In November, I was intereviewed by Fuller Magazine about my experience walking the Camino de Santiago. The original article was published in Fuller Magazine’s website.
The Camino de Santiago (or the Way of St. James) is a large network of ancient pilgrim routes stretching across Europe and coming together at the tomb of St. James in Santiago de Compostela in northwest Spain. This path has been trodden by pilgrims seeking spiritual formation and life transformation for centuries. The experience of walking this sacred path encourages pilgrims to deepen their faith through inner reflection, silence, holy listening, personal healing, prayerful contemplation, and communion with other pilgrims on the path. This past summer of 2023, a group of Fuller staff, students, and faculty embarked on the pilgrimage, walking over 80 miles of the Portuguese Way, one branch of the Camino. In this series of interviews, students share about their experiences of this spiritual journey.
Candance Greene is in her third year of Fuller’s MDiv program, with a concentration in chaplaincy. She is an ordained minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church and is the associate pastor of Gethsemane AME Church in Baltimore, Maryland.
Kevin Doi: Candance, thank you for being here. And thank you for walking with us this summer. Let’s dive into the Camino and your experience. Can you share a little bit about what led you to embark on the Camino?
Candance Greene: To be honest, I had never heard of the Camino until I saw the email from the chaplains. I was thinking, is this something the AME or Black people of faith know about? Do we know about the Camino? I didn’t. I read the description and immediately thought, “I’ve got to do this.” There was a burning desire within my heart to do it. When I feel that, I always know the Holy Spirit is leading me in a certain way or guiding me to do something that I’ve never done before. I knew it was going to happen. It’s like the burning bush—those are the times I really know. All I have to do is say yes.
KD: What did you understand about pilgrimage before taking part in this journey? And how did you prepare?
CG: The only thing that I knew about pilgrimage was: nothing.
I started doing my own pilgrimages to local prayer labyrinths. We have 13 here in Baltimore. I needed to hear from God. I didn’t realize it at the time, but that was really the beginning of my Camino. I took time every Friday, from January to early March, visiting these prayer labyrinths and just listening to what God was telling me. As I was walking, I’d say to myself, I’m preparing to hear from God—which I did on the Camino in an extraordinary way. That helped prepare me to walk and be in tune to God. It was just me and God on my pilgrimages to these local prayer labyrinths. That was one thing I did to prepare my spirit.
KD: Where did that come from—to feel drawn to these labyrinths in your city? And at what point did you realize, “Actually, I’m beginning to walk the Camino now”? Can you share about this sense you had of needing to prepare yourself spiritually?
CG: I was not really aware that I had started my Camino process until we got to Spain, and we started talking about when our Camino has begun. I didn’t make that connection beforehand. When I walked the prayer labyrinths, I was in the middle of really deep depression and grief. I lost my dad. One of my good friends was the headmaster of the school in Nashville who was killed by a school shooter. And then my godmother passed away. I had three deaths back-to-back. I just needed to connect with God, like, “What can I do, Lord?”
I’ve always loved walking the prayer labyrinth. There’s one that’s half a mile from my house, so I walk that one all the time. But then I started thinking, there are other labyrinths. What is it like to walk those? Because every prayer labyrinth is different. So I Googled prayer labyrinths in Baltimore, and that’s where I found the list.
Prayer Labyrinth in Baltimore City
At each one, God said something different. So that process helped me to get my spirit in tune to be able to hear God—to feel the presence of God without needing anyone or anything else. The silence is where I met God. It was what I needed because I was in such deep grief and mourning. I was mourning so deeply—I didn’t realize how deeply I was mourning until I got to Spain. But I’ll tell all that later.
KD: Can you share about some ways God met you on the pilgrimage? What invitations did you sense from the Spirit along the way as you were walking on the trip?
CG: The first days were really pivotal for me. The first day was proving to myself that I got this physically. But at some point, the silence was too much—I was too much in my head. So, I had to listen to music, to Tasha Cobbs, and there is a song I just kept listening to. That song sent me into such deep worship, and that is where God established how he was going to communicate with me: through water.
Every time I would see water or hear water, that was my sign that God was with me. “I’m with you, I’m always with you.” So, here I am walking and thinking, “God, you aren’t here for me.” And then I see the water. At one point, we had to walk by a creek and walk over these slippery rocks. It was drizzling, and I did not want to injure myself on day one. God said to me, “Every time you think that your steps aren’t sure, look to the water.” And I look and I see the water. Every time we passed water, even little fountains in people’s yards, God said, “I am here. I am here. I am here.” That was my constant message from God. “I am here. Even in the rain. I am here. I am here. I am here.”
Another thing was walking past all the vineyards. Of course, I’m thinking of John 15; that’s one of my favorite scriptures. I’m thinking, “Wow, you’re pruning me. You’re pruning me.” So, God and I were having some conversations on that first day. The Lord was saying, “Whenever you see water and whenever you see the grapes, I am here with you.”
Day two, I’m thinking it’s going to be this other beautiful day. But that day was the day with the hills. “How do you endure?” That’s what God was asking me. “How do you endure? Are you complaining? Are you looking around, are you seeing?” I was going uphill. I wasn’t looking ahead of me. I wasn’t paying attention to what was around me, and God kept saying, “I need you to look up. I need you to look. Be in this moment, even though it’s hard. Be in this moment, because I’m walking you through it.” The constant water was the rain, and I had to settle my spirit into it.
At some point, there was one last hill. I remember sitting on a rock and that’s when I said, “Why did you bring me here?” I even texted my husband, “Why am I doing this? I can’t do this. I’m done with this.” And then God said, “You’ve got to go the rest of the way. Do it to the end.” It showed me how I deal with adversity and how I deal with hard times. I go through them like this: I don’t look around. I’m riding the roller coaster with my eyes closed. That’s how I’ve been dealing with adversity in my life—“Just let me get through it and then it’s over.” But I don’t learn anything from that because I’m not really trying to figure out whatGod is saying to me in this season or in this hard time. I’m just trying to get past it so it doesn’t hurt anymore. That was when I realized that’s how I was grieving. But God was giving me a new rhythm to learn how to get through the difficult times.
Water along the way.
Day five is when I walked by myself for the first time, and it was probably the best thing I could have done because God really spoke to me. When we were walking, you were supposed to see arrows or shells [marking the way], but I wouldn’t see any markers for a while. “What’s going on?” I’d say. Then I’d hear the water, or I’d see a fountain. And then, look, there’s the arrow. God was saying, “I am with you. You’re not lost. Trust me to lead you and guide you.”
That’s the day that we walked through the canopy of grapes. So, John 15 again. I’m walking, I’m crying. I had a moment where I was raging at God, lamenting. It was extraordinary. I have never felt the presence of God that present or that consistent ever. It was like a cloak. It was beautiful.
KD: That is lovely. The way that you describe each of those days is very powerful. As I’m listening, I’m thinking we must all have a million and one sermon illustrations from the Camino.
CG: I think everybody’s story is going to be totally different. We walked it together but we had different individual experiences along the way.
Another issue I had was my blisters. I had blisters on every toe, and I had to figure out how to redirect my thoughts. It was extremely painful. I thought I had prepared; I had my compression socks, little blister pads, everything. My toes were fully wrapped, but there were times it was excruciatingly painful. I also had a knee issue that started the third or fourth day. So, I had to redirect my thoughts and think differently to get through those days. I had to speak life to myself and speak life to my feet.
That day I walked by myself, I stopped on that long wooded trail that seemed to go on forever. It was like being in the Shire. I took off my shoes and socks, and I sat there for a while thanking God for my feet. “Thank you for my feet, thank you for my toes. I’m still able to walk.” What surprised me was my body—what my body endured—and how much I appreciated my body. I was saying, thank you for my feet. Thank you for what you’ve done, how you’ve carried me through this. Thank you for my ankles that didn’t break down. Thank you for my knee. I was thanking every part of my body because my body could have broken down but it didn’t. It made me appreciate my body and what my body can do.
The wooded walk.
KD: Did that appreciation continue as we arrived in Santiago? How was that for you, when we got there?
CG: I was relieved. I would not have been able to make it another day. But then again, maybe so. Because of the way we walked in, our backs were to the cathedral, but there was something about turning around and seeing the cathedral that felt like, “Oh, my God, we actually made it.”
KD: It was nearing evening, and the cathedral was glowing at that point, right? With the way the setting sun was hitting it?”
CG: It was. And it was that moment of accomplishment. We walked all these miles, and God met us every step of the way. It was beautiful.
KD: You’ve already shared much of this, but are there any other ways the pilgrimage shaped or reshaped you?
CG: I’m still trying to wrap my brain around that. I do know that I left the heaviness of my grief in Spain. And I actually came back with joy, which I had not experienced in years. Since coming back, I’ve been trying to do things that are fun. I’ve been so work-driven and so in my head. There was something about that second day and realizing how I had been walking through life—I feel like the shackles were released. Yeah, life is still hard. There are still difficulties. But I still feel joy, which I hadn’t felt in so long. I’ll always be grateful for the Camino and meeting God there because so much of my pain was released.
To this day, I still feel joy. Part of me thinks, when is the other shoe going to drop? But even if I’m having a bad day, you know what? I still have my joy. I still have peace. I still know that I don’t have to be in Spain to feel the presence of God. But God took me out of here to reorder some things. And I returned with joy.
KD: Like it was restored to you.
CG: I had been praying for so long, “God, I just want to feel joy, and I want to be happy.” Because I couldn’t even answer the question, when was the last time you felt joy? Helping people, standing in front of the congregation, doing sermons, praying for people, doing everything in between—I was dead inside. God restored my joy in Spain, and I’m so grateful.
KD: Can you share about the joy that you feel? What does it feel like for you?
CG: Remember when I talked about the burning bush and the call? It’s still lit, but it’s all over. I think something had to be ignited, so that was the call to go on the Camino. But now, it’s constantly burning, and it’s a calm feeling. I felt empty before, and I couldn’t figure out why. But now I know. And now, it’s like a burning light. It’s not painful. It’s comforting. That’s what the Camino did for me.
Kevin Doi is a Fuller Seminary chaplain.
Candance Greene is a Fuller MDiv student, with a concentration in chaplaincy.
