there were confessions, even some from strangers who’d heard of the quest. I began to get an inkling of what I was going to shoulder. Also, I knew something of the weight I’d carry, because I had committed most of them. In fact, I’d say I was as experienced a sinner as I was a walker.
These were among the first sins to arrive:
My sin is a desire for vengeance to be visited upon the woman who had the affair and caused the break-up of my marriage a few years ago. I’m carrying it around and I don’t even care anymore but I still can’t stop secretly wishing it.
I’ve wished for vengeance. It was because of emotional cruelty inflicted on someone I loved—or at least, my perception of cruelty. I dreamed of the perpetrator in agony. I would wake shaking, still able to see the car that had ploughed into a tree as a result of my wishing, and the rivulets of blood running down a familiar forehead, as help failed to appear. It appalled me that I could imagine such scenarios.
But I could.
White lies to spare the feelings of others—or perhaps more honestly, to protect how others may feel about me. Is this wholly wrong? Could I/do I want to stop? Is it kindness or weak selfish self-preservation?
White lies can protect both liar and recipient. I don’t ever want to hear the words ‘Your bum looks massive in that’, even if they are the gospel truth. I wondered if I could travel a day without a white lie, let alone a week … or six weeks? Because it did seem to me that carrying the sins for others implied that I would try not to commit them myself.
The sin I wish you to walk off for me is sleeping with my best friend’s husband. Not once, but four times. Over a three-month period.
This act, this period of my life, has cost me dearly. I carried it alone for fifteen years. I finally confessed to my friend last year.
I did a three-month retreat, thirteen or fourteen years ago, specifically to expunge the stain from my consciousness, clearing my karmic debt.
But it still remains in my heart.
I believe that this act has prevented me from connecting/finding/meeting the partner I so wish to love and who will love me for who I am. A life shared. A love shared.
I don’t wish to carry the remnants of guilt and sh
ame anymore.
I would be so grateful if you would walk off what remains. I have done the best I can with owning it, dealing with it, seeing it. And tried very hard to forgive myself.
I have understood so much about human nature from this mistake I made.
But I don’t truly know if I have forgiven myself. I think I have. But it was so big for me. Maybe I should go to Confession?
Whatever it takes. Maybe you’ll find the answer. Who knows?
I knew that sin, too.
Many years ago I had an affair with someone who was in a long-term committed relationship. There had been no ceremony and no rings, but they were married. Let’s not quibble on technicalities.
Pain was caused, and I had my face resoundingly and publicly smacked. Sense was slapped into me but I regret the hurt I caused to this day.
So, I knew the territory.
Sin.
It’s such a little word.
The translation for it in Spanish is pecado. It sounds like a confection or a foible. Delicious but harmless.
Pecado.
That first sample convinced me that pecados were anything but harmless. I was shaken by the forthrightness of the admissions and by the reactions they evoked in me. I became protective of my ‘sinners’.
‘Have you had actual sins told to you?’ I was asked.
‘Yes, I have.’
‘Big ones?’
‘Well, they’re painful for people, so that makes them big …’
‘BAD ones?’
‘What’s bad? Tell me what you think is bad?’
I saw what it had cost to disclose. I wanted to ease my sinners’ struggles, and to forgive them. To make it all better.
I wanted to do their crying.
My brother and I are two years apart in age and live on opposite sides of the continent. Brett spent most of his life in the bush where we grew up, while I’ve lived a city existence in the performing arts. He has two children. I have none. While our love for each other is fierce, it’s rarely verbalised. The upcoming sin-walk made it possible for us to discuss the respective choices we had made—and to speak that unspoken affection.
One morning, we were laughing on the phone, joking about the seductions of a ‘devil-may-care’ life. Brett was telling me that he and his wife Sue were making changes that excited them. True childhood sweethearts, they’d been together since their teens. Now that their children were adults, they were dreaming of new horizons and adventures. The day was sunny and warm on both sides of the continent. Full of promise.
Six hours later, Sue was dead.
She had gone to work healthy and full of vigour, at a job she enjoyed. At morning coffee, she said to one of her co-workers that she didn’t feel well. With that she fell to the ground, unconscious. She never woke up.
The world was altered in a heartbeat.
Brett’s eulogy to Sue was a tribute to her endless capacity for giving practical, tangible love. These are a few of his words:
Sometimes it seemed that she loved everybody, and she wanted everyone to love her. It was difficult to explain to her that the world doesn’t work that way. She would be dismayed, when I would try to say that respect is not bought with love alone, that sometimes you had to be strong, or even tough, to gain respect and not be taken for granted.
Sue didn’t get it, because all she had was love.
I wrestled with the old chestnuts.
How can there be a god when things like this happen? How can a good person be taken too soon, when others live on, not wanting to be here or causing pain? Surely that’s a sin committed by God, if a god exists?
It’s pointless. There’s no logic or justice in death, only sudden then lasting sorrow. Our mother died at the age of fifty-seven, a full-force gale to the end. Years later, it still cuts deep.
I watched Brett being a father; being a grieving husband; being stoic, funny, wise, afraid and courageous. Mostly I just saw my little brother suffering.
And I couldn’t do his crying.
Brett was adamant that I ‘get on with living’, so I went home from the funeral to prepare to depart for Spain forty-eight hours later. Flying east to Melbourne through the night, I looked out at endless black. There may have been stars but they’re not what I remember. I saw nothing but a void.
3
Flying Sola
On my return, a friend said she was worried I was tempting evil by embarking on the sin-walk. She wrote that she knew the potency of guilt and sin and willingness, and urged me not to sacrifice yourself for something unworthy. I know there are forces that we don’t understand, she wrote, and that they might hijack your beautiful intentions.
I was already nervous after Sue’s death, having been reminded once again that we’re all merely a breath away from the end. I considered pulling out of the Mozárabe, or even delaying, but I’d been employed to carry a swag of sins and I heard my brother’s voice urging me to live, not simply take up space, so I farewelled my husband and boarded the plane for Rome. Then, in my window seat, I admitted to myself that I was terrified and I cried, much to the embarrassment of the honeymooners beside me.
The journey from Australia to Europe by air takes roughly twenty-four hours. For me, it was a chance to regroup.
I figured practicalities would help me to ignore grief and fear. As sunset turned the centre of Australia dusty pink below me, I opened the guidebook to the Camino Mozárabe. It was five years old—the most recent available in English, because the road was so little travelled—but it was all I had. Sue’s sudden death meant I was leaving without completing my research and planning.
My prep is normally exhaustive. For the previous year’s Camino Francés I’d read two guidebooks cover to cover, scoured websites, grilled camino veterans, downloaded Spanish podcasts, replaced my heavy boots with lightweight Merrells, and sourced a smaller backpack. I rehearsed saying por favor and buenos días as I hiked favourite sections of Victoria’s Great Dividing Trail. It runs through gold country and still bears century-old scars of the hopes that brought people from all around the world to scrape and dig. It’s hard ground, pockmarked and pillaged, yet when you investigate, it hums with life.
Yellow everlastings, pale spider orchids, and egg-and-bacon plant carpet the feet of gnarled gums. Red, blue and green parrots swoop, like visitants from a tropical jungle. At the base of eucalypts, echidnas snuffle. Kangaroos and wallabies bound between shadows, lizards and snakes slither, and galahs scream at intruders to get out of their patch.
People say the Australian bush is monochrome grey, not vivid in the way of European woods. And that’s true. But to me it’s more wonderful for the diversity it nurtures. And always, if I take myself too seriously out there, a kookaburra’s chuckle will set me straight.
So I walked my Australian trails, with visions of Don Quixote’s windmills in my eyes. I practised calling ‘Hola!’ to magpies and crows. I savoured the name of my destination, Santiago de Compostela, rolling it around my mouth like a boiled lolly. Santiago is Spanish for ‘Saint James’, who is Patron Saint of Spain and was one of Jesus’ apostles. Compostela translates as ‘field of stars’.
Saint James of the Field of Stars.
Stories about him abound.
One account says that his remains were brought to Spain from the Holy Land in a stone boat in about 44ad. Centuries later, they were supposedly found in a secluded forest near the coast at Finisterre, the westernmost point in Europe, believed to be the edge of the known world. The name means ‘land’s end’ in Latin.
Another story says that in the year 814ad, there was a man called Pelayo. He was a shepherd or a monk, depending on the account you read. One night he was guided to some very old bones by a star, or stars. The local bishop sniffed an opportunity and immediately claimed the bones in the sarcophagus as those of Santiago.
This was massive n
ews. King Alfonso II came to see for himself and so became the first Christian pilgrim, or peregrino. The story of the camino had begun, and it provided backing for the assertion that that region of Spain was Christian territory and Moors must not be allowed to claim it.
Santiago was made protector of the Christians, and in 844 he was said to have appeared on a white horse to lead them in battle. He became known as Santiago Matamoros—St James the Moor-slayer—an incarnation that seems at odds with his other persona, Santiago Peregrino—St James the Pilgrim. In this, he is usually depicted wearing a hat, robes and sandals, carrying a staff, and with a scallop shell around his neck.
Peregrinos took scallop shells home from Finisterre as a memento of the arduous conditions of pilgrimage and as proof of success. In words that all peregrinos come to know by heart, Sir Walter Raleigh wrote:
Give me my scallop shell of quiet;
My staff of faith to walk upon …
The shell relates to the pagan history of the camino, and may well be a leftover from the Romans’ worship of Venus, because some claim the shell is a fertility symbol. It was appropriated by Christians when Santiago was supposed to have intervened to help a knight who had been swept under the waves. In that tale, the knight called to Santiago, and when he and his horse resurfaced both were covered in shells.
Seduced by these stories, I’d walked my Spanish talk back when I was preparing for the Francés. Myths and legends had tumbled in my head as I learned to say pueblo (village), mochila (backpack), and albergue and refugio (the hostel-style pilgrim accommodation in most pueblos along the way).
I’d doused my belongings in a vile-smelling concoction, developed for the US Army, which promised to repel bedbugs for six weeks. I’d fretted over pack loads, compiling lists of every item I was to carry with its individual weight, right down to the twenty grams for spare shoelaces. I’d obsessed over a schedule, finally deciding thirty days was reasonable, and booked return travel based on that, congratulating myself on a job well done.
I had been so ready when I set off for the Francés.