Mark Labberton:
It is really a great joy and delight today to welcome Cherie Harder as our guest on Conversing. Cherie is someone I’ve admired a great deal over the last bunch of years, and in particular because of her role as the president of The Trinity Forum based in Washington D.C. Prior to her role in leading The Trinity Forum in 2008, she served in the White House as special assistant to the president and director of policy and projects for First Lady Laura Bush. She brings an enormous richness of education and background and service in many different domains, seeking to bring her faith to bear on all of these places of civic and public life that matter so much. We’re particularly fortunate to have her today because she’s literally still on a sabbatical, and the sabbatical has included the thing that we’re going to primarily talk about, which is a journey that she’s taken alone, with her husband and with friends on the Camino de Santiago Compostela. Cherie, welcome. It’s such a delight to have you today.
Cherie Harder:
Great to be here, Mark.
Mark Labberton:
When I think about your life, I’d like to have those who are acquainted with you and those who aren’t just be reminded of what your work with The Trinity Forum, as the president of The Trinity Forum really involves, what sort of vortex that puts you in. I want to be sure that people can picture what your work is more clearly so that we can understand even more why the sabbatical and the Camino walk that you just took is so important.
Cherie Harder:
Oh, well, thanks for that, Mark. Yes, The Trinity Forum has been around for over 30 years. I’ve been there for 17, and we try to provide a space and resources for really leaders to grapple with the big questions of life in the context of faith, and to basically provide space and platforms for the best of Christian thought leadership. At this particular time, there has been a lot of contention over what Christian ideas about how we interact in public, what the implications of our faith and Christian ideas about society, how they play out, how they should play out, what it means to love one’s neighbour, what is owed to nation, to the other, to our enemies. Those questions have become increasingly not just fraught, but antagonistic and polarized. I mean, you see some of the most vicious fighting often among Christians, among people who both claim to the same God and try to be obedient to His word, and you see very heated, often very nasty fights.
We’re located in Washington D.C. Our three big areas of focus have been faith and public life, as well as spiritual formation and the arts and humanity. So our focus is certainly larger than just faith and public life, but that is a big portion of it. So trying to remain faithful, remain thoughtful, as well as remain gracious is often a challenge. Often, when one is in the midst of a lot of opposition and antagonism, it almost feels like it takes a certain amount of counterforce just to stay in the same place.
We’re at times where it’s very difficult to remain neutral, much less gracious in all one does. Often, graciousness is seen by others as either weakness or cowardice or insufficient to the moment. Somehow we don’t know what time it is or are failing to put on the full armor of God and fight in the ways that others want. It’s a time where to simply try to articulate and invite people to contemplate and reflect on how God would have us seek justice, how he would have us love our neighbour, how he would have us interact with each other and try to contribute to a society in faithful ways has become increasingly fraught and increasingly… It seems like hostile territory.
Mark Labberton:
Right. Now, you didn’t come to this job at The Trinity Forum as a newbie to Washington D.C. or to the reality of faith and public life questions. So just summarize what you had done just before you eventually came to serve in The Trinity Forum.
Cherie Harder:
Yeah. Before serving at The Trinity Forum, I worked on Capitol Hill for a number of members, a congressman, a couple of different senators. I worked at the National Endowment for the Humanities as the senior counsellor to the chairman of the NEH. I worked at a think tank called Empower America. It was Jack Kemp, Bill Bennett and Jeane Kirkpatrick’s think tank. Then I worked in the White House sort of double-hatted. I was on the Domestic Policy Council and I was the policy and projects director for the First Lady Laura Bush.
Mark Labberton:
So you’ve been at various times, at least in the room where it happens or near the room where it happens, however we might define that, and you have a sense of those things. You bring all of that wealth of experience to The Trinity Forum. You’ve done it now, as you just said, for 17 years, and along that way there’s been lots of highs and lows, there’s no doubt about that in political moment. But how would you distinguish the particular challenges of this moment?
Cherie Harder:
Yeah. Well, it’s a great question, Mark. There’s lots of ways to answer that, and probably the more I think about it, the more I would elaborate on different things. But I think one of the big changes is I left Capitol Hill… It’s been a while. I left in the end of 2006, went to the White House after that and then joined The Trinity Forum in 2008. While I was on Capitol Hill, I was the policy director for one senator who was a very conservative senator, worked for the Senate majority leader. There was always controversy, of course, because there’s always different points of view about what should happen and the stakes are real and they’re high.
One big difference I think is there was still a widespread belief in the importance of persuasion. When I was still on Capitol Hill, one of the things I would often do for the senator that I served as policy director for is envision and create or set up different hearings to explore different issues. Part of the thought was if you basically set the table and you make an argument, you bring the right experts, they say the right things, you’re essentially making an argument both to your other members, but also to the American people like, “Here’s why this is a good thing to do.” It’s not that everybody was gracious and kind to each other. Of course, they weren’t. People are people, but there was a certain amount of respect and regard that’s embedded within the effort to persuade.
It takes other people seriously. It assumes that they are reasonable and open to persuasion. It’s a very different posture than seeking to dominate, humiliate and pulverize in a sense. Again, certainly, there are people trying to dominate and there were power plays all the time. I don’t want to make out the ’90s and the aughts where some era that just dominated by a sense of kumbaya. That was not it. But there was a sense of a need to persuade and a recognition that the person who is your opponent on this particular bill, maybe your ally on the next.
There was also, I think, a greater sense of shared assumption about the importance of the rule of law, the importance of maintaining relationships simply because your opponent this time might be your ally the next. Often, senators were mocked for starting out a speech with the distinguished member from the great state of whatever it was, and all of the platitudes and compliments ladled on at the beginning, but in a way that served an important purpose in that I think we’re much more likely to react when our pride or vanity is pricked than even when our ideals are assaulted. By essentially showing personal courtesy, it made it much more likely that work would happen and that progress would be made, that a compromise or an agreement could be reached.
At this point, it seems like our politicians are doing it in part because the people seem to want it, but that there is a premium placed on performative belligerence on not just one-upping or dominating, but humiliating and deeply personally insulting the other side, and somehow that’s a show of strength or competence. The gratuitous insult and the pointless belligerence is valorized now in a way that it wasn’t 25 years ago.
Mark Labberton:
Right. It is a remarkable transformation. I mean, I’m often struck by how much of what’s happening is the decay of mannerliness, and I’m not meaning that in some sort of quaint sense that it’s just about being proper. As you say, mannerliness, respectfulness, the kind of appropriate show of respect, that greetings and so forth really does establish a different table. It sort of says, “I’m playing at the table where there is mutual respect and I show difference by these various platitudes that may come at the beginning, but it’s a framing that reminds me of who and what we represent and what we’re about.” Then when you not only have the disappearance of that, but then the replacement, be the kind of belligerence you’re describing, we’re into a completely different territory that has much more to do with chaos and brutality than it does with anything remotely like persuasion.
Cherie Harder:
That’s right.
Mark Labberton:
Yeah, it’s an amazing moment. One of the things that has been a challenge, which many Christians have felt, and you referred to it earlier, is this incredible Christian polarization. So you add not just the general cultural belligerence within the House or the Senate or government at large, but you also end up with this division among Christian people whose vision of the nation, whose vision of what it means to value human life, et cetera, is just cast in dramatically different terms.
So when I think about The Trinity Forum, and I have the great pleasure and joy of being a senior fellow, so I have a kind of bird’s eye view of what it is that The Trinity Forum is doing, which I highly regard and respect with great joy and delight, actually deep appreciation for the kind of willingness and courage that The Trinity Forum regularly expresses, in the middle of leading that as The Trinity Forum’s president, you’re exposed to the battering of every side and you’re exposed to the hostilities against you, against The Trinity Forum itself, against the place of an organisation like The Trinity Forum that’s doing something that is so not about belligerence. It’s about understanding. It’s about rationality. It’s about debate. It’s about persuasion. It’s about thoughtfulness, and it’s about concrete action beyond those things in the world.
What sustains you as a general rhythm? I want to ask this in part as the prelude to having you then tell us about your very recent experience on the Camino. So, please just give us a sense of your spiritual rhythm. How do you sustain a healthy life in Christ in the vortex of Washington D.C. in these years?
Cherie Harder:
Yeah. Mark, is it okay if I add one thing to my previous answer and then I’ll jump into that question? One thing I should have mentioned earlier and didn’t yet is I think another change in what we’ve seen from even say 25 years ago to now is previously there was more of a sense of the obligations and the duties of being a leader, of being an institutional leader, in that there were members of the Senate and there was plenty to criticize about them, but who constantly held up both the prerogatives and the obligations of, say, being a senator. The same would happen for the House. There were certain just accepted standards for what it meant to be presidential, for example. Generally, that meant not giving into your id, not saying everything that you thought in all of its unvarnished ferocity of reining it in as suited the institution. The language was always saltier in the Senate behind closed doors than it would’ve been on the record.
Mark Labberton:
Sure.
Cherie Harder:
There was an understanding that that was the right thing to do, that being a leader had certain responsibilities, whereas I think we see this sort of inversion of almost what it means to be the leader of a great institution. You often see now members of Congress basically attend hearings, play for the cameras, and then not go to the back room to negotiate something, but go to social media to almost offer a play by play on the event that they just participated in presumably as a leader. So in a sense, what was understood to be there were just the responsibilities of holding institutional authority has almost been displaced by wanting the attention that a social media platform confers. Technology, of course, has been a big part of that, but it’s been a sea change. That’s different then, but I’m sure it affected the way that you had to conduct your leadership, that it affects all of us because it seems like there’s different public expectations as well. People want and often confuse publicity with effectiveness that somehow-
Mark Labberton:
Or even with leadership.
Cherie Harder:
Yes. Yes. Saying something in a public way or drawing attention to yourself is leading. It almost seems like there’s been a devaluing of quiet effectiveness. But to your more recent question, how do I sustain myself? Certainly, these are times that drive one to prayer. I’ve always been a walker, and so I enjoy walking, and that’s often when I do my praying. That was actually the long walks, which I think are… I find refreshing in good prayer times and reflection times were part of what made me consider taking on a pilgrimage and walking the Camino. I forget when the idea first occurred to me, but it’s been a number of years. At one point, I’d read a memoir of… I think it was called Off the Road, by a former NPR reporter named Jack Hitt, who had walked the Camino, gosh, probably 20, 30 years ago. I’d seen the movie The Way with Martin Sheen, read a few other memoirs as well, and had just filed it away is, boy, at some instinctive level, that sounds wonderful.
I’ve been at The Trinity Forum for a while. One, it was a real gift from the board of trustees to offer me a sabbatical. It’s also been a real gift. One of my colleagues who just started two years ago, Tom Walsh, who’s our VP of operations, I don’t feel like I could have taken a sabbatical if he had not joined us, so I’m grateful for him. So the different things were falling into place that seemed to make it possible. Again, at some instinctive level, it just sort of felt like with all that’s going on, well, I had started to feel mentally cluttered as well. Some of that is just probably my own lack of discipline. As you know, in leadership, there’s just a constant incoming, and one is pulled in a lot of different directions.
It has been a great gift and blessing to be able to be at The Trinity Forum for the last 17 years. But we’ve also been a small organisation. I think often people assume we’re larger than we are. It’s been a small staff. For most of my time there, it’s been me and three or four 20-somethings who’ve been very talented and made wonderful contributions, but there’s also just been a relentlessness to it, and again, over time just started to feel more and more worn down, mentally cluttered, having a hard time, just having the same kind of snap back or creativity. So having requested the sabbatical was really grateful that the board offered it and yes, wanted to make… There’s not often in life where you can take a month and go someplace else and just walk, but it felt like just the ticket on some instinctive level, and it really was a joy. I would do it again tomorrow if I could.
Mark Labberton:
That’s great. Let’s frame this a little bit for some people who may or may not know the Camino story. It really began in the medieval period. There were movements of different kinds that were seeking to take sacred pilgrimages. The sites typically were primarily Jerusalem, secondarily Rome, and thirdly, the Camino de Santiago Compostela. It’s this third destination that you took the Camino to. There are many, many routes. If anyone cares to look this up, you can find lots of different routes to get to Compostela, but it’s also an opportunity to say, “Here’s one of the three major pilgrimage sites.” It’s a long walk. You can take it in its full length, which I think in its longest forms can be as much as 300 miles or so-
Cherie Harder:
Oh, longer, much longer.
Mark Labberton:
… or even 500, but it all depends on, of course, literally and figuratively where you start, quote-unquote. It can be as long as wherever that is. So in any case, eventually the walking begins. This has been a spiritual discipline of seeking a destination, a sacred journey, a marked out time for the pilgrimage, which has been one of the classic ways of describing the spiritual life, that it is a pilgrimage. It is a journey. It is not just a single moment or a single place or a single instant, but really this long journey that now has focused attention for as much or as long as you can sustain it in the context of whatever opportunity you have, whether you take a much longer travel or if as I know, some people have done even less than a week to share in this.
It’s also worth just noting that in imitation of this, there are lots of other sites around the world that are thought to be meaningful sites to pilgrimage too. So this is the historic background behind the whole effort. I’ve known so many people that have done it. I’ve not done it myself, and I have had great conversations with people about what their highly varied experiences of this can actually be. So just break it down with some of the basic framework and then really, as much as you’re willing to share about your own spiritual journey on the Camino trail, we would love to hear about it.
Cherie Harder:
Sure. Well, just first, a little bit more on the history.
Mark Labberton:
Yes, please.
Cherie Harder:
As you mentioned, the three main pilgrimage sites are in the Christian tradition is to Jerusalem, to Rome, and to Santiago. Of course, in Jerusalem, it was following the steps of Christ. In Rome, it’s about St. Peter. Santiago, it has its origins in the belief that the Apostle James came to the Iberian Peninsula after Pentecost. Santiago is essentially St. Iago, which I guess is the kind of derivative of James. So the idea is that he came to the Iberian Peninsula, according to legend, was not all that successful, went back to Jerusalem in around 43, 44, was beheaded by Herod. The legend has it that his friends sent his body back to the Iberian Peninsula. It basically was received in a town called Padrón, which is a coastal town near where the Santiago is now, and essentially hidden away.
Then apparently in the ninth century BC, again, the legend has it that I think it was a shepherd or hermit saw a sea of light and stumbled upon St. James grave. The bishop at the time authenticated that and then built a cathedral around it. And because Santiago, Rome and Jerusalem were the three main pilgrimage sites during medieval times, that was where different pilgrims could also get absolution for their sins. So there was a very powerful incentive for pilgrimage. So people have been doing it for various reasons for over a millennium. Obviously, in the beginning it was almost all Catholic believers, again, wanting to see the relics, wanting to have absolution for sins or pardons. There were obviously some, or not surprisingly, some corruptions or abuses that grew out of that, and so pilgrimage fell into some less… It became less of a thing with a reformation, but Pilgrim’s Progress written by the Puritan John Bunyan in the 17th century helped save it.
There were even at one point apparently in John Adams journals, he recorded regretting not being able to take the time as he landed at one point in Galicia, was going to Paris, wished he had been able to walk the Caminos. Now, pilgrims, when they finish and they register in the Santiago office, they’re often asked, “Are you doing this for religious reasons, cultural reasons or other?” People have all sorts of reasons. I met people from a whole variety of faiths and none while I was walking. But it’s been growing in popularity recently, which doesn’t feel like a surprise in that the gifts it offers, I think, are it’s such contrast to everyday life.
But the way it’s set up now is, as you said, there’s lots of different paths, lots of different trails. The main trail is the Camino Frances, which starts in France and goes west across Spain, ending in Santiago. That’s probably the oldest, the most storied. That’s where most pilgrims walk. I actually took a slightly different route. I took the Portuguese route. Most Portuguese pilgrims start in Porto and then walk north to Santiago, and that takes about two weeks or so. I started further south in Lisbon. The full journey for me, I skipped a few towns. I started out with my husband and then continued on with a friend. Then from Porto on, I walked solo. So I skipped a few towns, but it would’ve been I want to say close to 500 miles. The Frances is, I think, closer to 650 or so. There are longer paths and there are shorter paths, but they all converge in Santiago.
I started in Lisbon, walked the first week with my husband. The first week, it was certainly a lot to get adjusted to. The path out of Lisbon is not all that well marked. The first few days it was not particularly a beautiful scenery. You’re walking on roads for the most part, often through industrial areas, trying to follow painted on yellow arrows, which are often the paint is flaked off or it’s very obscure. So it’s a bit of a scavenger hunt. There are different apps that can help you kind of find your way. Then in Coimbra, I met up with a friend. She and I walked from Coimbra into Porto, and then from Porto on walked solo. So I walked about 300 miles or so over the course of the last month.
I’ll note that different people take different approaches to pilgrimage. Lots of people will carry everything that they have for the journey on their back and stay in hostels or albergues. I chose not to carry everything. I actually had a suitcase, not a head, which a lot of other pilgrims choose to do. I had no regrets about that. So I wasn’t trying to maximize the suffering. I usually walk with a day pack rather than a full pack. But found that one of the really lovely things about the Camino was just one, the simplicity and the rhythm of it. One woke up early. I used a luggage transfer service. You had to have your bag out ready to go at 8:00 a.m., especially for, I’ll say this, like someone who perfectionists, who also struggle with procrastination, which would be me, it was such a lovely antidote to that because there’s no perfect walk, but you have to start.
Every day is literally putting one foot in front of the other for a long time. You spend each day outside, whether it’s in sunshine or in rain. So, it’s a day of fresh air, a lot of sunshine, seeing new and often really lovely things. I went in May in the first week of June, and walking through Portugal was a delight, and that the lemon and orange trees were in full fruit. All the flowers were blooming. It’s a beautiful country. So you’re doing that. I think I’ll mention is there is a sweet spirit of whether it’s solidarity or community that seems to attend being a pilgrim, and especially just comparing that to what we often have, certainly here in D.C.
I thought there’s something to be written about a pilgrim’s sociology in a sense, in that you are in the posture every day continuously of being a visitor, a foreigner in a new land. You’re in a position of vulnerability. You’re a fish out of water. In some ways, your mission or since what you’re doing can seem silly or foolish. Why is this random woman walking by herself through Portugal? That’s a curiosity, and yet there’s often people who are very gracious. You’re in a position of essentially receiving and responding, which is quite different than the position one is often in as an organizational leader of being in the mode of trying to make it happen, trying to stay on top of things, to be forward thinking, to just make it all, pursue the agenda, make it happen. So there was a lovely relief in essentially both receiving, but also it’s a posture where one is both vulnerable but grateful throughout most of the day.
You notice beauties and just little bits of loveliness that it’s so easy to overlook in the rush of the day to day when one has to make things happen. So it was really every day was the opportunity to just to walk, to move, to see, to attend just to what was in front of me. It also really moves one from her head or one’s head to your body in that both for better and for worse. You’re very aware of blisters. You’re very aware of knee problems and sciatica and just the weight of your pack. You’re very aware of the need to, “I have got to find a cafe to use the loo,” or whatever it is. You feel a little bit like a kid again in that it puts you back into your body. I can’t speak for you, Mark, but often when one is the head of a seminary or in a way an organisation based around Christian thought, you’re in your head all day and there was something really refreshing about suddenly having to be in your body day after day.
Mark Labberton:
Cherie, when I hear you would give that description and think of a word sorting that would take what you just shared and laid it on top of the earlier vocabulary we were using to describe the political moment that we’re living in, those two things, they have almost nothing in common because they are literally unlike one another. It’s some pretty deeply fundamental levels. The idea of being able to receive this gift, the work of the day was simply receiving the day and walking into the day with whatever that day is going to hold, and as you say, step by step, foot by foot. It’s an amazing experience, and as you said, just such a beautiful contrast to often the absence of beauty. I’m using that not just aesthetically, but the beauty of simply an engagement, a moment, a pause, a cup of coffee, a sore foot, the proper bandaging, having the right shoes, as you say, back in your body.
This is the work of the day, and I am attending to that work day by day by day. It certainly gets you out of your head, which I’m sure is a piece of why it has been such a spiritual journey, not because spirituality doesn’t engage our mind, which it clearly does, but it’s also more than our mind. It is an embodied spirituality that any kind of pilgrimage brings to mind, whatever religious tradition, and certainly in the Christian faith, believing in an incarnational God who literally entered into pilgrimage in our own human spheres and realities is a very big part of how we come to understand even the meaning of what God has done in Christ. So I’m curious, as you were having these experiences and walking, talking with people as that appeared appropriate and desirable or not, how did God meet you on the Camino?
Cherie Harder:
Yeah. Oh, it’s a beautiful question, Mark. Yeah, I’ll say several things. One, I will say it was a time of real refreshment, and it felt like a gift and a grace. I guess one might not think about long-distance walking as being refreshing. I really found it so. I will say I was very fortunate and blessed. It did not rain. I did not get blisters. I was unusual that way. There were a lot of people who really… They really struggled physically on the Camino. I have a friend in Nashville, he got shin splints. He got injured. He got blisters. He’s a big guy. He’s the CEO of a medical company. He made it. It took him longer, and he made it with the help of friends at the end who helped carry his pack. In some ways, I think some of the lessons and the gifts that he took away from it are different in that there was friendships and reliance on others.
There’s a saying that everybody walks their own Camino. It was a time of real refreshment for me. I think a lot of people go on the Camino hoping for an epiphany, and I would’ve loved an epiphany. I didn’t have an epiphany per se. The friend that I went with, I think she was probably hoping for an epiphany. She’d gone through a deep trauma in her community. She said she left with a metaphor. We had walked through eucalyptus forests where there had clearly been a forest fire and nothing had been mentioned in the guidebook, but there was all this new growth. We looked it up and realized later that the fire had happened at the same time that the trauma that she’d experienced had. But what was so remarkable is while you could see all that was burnt, what was most striking is all the growth that had happened since, and basically felt like it had been a lesson and like, “Oh, the damage is real, but so is this new growth that would never have happened otherwise.”
But one of the things that really struck me about the time was, in a way, how liturgical it felt. Just going back to what we were talking about earlier in terms of being in one’s body. I mean, if what a liturgy is essentially an embodied practice that forms our loves and our character, there was something about just, again, putting one foot in front of the other day by day, getting started, first thing, going the distance, being willing to receive, greeting other pilgrims, walking with them for as long as it made sense to do so, being able to perceive what they were struggling with or suffering from, because one had… It’s a different Camino, but it gives you a shared sensibility. There’s literally a sharing of each other’s burdens on the Camino and the rhythms of life and the assumptions were just so different than normal know day to day.
There was rest in it. There was also, it seemed like, frequent… Well, yeah, it was almost like an open invitation to both reflection, but also to awe. Dotting the landscape of both Portugal and Galicia and Spain are all of these little churches and often big churches too, but there are churches everywhere. The Camino goes by, just it seems like every mile or two, there’s one. So there’s essentially almost a frequently recurring invitation to and place to pray. Again, just the rhythms of that was something just really lovely. You’re tired and there’s an invitation to stop and to pray.
You’re tired at the end of the day. Sleep is deep and nourishing, and you feel the nourishment more keenly. You get hungry in a different way. We’ve all been hungry, but there’s a different kind of hungry when you’ve walked 18 miles that day and had a big breakfast, but didn’t really stop for lunch. There were a few days towards the end where I found myself like, “Oh, I’m more tired than I realized.” I’m stumbling. I’m tired, and just almost feeling the need more keenly and then feeling that need met. So it was a walk that I think by its nature just invites one to realize their vulnerability, to stop and reflect, to be open to wonder and to awe, and also realize, oh, how often He meets our needs, often through unusual, surprising ways. I would loved to have had some deep epiphany, but what I had instead was a daily practice that fed my soul and was just so different than daily life.
Mark Labberton:
Well, I think that’s a beautiful picture because, well, you and I both undoubtedly have had friends who have had epiphanies on the Camino. I can certainly say that across the array of people I know who have done their version of a Camino walk, that what you’re describing is probably more common to me and hearing people’s accounts, it’s that it is the rhythmic quality. It’s the fact that you’re doing something physical that is metaphorically valuable, you could say, but it’s really better as the lived embodied experience than as the metaphor.
The metaphor is, I think, derivative. That is we’re all on a pilgrimage. We’re all on a journey. That’s a fair way of describing daily life. But I also think there’s a way that this is a marked out space where it really is the physicality, the exact weather, the particular people, the exact spots where the rhythm of being a body in a place at a time in light of this long history, the thousand years that this has been going on. I’m curious in that way, because of what you’ve said about the rhythm of the liturgy, how does the historical character of the Camino affect you? You must have thought of time in a different way.
Cherie Harder:
Oh, absolutely. It’s a great question, Mark. I don’t know that I feel like I have exact language around it, but one does feel the weight of the history when one walks the Camino. You know that millions have gone before you. Millions of people across time have done this, and that lends itself a sense of whether it’s continuity or community across time and space, a sense of being part of something bigger. I’ll also say this, arriving in Santiago was quite… It was such an interesting experience because at that point, I didn’t want the Camino to end. I would’ve loved to have walked for another week. I almost felt like there’s more to walk off. I’d love to do this, but you have to keep going.
There’s all these different paths that converge upon Santiago. I found it very hard to walk into Santiago not thinking about, “I wonder if this is what heaven is like in that all these people coming from literally different paths of life.” The cathedral at Santiago is… There’s a lot of little humble churches throughout Spain and Portugal. This is not about humility. This is about glory and awe. It is a beautiful, huge, amazing cathedral, and you all converge in the space. I guess for some people, bagpipes are playing. They felt like it was introduction to glory. Mine was a little bit anticlimactic to that. There were no bagpipes playing. You kind of stumble in, you collapse on the ground. You look up, but you feel such a community and such a communal joy with the other folks who have made it, that there is a sense of, “Is this a small taste of what the homecoming is like that through all these different paths, we end up kind of looking up at glory?” There was such a deep happiness to it.
In some ways, I thought for the folks who had more of an ordeal… I saw a lot of older folks on the trail where I just want to salute the mental toughness of it in that I found it more a pleasure than an ordeal, but it’s a challenge. It’s not a walk in the park. I mean, there’s parts that are a walk in the park, but it keeps going. So for the folks who endured through it all, just that sense of completion, of being there. As you walk, it is hard not to think about the verse about “I’m the way, the truth and the life,” because the Camino literally means the way. You’re following a bunch of arrows, yellow arrows, and you’re relying on those. If you stop following them, or if they were wrong, who knows where you’d wind up. I might still be in some rando forest in Portugal wandering around. You have to rely on direction that is true. Yeah. So it makes you think about certain scriptures differently. It did seem to me like, “Oh, this is probably just the tiniest little foretaste of what it means to go home.”
Mark Labberton:
Cherie, you’ve very kindly allowed this conversation to happen not just right after the Camino, but still while you’re on sabbatical. So the question I want to ask could puncture that, and I don’t really want it to puncture that. In fact, I’m very glad that it continues longer than this and that you will have more to your sabbatical than what you’ve yet done. But I’m curious, do you find yourself thinking, “How do I live the Camino when I’m finally back in my routine in D.C.,” or is that even a misappropriation of it? Is it really best held as a special thing that is apart from rather than exactly “relevant to” in that way that we try to make everything relevant to everything, or is it really something that you do think has relevance? If so, how can you imagine it when that day comes that you’re back in your normal routine?
Cherie Harder:
Mark, it is a great question, and it’s one that I’m struggling with or at least mulling over, and I don’t feel like I have a ready-made answer. Before I ever went on the Camino… Well, I should say, as you might imagine, there’s all sorts of Facebook pages for people who are walking the Camino and long heated arguments about which socks to use or what have you. I had actually posted a question, I think it was some Camino group for women travelling alone or whatever, about what did you take away from it? I was curious about this before I ever went on.
I found some of the answers a little bit unsatisfying in that not many people… I mean, people were much more interested in debating socks or shoes than answering this, but most of it was, “Oh, I decided I wanted to keep walking.” I totally get that and totally agree. “I wanted to declutter.” I’ve felt that too. Since coming back, that’s one of the things I’ve been trying to do is declutter, so that resonates, but you also hope that there’s something bigger and deeper. I do think one of the things that was the most, I guess, profound for me was the time away where one can’t replicate that. I can’t basically stop answering an email and go to Portugal all the time and just walk through eucalyptus forest.
Mark Labberton:
That would be called retirement, perhaps, but not necessarily-
Cherie Harder:
I know. I know. Yeah, exactly. Maybe even with retirement. It sounds lovely, but that can’t be the live reality. But I have thought about one of the things that it did… I mean, I knew this, but it also shows you perhaps even more deeply just how thirsty I was for both the rest and the solitude and just the quiet reflection without being sucked into the immediate and constantly being responsive or reactive to the immediate.
That is one of those things I’ve been thinking about. How do I both make time, practice, make habitual some of that on a more I regular or daily basis? Because it did feel like there was rest and health and life in those rhythms. While they can’t be replicated in full, it seems like there’s aspects of there’s spiritual vitamins. We need an RDA. It kind of showed me, I think the deficiency was greater than I realized because just the hunger was enough. So it was enough to indicate like, “I’ve missed this.” Yeah, I still feel like I need to figure out or think about how should, how can, how does that happen because it did show me… I mean, it gives you a taste and you think, “Ooh, I want more.”
Mark Labberton:
Right. I certainly didn’t say that I have friends who have picked up on the same sort of liturgical theme that you described, and I think what a few of them have taken up is a renewed commitment to Sabbath keeping as a way of liturgically remembering the Camino, but in the sense of laying down ordinary implements of productivity, activity, practices that are more about entertainment than about rest and renewal. So how do they adopt a sabbatical that is a weekly Sabbath that ends up becoming a way of holding onto a different kind of rhythm and then trying to build out of that days that are also in their own terms liturgically framed?
I know these things are not one size fits all, and that it’s certainly not about having a right or wrong answer to what a person should do about their Camino experience, but I can say that as a person who cares deeply about The Trinity Forum, about you, about the significance of Christian public witness and Christian formation in this exceptionally complicated and fraught time where the body of Christ is at each other’s throats, often over the things that would define what faithful Christian practice actually even looks like, the idea of wanting to encourage you and encourage me and encourage other people to think about, we may not be able to make a trip on the Camino, but we have opportunities to figure out rhythms that can be set aside in a way that does fit our life and that can call us into a kind of rhythmic alteration of how we hold time, think about the rhythm of a day, think about the daily hours in classic medieval terms about praying the hours of the day.
All of those things are things that can be part of our life because so much is needed from the body of Christ in this era. So much is needed and so much is not being given. So I want to call myself on the winds of your Camino experience, I want to call myself and anyone else that wants to listen in to a renewed set of practices that are not like being on a pathway in Portugal in the midst of sweet smelling flowers and beautiful trees or hard paths and ups and downs and vigorous exercise, but to whatever the rigor is that we have and whatever the pain that we may work to a rhythmic practice of being open to the grace and mercy of God to meet us on those roads. Cherie, what would your concluding thoughts be today about this really, really rich and wonderful experience had?
Cherie Harder:
Sure. Well, a couple of things, Mark. One, for your listeners who are considering undertaking a pilgrimage, I would encourage them to do so. I think they will find it a refreshment to their soul. I think they will learn and discover a lot of things. I think especially in the times that we are in, it will be sort of an unveiling of a new way of being in the world and understanding who our neighbour is. I really do think that there is a certain form of pilgrim sociology that is so counter to the ways that we’re currently interacting with each other in civic space. Right now, it seems like we have a sociology of dominance, domination that certainly cultural embattlement.
Being a pilgrim, one is a stranger in a strange land. One has no pretensions to ruling the place. One is open and receptive to the graces and gifts one receives along the way, and by being open and attendant to them, one realizes just how many there are, which may have escaped notice before. One feels an affinity, a solidarity, a kinship with other pilgrims. And because you’re going through a similar experience, you’re eager to literally share the burdens. I mentioned a friend earlier who literally other guys helped him carry his pack the last few days. It was the only way for him to be able to walk. His shins once were so bad. You literally carry each other’s burdens. It’s a different way of being in the world, of understanding or apprehending who your neighbour is and what it means to love them, what it means to walk the walk. The sociology of pilgrimage is one we could all use more of now in our public space.
Mark Labberton:
Cherie, what a gift to have been given this sabbatical and this Camino, but what a gift you’ve given us by giving us these windows into the experience, so thank you so much. I hope that we can each find our own Camino way.
Cherie Harder:
Thanks, Mark. It’s great to talk with you.
