Tomorrow morning, my wife will become pilgrims.

We will walk the breadth of Spain, upwards of 500 miles, over Pyrenees Mountains, on foot, to visit the remains of the apostle James.

I’ve never been a pilgrim before. I’ve never thought of myself as a pilgrim. What even IS a pilgrim?

Contrary to American thought, a pilgrim is not someone who wears a hat shaped like a traffic cone. A pilgrim is someone who journeys for spiritual reasons. Someone who wanders through a foreign land, looking to be changed.

That’s me, I guess. I’m seeking. Although I’m not sure what for.

Maybe I’m seeking to be something different. A stronger version of myself. A healed version.

I’ve been trying to heal ever since I was 11. I grew up under the weight of suicide, domestic abuse, and gun violence. My dad’s last night was spent in a homicidal rage wherein he tried to kill his family.

On his final night, my father was holding my

sister and I hostage. My mother escaped and ran for help. The sheriff deputies bursted into our home with riot guns. Dad was arrested. That was the last time I ever saw him. He was dead the next day, shortly after being released on bail.

But my reason for a pilgrimage is more than that. I was raised in fundamentalist household. We were a cult, really. The cult of Puritanical American Evangelicalism, which is a shallow religion.

We were not taught to look for healing. We were taught bullet points. I come from people who told you, upfront, that God loved you no matter who you were and then gave you a long list of exceptions.

Mainly, I was taught that beer was evil, to shun rock ‘n’ roll, and heedeth not the wicked ways of “I Dream of Jeannie.”

But the older I get, the more…

There were ghosts everywhere. That’s what I kept thinking, while standing on Shiloh battlefield. Ghosts.

You could feel them. You could almost hear their fraternal laughter. You could smell their gunpowder.

A ghost is merely a soul who doesn’t want to be forgotten. Beneath our feet, at Shiloh National Military Park; beneath 163 years of gravel and grit, were tens of thousands of forgotten souls.

They were long forgotten boys in uniforms. Men who had families. Who never saw their wives again. Who nevermore kissed their mothers again, or shook hands with their old men, or bounced babies on their laps.

They were just children, really. Boys who once engaged in a great civil war, testing whether their nation, or any nation conceived and so dedicated, could long endure. Fighting for something they believed in.

My friend Bobby and I were playing music for a funeral directly on the battlefield. The funeral was held for the former National Park superintendent, Woody Harrell.

Woody was

the man who made the Shiloh park great. A man who dedicated his life to preserving the sacred ground of the oft forgotten. A man who was recognized on the floor of the U.S. senate for his work here.

There were park rangers galore, attending the service. It looked like a ranger convention. Stetsons everywhere.

I met one ranger who looked like Teddy Roosevelt. He wore a table-flat brimmed hat and green suit, pressed sharply enough to slice tomatoes.

“McDougall’s brigade would have been fighting on this spot where we stand,” he said. “Would’ve been one heck of a fight on this ground.”

We weren’t all that far from Bloody Pond. A country pond where dying and wounded soldiers sought water during the battle. Wounded men would’ve crawled on their bellies toward the water.

The pond became the hub of death. The remains of young men…