Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Walking virtually alongside pilgrims and authors, the Sacred Steps Podcast explores the world's most revered footpaths, connecting a community of pilgrims from across the globe. From the Camino de Santiago through Spain to the Via Francigena across Europe to Italy, the podcast features updates and first-hand accounts from the footpaths of pilgrimage.
A companion to Kevin Donahue's pilgrimage books (The Pilgrims' Table and Sacred Steps: A Pilgrimage Journal), the podcast also introduces several lesser-known journeys, such as England’s Pilgrims’ Way to Canterbury and the California Missions Trail in the United States.
Buen Camino Pilgrims, and welcome back to the Sacred Steps Podcast. I have waited
Speaker 2:what is it? Three years? Has it
Speaker 1:really been three years? Have we been apart for three years? I've waited three years to say those words. So without further ado, let's see if I remember the intro. Juan Camino Pilgrims, and welcome back to the Sacred Steps Podcast.
Speaker 1:I'm Kevin Donahue, pilgrim, backpacker, author, and host of the Sacred Steps Podcast. Let me just say if this is your first time joining us, this will be a Rocky episode, my first one in three years. But I think you'll find that on our past episodes and hopefully on our future episodes, we're walking virtually alongside pilgrims and authors sharing their stories and connecting a community of pilgrims from around the world, and that includes you. So if you're planning a pilgrimage walk, if you're already returned from your journey, tap subscribe and join us twice monthly for the podcast. I am going to take liberties with this episode, So if this is your first time joining us, please feel free to browse our library of episodes for the podcast now streaming in 116 countries.
Speaker 1:First and foremost, let's address the silence. Three years, no episodes.
Speaker 2:In that silence, my life has become quieter, smaller somehow, but also deeper.
Speaker 1:Some of you know my father passed away in 2023, right when we would have been recording our fall twenty twenty three episodes, which would have been season four. And a few months afterwards, my wife suffered what would ultimately become the first of three major strokes.
Speaker 2:So for a season for me, the long roads of pilgrimage gave way to hospital corridors and waiting rooms, uncertainty and caregiving and grief,
Speaker 1:and the strange suspended feeling that life sometimes enters when you're simply trying to make it through one day at a time. And yet, over these past few years, I've found myself thinking about pilgrimage
Speaker 2:more than ever. Not necessarily the walking itself, but what I've learned from my travels,
Speaker 1:what remains when you return,
Speaker 2:and the people that I've met who've touched me along the way.
Speaker 1:One of the surprising things about Pilgrimage is that when enough time passes, you rarely remember it the way you expect to. People assume your strongest memories will be cathedrals
Speaker 2:and prayers and pilgrim blessings,
Speaker 1:mountain crossing, ancient churches, the great historic places.
Speaker 2:And honestly, those moments genuinely matter, but for me and for many of
Speaker 1:you that I've spoken with over the years, that's usually not what stays with you most deeply.
Speaker 2:What stays with you are the people. A conversation shared over a simple dinner in a crowded
Speaker 1:Albergue, a bottle of wine passed around an old wooden table, a stranger whom maybe you speak their language, maybe the two of you are struggling, telling truths about their life for the first time in years, the exhausted laughter at the end of that
Speaker 2:difficult uphill stage, and
Speaker 1:the unexpected kindness of someone who owed you absolutely nothing but gave it anyway. Over this time away, I've begun realizing that pilgrimage is often less about the road itself than the
Speaker 2:humanity the road reveals. Because, and you know this, something happens to people out there. The masks that we wear in our jobs and our lives begin to fall away. Titles and business cards and degrees disappear. Success, wealth, and all of the physical
Speaker 1:just fades away. People stop introducing themselves by what they do, Oh, I'm Jim. I'm a doctor.
Speaker 2:And instead, they begin speaking honestly about who they are. Not what they do, but who they are.
Speaker 1:Or I guess perhaps maybe who they were, or maybe even who they still hope that they will become. And I think that's why the concept of pilgrimage and communal tables has become so very important to me over the years, not just as places to eat, but as places where we encounter one another, places where grief sat beside joy, where strangers became friends, where loneliness retreated a little,
Speaker 2:where people quietly helped carry each other forward.
Speaker 1:I think in many ways, the deepest moments of pilgrimage never happened while I was
Speaker 2:walking. They happened after the walks, at a table.
Speaker 1:And during these past three years, I have found myself returning to those memories time and time again. Not because I was longing for Europe. In fact, I've left The United States many times in these three years and traveled throughout Europe, but because I was looking for the kind of honesty and humanity that pilgrimage so often creates, the kind of conversations that remind us we are not carrying life alone.
Speaker 2:And when everything
Speaker 1:is crumbling around you, or at least it feels that way, the thought of someone helping you carry it,
Speaker 2:that's one of the things I've missed. And somewhere in all
Speaker 1:of that, slowly and perhaps a little more unexpectedly,
Speaker 2:I've spent a lot of time writing and journaling and finally came to the realization about what I needed to unlock in order to move forward, and that was to finally finish one of my pilgrimage books.
Speaker 1:Not
Speaker 2:another book about routes and stages and distances, not a memoir, but a story that would capture the emotion, the essence, the feeling that is created when pilgrims are together. A story about wounded people like me arriving at the edge of the world, Moshiya, carrying very different burdens, and about what can happen when strangers gather around a table long enough to share their truths, and the unexpected grace that can come when a stranger sees you in a way that many of your friends back home never could. That story eventually came my first novel, The Pilgrim's Table. And today,
Speaker 1:after three years of grief and struggle and rebuilding, I want to share a little bit of that journey with you. One of the things I've noticed over the years is that almost everyone begins pilgrimage believing the journey is about movement. How far are you walking? Where are you starting? When will you arrive?
Speaker 1:Those milestones that are so common in our pilgrim vernacular. But slowly, and usually it's during the journey, the purpose changes, and I think the Camino teaches this very gently. At first, you measure your days by kilometers, right? By the guidebooks, shout out to my good friend Sandy Brown, by Destination Cities. We finally made it to Burgos.
Speaker 1:How far to Leon? How far to Santiago?
Speaker 2:If you text or chat with anyone back home while you're on the journey, how far did you go? How far do you have left? But eventually,
Speaker 1:I think another rhythm emerges. You stop asking how far is left, and you begin asking deeper questions instead. Questions like, Why did I come here in the first place? Is there something that I'm working through? Why does silence feel uncomfortable for me?
Speaker 2:Or, eventually, why does silence become necessary? Why do conversations with strangers sometimes become more
Speaker 1:honest than conversations with people I've known for years? I remember one evening on the Camino Portuguese. Nothing extraordinary happened, no dramatic revelation, no cathedral, no vista breaking through the mountain pass, Just a simple meal at a just a simple meal at a crowded table.
Speaker 2:And I wanna say this was Casa De Jesus, past Padron, almost to Santiago. There were,
Speaker 1:I don't know, ten, twelve pilgrims at the table, a German, some Canadians. There was a young Korean that was there, a couple of pilgrims from Australia, I believe, and Brazil, and one from Spain, and a Frenchman who was actually walking the opposite direction towards Fatima, and myself and my son, we were there. You may remember we walked the Camino for the first time together in 2023. And somewhere between soup and wine and fatigue, people just started speaking honestly. Right?
Speaker 1:After the introductions, after the jokes and the laughs and the charades and people using Google Translate, trying
Speaker 2:to understand one another, they began speaking honestly, not performatively or trying to impress one another.
Speaker 1:And I remember realizing something very clearly about that night, maybe two things. Number one, I was so grateful
Speaker 2:that Jack, who I think was 14 at
Speaker 1:the time, could be in that moment and see this happening, right, and be a part of that conversation.
Speaker 2:And also realizing that modern life gives us very few places
Speaker 1:where vulnerability feels safe. But pilgrimage creates those spaces naturally because everyone is already stripped down. We are all disconnected from our routines. We are all exhausted from the day. We are all sweaty and tired and sore and hungry and thirsty and emotionally open, let's say, because sometimes it's even emotionally raw.
Speaker 2:And perhaps for the first time in years, for some of us,
Speaker 1:fully present. I think it's remarkable how certain people remain with us long after pilgrimage ends.
Speaker 2:Most of the time, you will never see them again. I think about some of my Pilgrim family. Some of us
Speaker 1:stay connected through email or WhatsApp, but we have not seen each other
Speaker 2:in five plus years,
Speaker 1:seven plus years for some Caminos. Sometimes you don't know what became of those people, and yet years later, you still remember the exact expression on their face while telling a story over dinner. You remember the sound of the rain against the windows and the way the candles flickered against the old stone walls or whatever kind of place this happened to be, because pilgrimage compresses human connection. There's a strange intimacy to temporary community. I think people are more willing or in a different place where they can tell truths quickly because everyone understands that the journey is moving forward tomorrow morning.
Speaker 1:This group of people that we're experiencing and enjoying and engaging will not be together again.
Speaker 2:Maybe because of that, there's less temptation to hide.
Speaker 1:One of the great ironies of pilgrimage, I think, is that strangers often see us more clearly than the people who have known us our entire lives because they encounter us without our history, right? Without our mask, without expectation, without all the identity pieces we've accumulated over time. You're simply another pilgrim
Speaker 2:walking,
Speaker 1:and there's freedom in that. I think in talking to many people who are considering walking a Camino,
Speaker 2:I think they're hungry for spaces where they can simply be human again, not curated or constantly performing or optimized, Just human. Pilgrimage offers that, and honestly, those lessons become even more meaningful during the difficult years that this podcast was away. Because
Speaker 1:sorry. Because suffering, I think, strips life down in very similar ways. When you experience loss, it clarifies things.
Speaker 2:When you are a caregiver, it clarifies things.
Speaker 1:You begin seeing what matters very quickly.
Speaker 2:When your best friend, love of your life, and wife of decades is experiencing that trauma. What matters
Speaker 1:is your presence, kindness,
Speaker 2:time, and the people who choose to sit beside us in difficult seasons
Speaker 1:matter enormously. I've wondered why tables became such a powerful recurring image for me as I was writing.
Speaker 2:Why not the road itself? Why not the cathedral? Why not Santiago? Both
Speaker 1:Santiago the Apostle, Saint James, and Santiago De Compostela, the place. But the truth is tables symbolize something Pilgrimage understands beautifully. Nobody walks alone. Now, I know literally there are people who are walking by themselves, but nobody walks entirely alone.
Speaker 2:Even solitary pilgrims are eventually shaped by encounters,
Speaker 1:by the hospitality that is extended to them at Annalburgue or shared meals by someone pouring water or wine into their glass and asking, what brought you here? Sometimes that single question opens an entire life. I've literally watched Pilgrims answer that question with laughter and sometimes with tears and sometimes both at the same time. Is that you? That's been me.
Speaker 1:And perhaps that's why I keep returning emotionally to those scenes while I'm writing, not because I wanna romanticize Pilgrimage. And you know I have a very positive view of pilgrimage, but not to romanticize it, but because I want to capture something that I believe is true about it. Without a doubt, the road changes people. That is a very old trope.
Speaker 2:But so often, it is other pilgrims who help us understand how we are changing. Let me
Speaker 1:say that again. Often, I think it is the other pilgrims that are strangers to us who help us understand how we are changing. We become mirrors for one another, witnesses, pilgrim family. And increasingly, during these past few years, I realized that was the story I wanted to tell the most. Not the mechanics of pilgrimage with how someone ties their shoe or create a character that knows everything about the journey and the history,
Speaker 2:but the humanity within it.
Speaker 1:There's a place in Spain that has stayed with me for years, Moshia, along the Atlantic Coast beyond Santiago De Compostela. And many of you know of Moshia, and some of you have been there. Shout out to Mika and my good friend, Kevin Considine. For many pilgrims, Santiago De Compostela is not truly the end. They keep walking west toward the ocean, toward what the Romans once called Finistera, the end of the world, and there's something emotionally powerful about arriving there.
Speaker 1:If you've ever seen the American movie, The Way, you'll recognize it
Speaker 2:right away. Right? That is where they all traveled to spread the ashes and to stand by the ocean.
Speaker 1:But outside of movies, there's something emotionally powerful about arriving there. After weeks of movement, there's suddenly nowhere left to walk.
Speaker 2:It's just ocean. It's only horizon.
Speaker 1:Moshiya carries a certain
Speaker 2:stillness that way.
Speaker 1:The wind off the Atlantic, the stone pass, the sound of waves striking the rocks again and again and again. And years ago, I began imagining a house overlooking the sea,
Speaker 2:And that image evolved as I have evolved to be
Speaker 1:a house that has within it a table set for dinner and pilgrims arriving one by one, carrying all that we do, our packs and our burdens.
Speaker 2:And mine, grief, regret, fear, questions, loneliness, pain, uncertainty.
Speaker 1:And slowly, almost scene by scene, the emotional architecture of The Pilgrim's Table began emerging. Not because I set out to write fiction, this is actually the first time I've ever written a novel, but because the more I was journaling, the more this story kept insisting on being told. I think one of the reasons this story finally emerged when it did is because life itself had slowed down for me enough to listen. For all things, there is a season. There are seasons when we consume experiences quickly, and there are seasons where experiences finally catch up with us emotionally.
Speaker 1:These past three years are very much the latter. Grief changes your relationship with time.
Speaker 2:That's something that I've been writing about in my journal. Grief changes your relationship with time.
Speaker 1:Caregiving changes your understanding of love, and uncertainty changes your understanding of control. There have been many days during these past three years when Pilgrimage felt very far away.
Speaker 2:And yet strangely, the deeper truths of pilgrimage have never felt closer Because pilgrimage has never really been about escaping life.
Speaker 1:It's about learning to walk through life more honestly,
Speaker 2:more attentively, more compassionately.
Speaker 1:Even suffering has its own form of pilgrimage, Not one we would ever willfully choose, but one that changes us nonetheless. And perhaps that's part of why this story became important to me, because the characters arriving at the Pilgrim's table are not heroic in a traditional sense or a literary sense. They are just human, trying to carry what life has handed them,
Speaker 2:trying to understand themselves, trying to find grace in the company of others, just like all of us. And this is a story I wanted to tell because I think stories matter because stories can help us feel less alone, especially stories that are rooted in compassion and empathy. Not simplistic Pollyanna optimism, not easy answers, not something happened and they felt bad and then a rainbow came out, But compassion,
Speaker 1:recognition that every person we encounter is carrying something unseen. Pilgrimage taught me that
Speaker 2:repeatedly. The cheerful man carrying grief across Spain.
Speaker 1:The ever so confident Pilgrim carrying fear. The Quiet One carrying enormous loneliness. Often the road becomes sacred precisely because people stop pretending otherwise. They put that aside, and that's what I wanted this novel to feel like. Not an adventure story, not we saw this, traveled here, encountered this, drank that, but a human story.
Speaker 1:A story about what happens when people finally feel safe enough to speak honestly.
Speaker 2:And I think perhaps more importantly, what happens when someone truly listens. So today, after a very long silence, I simply wanted to return to the road with all of you to reconnect with this community,
Speaker 1:to share where my life has been, and begin sharing the story that quietly emerged from these past three years. If Sacred Steps has always been about the inward journey beneath the outward, then perhaps the Pilgrim's Table is simply another expression of that same path. And honestly, I'm grateful to finally share it with you. The book will be out later this summer. It's with the printers right now.
Speaker 1:We're saying July 1, but it might be sooner. We'll keep updating it on social media and at the pilgrimstable.com. And to those of you who have remained here quietly
Speaker 2:listening and waiting over these years, thank you. Thank you for continuing to walk. Thank you for continuing to listen.
Speaker 1:And thank you for
Speaker 2:believing that even after long absences, the Camino,
Speaker 1:our Camino family, still welcomes us back. Pilgrimage is rarely about something entirely new.
Speaker 2:More often, it's about returning to the person we were meant to be all along. I'm Kevin
Speaker 1:Donahue. This is the Sacred Steps Podcast. And until next time, be well, stay safe, and buen camino.