{"id":27115,"date":"2023-03-28T15:10:16","date_gmt":"2023-03-28T15:10:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.interfaithamerica.org\/?p=27115"},"modified":"2023-04-03T17:31:05","modified_gmt":"2023-04-03T17:31:05","slug":"dispatch-from-the-road-build-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.interfaithamerica.org\/article\/dispatch-from-the-road-build-community\/","title":{"rendered":"Dispatch from the Road: How to Build Community"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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\u00a0<\/span>\u201cAnd when I think about it, I guess it is true that people always arrive at the right moment at the place where someone awaits them.\u201d<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>
In August 2023, I embarked on my second post-pandemic pilgrimages, walking seven days and 100 miles of the Camino de Santiago in Spain, a nearly 1700- year-old Christian pilgrimage route to the cathedral that is said to hold the bones of James the Elder, disciple of Jesus. I traveled as a Christian pastor with a Hindu walking partner. Here were a few lessons I learned along the way about the art of building community.<\/span><\/i> \u00a0<\/span><\/p>
Make Time for Others<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>
The train was arriving late. Wildfires in the South of France, caused by unseasonably hot weather, made the countryside sizzle like kindle and jumped the tracks that would have taken us to the sleepy mountain town of St. Jean Pied de Port. Global warming, no longer a future oracle, rather today\u2019s headline, set in motion a series of events which left me and my walking partner Milan aching along in sweltering noonday heat at the heights of the Pyrenees mountains dividing France from Spain. The delays left us without the ability to transfer trains necessary to arrive at our final destination. We, along with some eight other stranglers marooned at the train station waited for a midnight taxi ride to take us to our lodging about an hour\u2019s drive away. By 3 a.m. we settled into our beds aware that we needed to wake up just a few hours later for a slightly delayed start on arguably the Camino Frances\u2019 most grueling day of hiking: the ascent up and down the Pyrenees mountains in the heat of an abnormally hot summer. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t