[.ca] What the Psychic Told the Pilgrim: A Midlife ... (ISBN 1553652401)

What a pilgrim tells the readers:
I finished What the Psychic Told the Pilgrim, by Jane Christmas, at 1.30 am yesterday. I just couldn't put it down. I love everything in that book: the complexion of it, the spirit. It's funny and moving at the same time and even if you can tell that the author is a pious person, she keeps an open and critical mind about her fellow pilgrims (and herself). Pilgrims are human beings, right? And when human beings are concerned, anything is to be expected and the book is indeed rich in (mis)adeventures. The book, of course, is about the author's personal experience, but it says so much about the way we humans are - and so much about the Camino itself from an historical and geographical perspective - that even though I'm a "veteran" of the Camino myself, I think that anybody who hasn't walk it will enjoy it! And maybe even walk it one day or another, because, as they'll see, some miracles seem to be still possible after all.

A Life-Changing Experience:
I don't know what compelled me to read this book other than the fact that the covered mentioned something about Spain's Camino - one of the world's biggest networks of pilgrimages. Like Lourdes in the south of France, the Camino (a trio of lengthy treks to the putative sepulcher of St. James) attracts tens of thousands of hikers every year. Some are the faithful who want to draw closer to God through acts of penance, while others simply turn-up for the challenge of trudging 750 kilometers through mountainous terrain on the way to Santiago. Since this annual affair has been going on for hundreds of years, the Spanish population is well prepared to provide various degrees of hospitality for the sojourners. I even discovered a number of websites that help out-of-towners make travel arrangements to the starting line on the French side of the Pyrenees. Christmas' story is one of a wild adventure that went way beyond her initial expectations for taking the journey. Going through a mid-life crisis in Canada, resulting from a failed marriage, Christmas decided to organize a group of friends to accompany her on the roughest stretch of the Camino. For the next month or so her story unfolds along the lines of learning to adjust to the biggest challenge in her life to date: finding God in herself. As Christmas struggles to overcome the aches and pains, the fear and loathing, and the growing sense of disillusionment, she gradually learns to look outside herself and her little group of so-called friends to find a whole new world beckoning her. While the Spanish countryside and its many decrepit little villages may not possess the spiritual values that she is idealistically looking for to get her life going again, they contain a strong sense of newness and vitality that will challenge her time-worn sensibilities. By the end of the pilgrimage, she has become a transformed person who relates more effectively with people outside her traditional bailiwick, and can begin to take risks with her emotions. There is a lot of fun and high spirit in this book.