★★★★★ 4
Practical Pilgrim Traveling
Format: Paperback
My wife and I earned a compostela walking a portion of the Camino Frances in May of 2004. Since then I've read many books on pilgrimage, including several accounts of other pilgrims' journeys on the same road we traveled. Many are what another reviewer describes: diaries of the interior lives of the author, focusing mainly on their hardships and triumphs, as if to point out how they changed the camino, rather than how they were changed by it. If I felt that this were all to this book, I wouldn't recommend it. Instead, I think this book provides a wonderful balance between soulful reflection and the pragmatism of the all-too-physical journey. Walking the camino does appear to have all the ingredients necessary for earning a 'spiritual experience merit badge', and some seem to walk it just to earn pilgrimage street cred. Even were that Rupp's intention, and I doubt very much that is the case, she's provided a great perspective for potential pilgrims and useful material to aid past walkers. It's true that she does not shy away from describing unpleasantries of the road: dirty accommodations, illness, rude pilgrims, bad food, and bad weather. These are very real likelihoods, and she discusses them very frankly; pilgrims do not float along the road, barely touching the earth, and any idyllic expectations soon come face-to-face with harsh reality. Rupp does not bring up these issues merely to complain, however; the benefit of this book is how she treats these subjects as well as her prayerful introspection as equally engaging points of reflection and provides a useful perspective on integrating even these issues into a larger pilgrimage experience. The subtitle of the book, however, is "Life Lessons from the Camino", and that's the true value of these observations: her effort in showing that much of our day-to-day life is filled with just these sort of experiences and just this sort of potential for reflection, appreciation, and understanding.
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Reviewed in the United States on October 5, 2008
