Journey

This Advent I'm going to be following the Adventword process, of reflecting on a different prayer word for each day of Advent, and here, on Twitter and on Facebook, contributing to a growing, communal Advent calendar of thoughts and images as Advent develops. The word for today is Journey, which, of course, immediately makes me think of the Camino.

Of all the many hundreds of pictures I took on the Camino Santiago, this is my favourite. Clemency is ahead of me, walking steadily, and I have paused for a few seconds to unpack my camera and dash off this quick shot before she gets too far ahead. I'm pleased it worked out so well. There's a lot of obvious iconography here: moving from dark to light, the ancient architecture, all that stuff, but really that's all an illusion. This is actually a motorway underpass.

But that has it's own iconography, when you think about it. Overhead, a thousand cars are thundering past, each intent on some journey or other, while underneath them, under their very feet, another journey is waiting: the ancient, holy journey of  El Camino Santiago de Compostela.  Just as another ancient, well trodden journey waits under my feet right now: the timeless journey through Advent, to the best picture I am ever going to get of the reality which lies at the heart of all things. A picture which begins with a refugee peasant girl giving birth out of wedlock in her fiance's home town.

Photo: The camera I took on this camino was a Canon Powershot SX10 IS. The very long zoom was set to 13mm and the auto mode had chosen 1/160, f4 and iso 200