Grañón is a small village dating back to 885. The stone streets are empty this afternoon. Siesta is underway, the Spanish world has shut down to observe their daily food coma.
There are seemingly no rooms in all of Spain tonight. There are 40 percent more pilgrims walking the Camino, we are told, than there are beds. We could not find a bed, so we hiked onward to a hostel where we heard about nuns who would not turn pilgrims away.
Jamie and I arrive in town covered in dust, with muddy boots, and mid-sized Toyotas strapped to our backs.
The centerpiece of Grañón is the 16th century church of San Juan Bautista. The stone structure stands like a prehistoric behemoth in the middle of the antique village. Pilgrims are relaxing in the church courtyard. Some are freshly showered, reading books, smoking, or massaging bare feet.
I don’t see any nuns. But I see church volunteers.
“How much to stay here?” I ask one volunteer.
“Donation only,” replies the volunteer.
We check into our lodgings. We are immediately taken to a communal room full of individual high-school wrestling mats on the floor.
“What are these mats?” we ask.
The volunteer smiles. “You sleep on floor.”
We are informed that this is not a “hostel,” in the traditional sense of the word, but a 10th century “hospital.” Grañón, has been serving pilgrims this way for the last 1000 years. The volunteers who run this place maintain the old ways.
They inform us that, in addition to sleeping on the wooden floor, as in the 10th century, we pilgrims are also going to prepare our own communal dinner.
Before we begin cooking, however, we’re told we must first elect a chef. For this position, we’ll need a pilgrim with organizational skills and the unique ability to lead people with the finesse of a dictator in a small country. Everyone votes for my wife.
Soon, my wife and I are in the kitchen. I am chopping onions and preparing pasta, Jamie cooks the beef, and Daithi, a software engineer from Ireland, preps salad while simultaneously teaching me to cuss in Irish.
To cook the potatoes, we must borrow the use of the bakery’s oven, which is down the street. So several of us march through the village carrying baking sheets of sliced, uncooked potatoes. Townspeople pass us and do not bat an eyelash.
At some point, the “papas” are finished cooking. So, we must march down the street, to retrieve the cooked potatoes. This is an ancient San Juan tradition. The ancient tradition also stipulates that ALL pilgrims must accompany us to get the potatoes. We must ALL sing as we march. Also, members of the kitchen crew are expected to wear tutus and wigs.
And so it came to pass, that my wife, wearing full tutu regalia, with a yellow wig on her head, led a parade of 30 pilgrims through the antiquarian streets of Grañón, carrying cooked potatoes.
After a filling supper, with much wine, we are all gathered in the cathedral’s dark choir loft, which is only lit by a few flickering candles.
Although it is ink-black in this sanctuary, the chapel is tall and spacious. And you can feel the cool atmosphere of the stonework surrounding you.
One of the volunteers flips on a light, which illuminates the 15th century altarpiece, gilded in Spanish gold. The vision is arresting.
Whereupon Jose (Brazil) plays a splintered guitar. He asks me to join him on the beat-up fiddle I have carried on my back for the last 140 miles. Jose asks me to sing. So I sing “It Is Well With My Soul,” which is a song that catapults me backward into a fundamentalist childhood of teetotalers, holy rollers, and Oral Roberts enthusiasts who I’m still trying to forget.
My tired voice reverberates across the ancient walls as though it is not my voice at all.
We all decide this seems like a good time to pray. So, everyone passes around a large candle, and takes turns praying aloud. There are seven languages spoken. We have no idea what fellow pilgrims are praying for. But their prayers sound important because most of them are sniffing noses between sentences.
A French woman across from me is weeping. A silver-haired man, a bricklayer from Wales, begins sobbing; today is his 60th birthday.
The candle is finally passed to me, and all that comes to my mind is a poem I learned in second grade for Saint Patrick’s Day.
Suddenly, I am a little redheaded Baptist boy, standing before a classroom. Suddenly, I am freckled again, with a cowlicked mass of hair, and Mrs. Burns is urging me to recite my poem. But the poem’s words are more crystalline to me this evening. More real than they’ve been before.
“Christ with me, Christ before me,
Christ behind me, Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ on my right, Christ on my left.”
“Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me, Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks of me, Christ in the eye that sees me, Christ in the ear that hears me.”
Then we all slept on our wrestling mats.
