This interview took place between Sharenda Barlar and Captain David Iglesias while they walked trails in and around Wheaton, Illinois. This is the sixth part of a series of interviews that will take place with faculty from Wheaton College as part of Dunn-Hensley and Barlar's 2020 virtual pilgrimage program.
Hereafter, each individual will be referred to with their initials: DI and SB, respectively. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
DI: I'm a younger member of the baby boomers, I don't like a lot of the over-management and helicoptering in parenting I see. I have 4 daughters, they’re all in their twenties and three of them are Wheaton grads. We've never tried to tell them that you can go through life without any risks. We've told them you need to be sober minded about what the risks are and be willing to take it.
We took a trip to Panama with the Wheaton football construction trip on two consecutive spring breaks. Part of it was on an open-air boat and we went about 4 hours through punishing ocean waves. That was the hardest trip I've ever made. I told them, no electricity, no running water, and questionable food.
If the football guys want an adventure, this was the occasion. I told them, “Some of you are going to get sick on this trip, you're going to get sunburned, you're not going to bathe very much, you’re going to be sleeping in hammocks, but as long as you know that—” Of course, these guys are like, “Bring it on!”
SB: That's how the students who do the Camino are—they’re very different students from those who do Wheaton in Spain (WIS)--not all of them, because some of them have doubled up. WIS is more about, “let's explore these places, we know that we'll have a nice place to stay.” We try to prepare the Camino students as best as we can, that it's about “what’s on your back, you’re going to get blisters, you’re going to get tired and you need to keep going.” But one of the things that I tell them, and I say this to my kids too, is that “You can do hard things. I will never ask you to do something I'm not willing to do myself.” I will always walk with them--I'm not going to tell you to walk to this town and I'm going to catch a cab, I would never do that.
DI: That reminds me of my daughters. I took two of my daughters with me on the (Panama) trip, and they’re just like their mom, they don’t complain, they were adaptable, they worked hard. We had a painting project--we painted the inside and outside of a church, and all of the pews.
SB: Let's talk about your Camino experience. I know that it really came about from Matt Milliner and one of his classes, where you were introduced to the movie, “The Way,” so take it from there--what sparked the desire to actually do it yourself?
DI: I think what attracted me was the fact that it was an ancient route--there was spiritual significance attached to it, so seeing the movie, it started this insatiable desire to learn more about the Camino. I read the book that the movie was based on, Off the Road, by Jack Hitt, and read as many magazine articles as possible. I read _Paul Coelho____, didn't like that as much, it was too new age-y for me. They started talking about the blue spheres and the black dots, I thought--this guy is taking drugs while walking, and if he's not, he's got an amazing sense of imagination.
So I saw the movie in 2012. I thought to myself, I've never walked that long, but I can walk in parts. I can't take a month off to walk, but I can take off two weeks. So I met with one of my former Wheaton roommates, who started this short terms missions group called Adventures and Missions, and he took us and a group of 6-7 young guys right out of college, and the trip was to mentor them. There were 4 of us older guys, guys in our 50s. We started in St. John, and then we had a couple of coaches who were in their late twenties. I met them in Terradillos, right in the middle of La Meseta. But the other (older) guys met them back in Burgos.
So we walked the two weeks, ate with them, slept in the albergues with them. We stopped in Tricastela. So we walked that portion of the Camino in 2013. I got to know these guys really well, because no one had cell-phones on or music playing, it was all just talking and listening, and some of these guys had some sad stories from their upbringing. That just whetted my appetite to go back, so I went back in 2017, and I walked the first third. I started off in St. John with my former roommate. We did it after ISI (Wheaton study program Iron Sharpens Iron) in 2017, so I was in Europe anyway.
SB: I wanted you to walk with us, and it just didn't work.
DI: So we went as far as Santo Domingo de la Calzada and then had to stop. Last year, my daughter Amanda had just finished her studies at Cambridge. She had two weeks of downtime, and I said “well--that's perfect.” She flew to Spain and met my former roommate Randy and me, in Madrid, took the bus up to Santo Domingo de la Calzada, and then we walked to Terradillos in La Meseta, and then we took a bus to Tricastela, and then we walked from Tricastela to Santiago. So we walked the entire length, just not at the same time. I have never spent that kind of sustained time with any of my children. I asked my daughter Amanda, who is quite contemplative, “what did you learn about me?” She said, “I had no idea you were that outgoing, you were so friendly to perfect strangers--you would invite them to dinner.” She was like, “I've never seen that before.”
SB: Cynthia is pretty outgoing--
DI: She's super outgoing. So I don't have to be, because she's the social charmer, I just make sure I get us there.
Cynthia wrote her capstone paper at UVA on the Camino. She has some pretty significant back issues, but we're hopeful that she gets her back repaired in the fall in time for the Portuguese Way. The ISP (Wheaton student trip International Study Program) trip is going to be in Scandinavia, so Lord willing I'll be in Europe anyway, and I'll peel off at the end of the trip to do the Camino.
When I was in Spain, I spent a lot of time at Pilgrim House (in Santiago), I would just stay there and read.
SB: Did you do any debriefing?
DI: Yes. Faith (at the Pilgrim House) debriefed Amanda and me. She had great questions, it was just the two of us. I noticed a constant flow of pilgrims, day in and day out, had my clothes washed twice. What was cool about the Camino is that there's always an abuelita somewhere who's willing to do your dirty clothes for 5 euro.
SB: A lot of people end up doing a month at a time, but obviously, most people don't have the privilege, the means or the time to do that. What was your experience doing the Camino in stages? I imagine you aren't encountering the same people over and over, what was attractive about that, what do you wish could have been different? DI: We never met the same group of people year to year, but once you're on the Camino you keep running into the same people who are walking your pace. So that's how we got to make friends from South Africa and Holland and Germany.
I'm not sure. Would I do it from the beginning? Maybe. I don't have a big desire to walk the French way from beginning to end. If Cynthia wanted to do it, obviously I would go with her. I'm sure it's the kind of thing that I would do. I'm also interested in doing the Portuguese way. I'm also toying around with doing the Northern route, but I've heard it’s very difficult and not well-supported.
SB: If you want solitude, prayer, reflection, it's a great route. If you're seeking out community, you're not going to get that in the Northern route right now.
DI: Was there a lot of community on the Portuguese way?
SB: It's definitely growing because a lot of people feel like the French way is so saturated. Now, I'm a lot like Cynthia, I love people, the more people the better. I thrive with people. I don’t find it to be frustrating.
I do hear from pilgrims who have walked since St John, once they get to Saria, they see the pilgrims who are just doing the last 100 km, and they’re really frustrated. I've also had to talk to the students about this. Even though they haven't walked for a month, they've walked for three weeks, they've been walking from León at least. I’ve had to change their perspective: maybe the pilgrims who have a shorter journey only have 2 weeks, they only have 10 days. This is their pilgrimage, and we're going to respect that.
When you have people who are different stages in their walk, it's really easy for them to get frustrated with pilgrims who are so excited to be there and you've reached a contemplative state, where you're not wanting to talk as much, and you're more conscious of those around you. Newer pilgrims aren't.
DI: You can tell the ones who have been on The Way for a long time.
SB: What about your life prepared you for the Camino? You're from a military background—how did that prepare you? What didn't prepare you? What are you excited about?
DI: I wrote two short pieces about this for Linkedin. One is "7 Business Reasons to walk the Camino de Santiago" (https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/7-professional-lessons-learned-from-walking-camino-de-iglesias/). I got 500 views. I wrote a follow up, "3 more business reasons to walk the Camino." (https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/3-more-professional-reasons-walk-camino-de-santiago-david-c-iglesias/). I like the idea of preparation. The military is all about preparing for war. Even in times of peace, you have to be ready to prepare for war. The idea that you are equipped correctly, you've trained correctly, you've got the intelligence necessary to achieve your goal. It's very mission oriented. I'm going to start here, I will attempt to go this many miles or km per day, I will end in Santiago. It felt very normal to do that. Especially the equipping. If you don’t have the right equipment, you're not going to do well. If you show up with a fifty-pound backpack wearing sandals, you're not going to make it. If you travel light and have the appropriate socks and footwear, it's not a guarantee you'll make it but you'll probably make it.
SB: Wasn't there a guy who walked with you who wasn't prepared at all?
DI: *Laughs* He didn't read one of our preparatory memos, he had just graduated from Notre Dame, he was a kickboxer, super fit, the youngest guy in our group and he was the first one to physically break down because he was wearing toe shoes and a forty-pound backpack.
SB: What in the world could he be taking? DI: He took a laptop, a professional camera, way too much stuff. We had to put him in a taxi and send him to a rally point, buy him hiking boots so he was able to finish.
The idea of teamwork, community also impacted me. You can do it by yourself, but I think the experience is so much more impactful when you can share it with a friend or a family member. I got to know Amanda better through those 2 weeks than any time since she was born, and I think she'd say the same about me.
SB: I agree that if you are able to do it with someone who knows you, that could be a deepening relationship for you. I see in the military, I have no military background, but I see in my family who are military, your group becomes your brothers, your family, and you share things with them that you haven’t shared with others because of the trust that's there. I see that on the Camino, even when we were talking about “The Way.” The main character didn’t want to be in community, he wanted to be alone. He fought it, but when he opened himself up to it, that's when he could start healing.
DI: Last night, we were watching that movie. I was talking to Sophia, my daughter, and I said “Let's try to spot the point where they become friends.” These are no long strangers. We decided it was when he got bailed out. When he got drunk and tried to hit a police officer, he arrested him and handcuffed him to a radiator until he sobered up. Jack from Ireland had to bail him out. At that point he became friends with Jack, Jos, and Sarah.
SB: Learning to be vulnerable with each other, and I think the Camino does that. Even with people who you might not talk to in a normal setting, it invites conversation and vulnerability, whether it be, my back is really hurting and someone offers a Tylenol, blister, Band-Aid. I see that so many times, those opening doors, that vulnerability.
DI: I made a point on the first trip in 2013 to buy the young guys cafe con leche, a bocadillo, because these guys were traveling on a shoestring, and I had plenty of money. I went back to the states with money in my pocket. So I made a point of giving it to them, just for them to take it. Once word was out, I'd have a little group of guys who wanted coffees or pastries or bocadillos during our mid-morning break.
SB: How has the Camino stayed with you? How has it changed you?
DI: I mean, the fact that we are walking here right now. I used to never walk everywhere, I'd either drive or I ran. Walking was something old people did, or people in third world countries did. The Camino has really given me an appreciation for the gift of walking, the gift of observing. When I walk into work every day, I look for the one tree that's going to first announce fall is coming by showing the yellow leaves. It's made me much more aware of my surroundings. It's made me want to reach out more towards strangers, and when I go into a room and see somebody who’s a wallflower I'll probably go up and start talking to them, that's something I learned on the Camino.
SB: What about spiritually? How did God speak to you? DI: The importance of community, and not my own little group of guys that I've known for forty years, but the broader Christian community. It's also made me think about the brevity of life, because you don’t think about death when you're young, but then you realize there's a beginning and a middle and an end. If my life was the Camino, I'd be in O’Cebrero or León. Closer to the end than to the beginning. When you’re in your 20s and 30s, you aren’t thinking about that.
SB: We were talking about risk management earlier, and we can prepare, like you were saying, for war, strategy, we can do the best preparation, and we can try to avoid as many risks, but that doesn't protect us from risks. Every time I have walked the Camino, I have heard of someone dying, just two stages before me, the word gets back. It was still snowing up in the Pyrenees, and they wanted to close the route, but somebody fell and broke their leg. We arrived in León, a girl was limping and crying, saying “I don’t know if I can even finish.” We can do as much as we want to avoid risks, but that doesn't mean they aren’t going to be there. And we can't control it, it's just like life, we can say what we want, and we can make the best preparation, but that doesn't mean that we aren't going to suffer.
DI: Protestants don't appreciate suffering very much. Especially American Protestants, we overmedicate, we try to avoid pain as much as possible. That's something our Catholic brothers and sisters are better at.
SB: I agree. I'm not saying that suffering is good, God doesn't want us to suffer, but I feel like oftentimes, American Protestants feel that if “I’m suffering, it's because I'm not right with God. I must have done something wrong. Hey--I'm saved, God covers everything, why am I suffering?” That's just not true. We can look all through Romans, all through different epistles, and we're not even talking about Christian persecution, we're talking about suffering, thorn in your flesh. Paul didn't have it all rosy after he accepted Christ.
DI: I was at a conference with former US attorneys, and our guest speaker was the former head of the Drug Enforcement Agency, talking about the opioid crisis. I asked him a question: can we learn what other countries have done about their opioid problems? He said, “Well not really, because we're only 6% of the world population, but we consume about 90% of the world's painkillers.” So this is a uniquely American problem. We avoid pain pretty well in this country.
SB: I agree.
David Iglesias served as a state, federal and military prosecutor with a focus on national security and terrorism cases. He was the presidentially appointed, Senate confirmed, United States Attorney for the District of New Mexico between 2001-07. CAPT Iglesias presided over the largest political corruption investigations and prosecutions in New Mexico history. Captain Iglesias was recalled to active duty U.S. Navy status from 2008-14 in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. He served as a team leader, senior prosecutor and spokesman with the U.S. Military Commissions, in Washington, D.C. and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, handling war crimes and terrorism cases. He supervised the conviction of the U.S. v. Noor Uthman terrorism case. CAPT Iglesias testified before the U.S. Senate and House in 2007 concerning the U.S. Attorney firings and wrote a book about the topic, “In Justice,” (published 2008). CAPT Iglesias initially served on active duty as a U.S. Navy JAG officer between 1985-88 at the Pentagon and Naval Legal Service Office, Washington, D.C. He was a defense counsel in a 1986 Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, court-martial that partially inspired the movie, “A Few Good Men.” Then, CAPT Iglesias also defended legendary Navy SEAL Team Commanding Officer Dick Marcinko, author of the “Rogue Warrior” books, in military legal proceedings. Marcinko was the founder of the Navy’s premier SEAL Team. In 1998, Professor Iglesias was the Republican nominee for New Mexico Attorney General. He also served as a prosecutor with the New Mexico Attorney General’s Office, General Counsel for the NM Taxation and Revenue Department, senior associate for the Walz law firm, executive advisor for Southwest Border issues for Booz Allen Hamilton and led a national security consulting team, The Soufan Group, in Singapore. Iglesias served on active duty in late 1999 at Fifth Fleet, Bahrain, in support of Operation Southern Watch. He retired from the U.S. Navy in 2014 as a Captain. As U.S. Attorney, Iglesias was a member of the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee and chaired the Attorney General’s Border and Immigration Subcommittee. Since 1998, CAPT Iglesias has taught foreign military, intelligence, Ministry of Defense and law enforcement personnel in South America, Eastern Europe, Africa and Asia about border security, law enforcement, counter-terrorism and rule of law issues with the Defense Institute of International Legal Studies, the Joint Special Operations University, and the Justice Department.
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