This interview took place between Sharenda Barlar, Susan Dunn-Hensley, Cynthia Iglesias, and Captain David Iglesias while they walked trails in and around Wheaton, Illinois. This is the seventh part of a series of interviews that will take place with faculty from Wheaton College as part of Susan Dunn-Hensley and Barlar's 2020 virtual pilgrimage program.
Hereafter, each individual will be referred to with their initials: SB, SD, CI, and DI, respectively. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
CI: This is a favorite quote I have that really helped me with my thesis, looking at walking and the importance of walking. It’s from a book called Wanderlust by Rebecca Solnit. This is how she opens up chapter 1. "Where does it start? Muscles tense, one legged pillar holding the body upright between the earth and sky, and the other pendulum. Swinging from behind, heel touches down. The whole weight of the body rolls forward onto the ball of the foot. The big toe pushes off and the delicately balanced weight of the body shifts again. The legs reverse position. It starts with a step and then another step and then another and then another that adds up like tacks on a drum, to a rhythm. The rhythm of walking. The most obvious, and yet the most obscure thing in the world. This walking, that wanders so readily into religion, philosophy, landscape, urban policy, anatomy, allegory, and heartbreak.
SB: Great start--let's start walking. Cynthia, I know you haven't walked the Camino. Any thoughts on going back with David and walking it? CI: I would like to walk it in its entirety, we had talked about possibly the Portuguese way, because it's shorter...
SB: You could do coastal, or interior. I did coastal, and its beautiful, and I think that the Portuguese Way, if it’s just the two of you, is great. We've talked about doing a different route with the students. In terms of the infrastructure, there's no comparison to the French Way. It's fully supported. and now, the Camino is back open, even with COVID. It opened in July, to the EU and others. They have implemented COVID restrictions where they've separated the beds in albergues, they're primarily wanting people to have pensions and stay in private rooms, so really this idea of what we've thought of the Camino and its communal living is kind of gone right now.
DI: That's a bummer. My comment after watching the movie “The Way” last night was, you know, it's really about friendship. It's about community. CI: Communitas. So whether it be the French Way, or the Portuguese Way, I would like to, God willing, time-permitting, do it all in one time. Not everybody's able to do that, I understand, but we'll see. Hopefully next summer will be great.
SB: If you are going next summer, God willing we'll be there too because we've canceled Wheaton in Spain this summer. We've moved it to next year because students have already signed up. Susan's son was a student, and he was going to Wheaton in Spain (WIS), and all of those who had already been accepted were looking forward to it. Next year is the Holy Year. It's a big year, so we decided that I'm going to stick it out and right after WIS, I'm going to welcome Camino students, and we're walking the Camino.
SB: I haven't done the Norte, but everybody I've talked to has said its gorgeous but incredibly difficult.
DI: A lot of climbing.
CI: Not as well supported.
SB: I don’t know if you guys are a part of American Pilgrims on the Camino, but if you love the Camino, they do monthly walks here in Chicago. There's a Chicago chapter, and last month, our walk was at the equestrian center. So you get to meet all kinds of other people that love the Camino. They have lectures, just a support system.
One of the things, too, that we heard about the Northern Camino is that there's no one there. If you want solitude, if you want to be alone, and some people do, you do the Northern Camino. If you want community, you do the French Way.
CI: From 2010 forward the Camino has increased in popularity due to the popularity of “The Way,” which really was probably a sleeper at the theaters, but has become this force. Given your research and experience, why do you think the Camino has taken off as it has?
SB: I think that people long for connection, for purpose. And the idea of slowing down, disconnecting from reality. Susan and I have created some surveys, talking to different pilgrims, about their experience as they walk. What they say overwhelmingly is usually there is some kind of catalyst in their lives, could be a graduation, retirement, divorce, new job, all of that brings about this desire to look inward but also connect with others. The Camino offers that.
SD: It has also produced a resurrection in other pilgrim routes from other parts of the world. For example, in England, they have opened up a Durham route. In Ireland, they opened St. Brendan’s way, so people could walk in Ireland and get credit towards walking the Camino.
CI: I was looking at my thesis and pulling out those soundbites and those moments in my writing, and pulling at those moments that really spoke to me as a believer. Looking at the religious and the secular, the pilgrims and the tourists and those lines being blurred now, and what pilgrimage means for so many, it's not what it used to be, we all know that. There's something that stuck out to me-- the secular transubstantiation. Finding God instead of finding themselves. That space of transition, the liminality of it,” I'm not there and I'm not there, where am I, and where am I going?” and the journey. The importance of walking that allows you to do it. Rebecca Solnit talks about it in her book "Wanderlust." the mind at 3 miles an hour, and the process of fleshing out the mind at 3 miles an hour. That's a very general speed for most people, but what happens in walking, and how walking has been named a preferred mode of travel within medieval pilgrimage. Now, we can drive, we have other options. For the Camino, it's not about the destination, it's the journey. We're going back to those medieval times, where there were more miracles, as I understand it, recorded on the route than the actual sites. That’s why the journey became the most important part about the Camino, and walking became the preferred mode, even still to this day.
So I was looking at what defines a pure pilgrim in my thesis. For the secular, the pilgrim, the tourist, it's the walking. You walk, you get the stamp. There's still this hierarchy, this pecking order that says, "Oh you walked, you're the true pilgrim. Regardless of why you're here, you walked it.”
SB: I know that for Susan and me, and I'm sure for David, when we walked in Ireland, when we walked the Camino, we observed things when we were walking that we can’t observe when we’re in a car.
We walked with Leah Samuelson yesterday, and we walked the Camino with her last year, and we painted, and so we were talking yesterday about how when I was walking, I would look at the trees and go, “I want to paint that. How would I blend those colors?” I would think about things that I would never imagine thinking about in a car. There was one particular time that Susan and I were on the Kerry Camino. Now the Kerry Camino is very rustic. It's more like the northern route in Spain. Very rustic, we were going through sheep pastures, no stops, no infrastructure.
We walked 17 miles one day, without any stops, nothing, we just ate a sandwich, no infrastructure whatsoever, we get to the town that we're supposed to stop at, and supposedly this bar has a stamp, he has no idea what we're talking about, we have nowhere to stay, so we have to take a cab back to our original town to spend the night, and then take a cab back to that place to start the walk over. That feeling when we were in that cab--if you are walking for a month or so, and you get in transportation, you are like, “They are going way too fast. Slow down. This is crazy.”
SD: It wasn't even poor planning. The company that was making our arrangements for the pilgrimage had to arrange our transportation back--there was just not enough housing.
SB: We got there so quickly back to our spot. We were like “wow, we saw such amazing things today, and we would have missed it in the car.”
CI: That's so amazing. The ability to slow down everything and process, and pay attention to things you would never be aware of. And how multi-sensory that is. It's not just what you're seeing, it's what you're hearing, it's what you're smelling, everything.
SB: When I wrote my Faith and Learning paper, I argued that Jesus's ministry was so effective because they walked everywhere. That doesn't mean that they couldn’t walk everywhere because he rode on a donkey. There were other modes of transportation. But by walking everywhere, he was able to slow down, talk to people, he had more freedom to minister.
SD: So much of that culture was so different than ours. The possibility that technology offers for getting somewhere super quickly and literally ignoring the humanity that exists around you is profoundly different than the past.
CI: Notice how we slow down in our society. We do slow down, we're at a traffic light, where in traffic, and we're frustrated. We're irritated, because we've had to slow down, because we can't get there faster. As a believer, so many parallels in walking, the importance of walking, we even say in our modern Christian vernacular that "they walk the walk." A believer walks the walk, it's not just head knowledge, it translates down to the feet. They're really showing and proving their faith in action.
SD: I was interested in what we were talking about earlier with the idea of secular pilgrimage too--what is your focus on?
CI: Walking, through walking.
SD: Are you focusing on God, or self-actualization? Those can come together, but sometimes what you're looking for determines what you get.
CI: As I understand it, the Walters made the Pilgrim House to help people unpack that very question: I'm here, now what.
SB: That is their ministry, and it’s very implicit, because they are explicitly a welcoming center. People can come to the Pilgrim House, and it is not perceived as a Christian ministry. It's a welcoming center where they can do laundry, where they can sit. As someone who walks pilgrimage, you want to debrief with someone, you want to talk about it, you want to take some time and think through what you just went through. They use that as an opportunity to then open up discussion that then takes them deeper. That was something that was lacking a lot of the time. David, I don't know if you've had that experience. Part of the reason why APOC is so popular is that if you've experienced something like that, you need to talk about it. You want to talk about it, and not everybody understands, and people look at your pictures and say that's great, that was nice. Nate and Faith Walter offer this way to unpack what has happened. They even offer bible studies in a very soft manner. They have these amazing questions that we do with students after the Camino, and Nate takes us through this unpacking of what we just went through.
CI: Even for the believer, working through it, processing it, is still pretty heady. What did God say to me for today, tomorrow, it may not be that clear yet, it may be once you get home. I'm sure it's varied for you, Sharenda, every time you've gone.
SB: I think that every time I've done the Camino, I've always worked through something different, and thought through different aspects of my life. For some students, it’s "I'm looking forward to this, it's really helped me set goals," For other students, it’s really helped them deal with trauma. We have solo days where I ask them not to talk to anyone in our group for a day, and if someone initiates a conversation with them, on the Camino, of course engage, but use that as a time to really ask God to speak to you, and to reflect on the goodness of God, and I've had students really have breakthroughs during that time. "I've never really understood why my dad left. I was able to realize I'm a child of God, and I'm loved."
DI: One of our daughters' roommates lost her mother unexpectedly. Her mother was an aerobics instructor, and one day just keeled over with an heart attack. Her daughter, April, walked the Camino by herself to process. Some of the things she wrote were beautiful.
CI: I remember talking to her, reading her posts, she said she thought there would be some aha moments, but overall what was healing and soothing was the daily rhythm--mindless daily rhythm. Get up, get out, walk, start over again. And she needed that simplicity.
SB: To change what you're saying a little bit, I've always thought, and still believe, that the Camino is a special place apart from everything where you can just really separate from life, but COVID has taught students and me is the fact that we're here, walking all of these different routes that are all in our backyard. We've discovered places in DuPage county that we didn't even know about because we're never here, and thinking how we have a pandemic, we have political turmoil, we have protests, we have so much going on, and when we started walking, it became a way to process together, and pray. it's like you're saying, sometimes the answer doesn’t come right away in this aha moment, but we have found that no matter what we're going through, what's around us, we've gotten up every day together and walked, and prayed. And there is such a faithfulness of God that comes. His mercies are new every day, that's been a comfort. No matter, what, we're able to get up and walk. What's remarkable, really, is that we're on day 71, and we have not missed a day, and we have had amazing weather. And so we are so thankful for that.
CI: Amanda finished the Camino with David last summer, loved it. This whole journey for our family began with Amanda and Matt Milliner, she took his Byzantine art class, came home spring break and said, “hey, there's this movie that just came out,” in 2011. We watched it. That's when David announced to the family, we're going to do that. He did--with classmates in 2013, he's had to do it in two different trips. It's tapped a nerve for all of us.
Of course, for me, with my studies, coming back to UVA and getting my degree, finishing up, having to write my senior thesis. I finished in 2014, and all of this was what am I going to write about, and of course for the life of a believer, and Psalm 84 is just a beautiful psalm for all of us...the importance of why are we on pilgrimage, and we go before just to establish those springs for those who follow after us. Those who follow behind as a place of comfort and solace. So it really resonated with us as a family in general, so it was a real blessing to Amanda to finish with her dad. But we've all talked about, could we do it together, what would be the route that we would do if we did it together. Not everybody has time to go all the way at once. What touched David and I last night as we were watching the movie again for the umpteenth time was they're out in front of the cathedral, they're just standing there, they've bonded so much, and they look at each other and they say, well, let's go. And they go all the way into the end...they shared that journey together, and that's what was special.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if there was no consideration of time, and you could just go on the Camino?
SB: We often talk about, here in the US when I talk to different pilgrims who have gone on the Camino, because those that do the Camino in the US either have the means financially to go, or time, they're retired, they've graduated from college, on a summer off. Of course we as Americans have all kinds of restrictions, and we see Europeans get six weeks off. Sometimes, we encountered several people from England last year, who like David, did it in stages, but it's also so much easier to do it in stages when you’re a country away, and it's cheap to do. It takes determination and a plan if you’re going to be doing it from the US, going over.
CI: It's very obvious to David, each time he's gone on the Camino, that there are two seasons of age groups: post grad or retirement. You have this chunk of time, begin again, think what's next, with no consideration of that tight schedule. I've got to get back, I've only got two weeks, the freedom that comes with that.
SB: Unfortunately, something that we encounter a lot when we're walking the Camino, we see Americans who are walking and they do have that constraint of time, and they miss so much because they are wanting to make sure they meet that deadline, and they miss the culture and the beauty and the community oftentimes.
We stayed in a house in Molina Seca, right after Cruz de Ferro, which is a really hard day on the Camino because it's loose rock. So I give the students a rest day, we only walk 7 miles after we reach Molina Seca, which is a rest day, really.
And so we were in Molina Seca, staying with this amazing Brazilian family in their home, so they were welcoming American pilgrims from North Carolina, and we always have devotions in the evenings, so we were having a devotion, and you could tell that these Americans really wanted to talk. So we invited them to our devotions if they wanted to participate, and they said yes, they were so impressed with our group and taking the time to be intentional in everything we were doing, we would always reflect on something as simple as what does this architecture mean? what is the significance of it? What happened in this town, and we found that people, locals, were so appreciative that they were actually taking the time to learn about every place we stopped.
He was a go-getter, while she has not done anything like this. We shared with them about this town called Santo-Domingo de la Calzada, where a miracle occurred. A young man was accused of sleeping with the town's daughter, and he was hung, and his parents when on to Santiago to pray for him, came back, because you had to walk back during pilgrimage, and found him alive because their prayers worked. They went to the mayor and said, "He's alive, can you take him down." The Mayor was eating a chicken and said, "if he's alive, this chicken is going to get up and walk, I don't believe it." The chicken got up and walked off his plate. So now in that cathedral, they have live chickens, in gilded cages as a reminder of that miracle. So we were telling the couple and asking them about that place. They had not even gone in there, and then to come to find out, the wife got heat stroke because her husband was pushing her so hard to get to the next place. How tragic! How many people walk the Camino like that? That's what I appreciate about what David has done--he knew that it wasn't worth it to walk it in 30 days.
CI: You've talked about how each trip is predictable with your students, the first day they are flying ahead, trying to get there. Overpack, go too fast. Two things you probably see right away. Everybody starts to shed their extra possessions.
SB: They shed extra stuff about halfway--we pack it and send it to Santiago, even though I tell them, “ok, what have you not used so far?” And they gather it up. That's so symbolic, and I think relating it to what's going on today in the world, I think in so many ways COVID has made us stop all activities, and slow down and say, “ok, let's think about where we are, what's going on.”
CI: Yearning for communitas. Communitas is not the screen. We make it work, we have to, but there's no replacement. Nothing replaces the side by side being together. For so many to shed, to process, to debrief to unpack. The side by side is so safe, versus the face to face. You're together, close, doing something, but it can be that way of evening out that male-female communication. men often share more through activity: on the court, walking, running side by side, fishing, when women prefer face to face. The Camino allows for that space, for all.
SB: It really does, because you do take a deep dive, oftentimes when you're walking. You have the deepest conversations with someone you just met, but it's kind of a safe place, because you say, “I don’t know if you’re going to see this person again, I'm just going to share,” but the face to face of community meals, when you get there....
CI: With you as an academic and a believer, what was the moment in which you were like, "I need to bring the Camino to Wheaton?”
SB: In 2015, I walked the Camino, personally, and it was such a powerful moment for me thinking. I was at a crossroads in my career, I was fulfilled teaching, but I'd been interested in the Camino for a while. I didn't know how well it would be received at Wheaton, but I started thinking, "Could we do this in a way that could include spiritual formation for the students?" We don’t have a lot of those activities because the Camino trip is not a study abroad program, this is not something where they’re immersed in the language, but it is a powerful moment. I'm a firm believer that all truth is God's truth, and all beauty comes from God. How can we use this opportunity to challenge the students to let them see what living in community with others?
It's easy to be in community with people who are like you. It’s harder when you are trying to negotiate language, cultures, and I think something that is missing oftentimes in the Western culture is this idea of hospitality. We think of hospitality as “oh, let's offer this to other people, let's host you, we're the saviors, we're going into your country and fix things and we'll leave if you do it our way.” The Camino is not that--oftentimes, I'm hurting, I'm in pain, I've gotten lost, and I have to rely on someone else's hospitality, and I have to receive it. I think that is such a representation of our walk with Christ. Our pastor was talking about grace the other night. He said that grace is a two-way street. We can't accept God's grace unless we offer it to someone else. How are we going to live in community with Christ unless we are offering grace to one another and that's not meaning just forgiveness but hospitality, true community, accepting others’ differences?
So my experience on the Camino happened in 2015, and I was so impacted. In 2016, during Wheaton in Spain. I said something to Laura Montgomery about it and asked her what she thought, and she said “Do it, I think it’s great.” And we did the program the very next year in 2017. So it was a swift learning curve for me. We had an amazing group that we're still in close contact with, made connections that I still have that I made on the Camino, made mistakes as we always do, and learned from that.
CI: It's like your first year of teaching: you never forget, and you’re so grateful for all you’ve learned in such a short time.
Cynthia Iglesias is Wheaton College's Regional Director of Development for the Western Region, including Washington, Oregon, California, Idaho, Alaska, and Hawaii. Cynthia earned her B.A. from the University of Virginia in Interdisciplinary Studies. Prior to joining the Development Department, Cynthia served in a variety of volunteer fundraising and leadership positions related to her husband’s career and her daughters' preprofessional dance company. Cynthia and her husband, David Iglesias '80, reside in Wheaton with their cocker spaniel, Anise.
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