Solvitur Ambulando — “It is solved by walking”
Camino de Santiago walked by Kit Danley for her 70th birthday. (Getty)
This Christmas week, we’re honored to welcome Kit Danley, founder and president of Neighborhood Ministries, a powerful witness in Phoenix blending evangelism, church planting, community development, and social justice. With over 50 years of impactful work, Kit has inspired many, including Kendall during his 4.5 years as a youth pastor there. Her wisdom on the synergy between community development and organizing continues to bless and shape our lives.
I finished a leg of the Camino de Santiago in Spain this past October. People come from all over the world to walk the Camino, and have made this a pilgrimage since the 9th Century. When you walk the Camino you are called a pilgrim and you greet each other daily on the way saying “Buen Camino,” which means, in effect, “have a good Camino,” like have a good life, or have a good day.
Pilgrims, of this kind, are people who are on a quest. They are asking the big questions of life and hope to find some clues along the way. They are grieving a loss and hope to find healing. They are looking for God or looking to encounter God in a deeper way. They are on a pilgrimage, and walking, as pilgrims have learned for millennia, works. Especially if it’s on holy ground as this Camino is, designated by the saints who have marked this space.
Before I talk a little more about my Camino story, I’d like to suggest that Kendall and Erin, through BLK South, are making a pilgrimage. As you know, they are purposely going back to the South, following a reverse migration, which has all the inter-nationalities of a pilgrimage. They are looking for answers to some big social and historical questions. They are looking for where God is at work to join Him. They are walking the holy ground of their ancestors who first migrated north for hope and a new life. The bible often names believers as pilgrims or sojourners:
Hear my prayer, O Lord!
Listen to my cries for help!
Don’t ignore my tears.
For I am your guest—
a traveler passing through,
as my ancestors were before me. (Ps. 39:12)
I walked the Camino with my daughter-in-law, 110 km. It was on my turning 70 bucket-list, actually it was the only thing on the list.
Kit holding the certificate earned by completing the required kilometers and collecting stamps along the Camino de Santiago.
I walk daily already and have learned that it is my way to pray, to sort things out, to intercede for those I love. I read the Scriptures while walking, in a form of the Lectio Divina. Pilgrimage has become intuitive, as if I know I will find what I am looking for while walking. So to join eleven centuries of pilgrims who have been walking this holy way, seemed like a perfect way to inaugurate the next season of my life. A fellow pilgrim wrote this about the Camino:
The journey makes you a pilgrim. Because the way to Santiago is not only a track to be walked in order to get somewhere, nor is it a test to reach any reward. El Camino de Santiago is a parable and a reality at once because it is done both within and outside in the specific time that it takes to walk each stage, and along the entire life if only you allow the Camino to get into you, to transform you and to make you a pilgrim.
This season is a transition time of my life, after 50 years in ministry. Not that I will stop doing what I’ve done all my life but asking the age old question of “what’s next?” What is the next assignment the Lord has for me. I wrote this to mark the transition:
Facebook Birthday Post: August 4th 2024, is my 70th birthday. I wanted to log in with some reflections. This birthday feels bigger than the ones that came before it.
I’m marking this big day a few ways. We’re spending time with our family, first in Ensenada and then in Phoenix. Then I’m walking the Camino de Santiago in October. These events inaugurate something of a transition, I think, and warrant this attempt at a reflection of what this birthday means.
The word Camino works as a metaphor for these thoughts. I am a pilgrim at heart. I walk and hike most days. The road less traveled or narrow road are descriptions that pull at my calling; the choice of the ancients to make pilgrimage a holy activity has always felt like an invitation to do life similarly. When asked, we often describe our life as a relentless adventure, knowing that what we mean is that an adventure contains all the good and all the hard parts. Camino... yes, that works… my response to this mystery, is gratitude and joy.
Where did it start, this journeying life? Here I suppose: a fulsome “yes” to God, an ascent to followership of Jesus which happened in a phone booth, a fantastical beginning. I was 19. Though everything changed from that point, I couldn’t possibly know then what I can describe now. Just like all beginnings in adventure stories, no one knows what comes next, certainly not the protagonist. But there were clues, scattered among the ordinary. An indescribable calling to the urban poor; it was unshakable, like it had been written onto my newly forming DNA. An attraction to the mystics, whose language I wouldn’t understand for years. An athletic compulsion toward risk and culture exchange. Overall, I experienced God pouring his love, his enormous love, into me for a distinct other. And so it began.
Adventure stories have always captured my husband Wayne’s imagination, whether it was Lewis’ chronicles, Tolkien, or others. In the beginning, being a co-traveler in a real adventure was suspect. We look back on those conversations with nods. What I can tell you now is he was a lot like Bilbo. The adventure tested him throughout, and he became stronger along the way. He carried the weight more than anyone. The classic moment in our love story was the decision we made to try and name this life we wanted before we lived it... virtuously naive, we embedded this inside our wedding vows to God, asking that we might “live a life for others.” We implicated our house in those vows as the place of encounter. Our time-worn and threadbare house became a home for more than we can count. Two children officially adopted themselves into our family -- two more Danleys -- and a few more carved their names in our back yard for posterity; many tell us they recall food and smells and life events in that house. We’ve never moved so that all these who are now grown can find us if they are lost.
Our children inherited this origin story, without a vote. We worried we made too costly a decision for them. Yet, I have been given glimpses over the years of how they are mastering their strengths, have embraced grace and hope, learned to tell their truth; I am amazed by their resiliency. They walked the Camino with us. Together, we met giants along the way, were crippled by sickness and injury, fought trolls under bridges, feared famine in the land, learned justice persecuted by tortuous enemies, had miraculous visitations, supernatural occurrences and generous hospitality.
Daily, we endured, often resting in grace filled beauty; provisions and loving kindnesses were, and still are, too numerous to count.
Kendall & Erin Dooley with Kit Danley at the Charlotte CCDA Conference (2022)
On the Camino we fell in love with so many. I see them in my memory. Looking into the eyes of gang members, stressed and harassed neighbors, indefatigable mothers, hard-working migrants, future leaders, confident students, tiny faith-filled children… in all of them I saw the Imago Dei. With every effort, with misplaced attempts, with unseen hope, we chose to believe in a future not our own, for them. Though the path was littered with trauma, a cycle of despair we used to say to call it, there were also gifts. My co-travelers taught me how to break those cycles, taught me how to parent, taught me how to live in community, taught me how to believe in God in the midst of pain, taught me how to survive, how to flourish, how to celebrate and how to love the Camino. Gratitude, I have gratitude, for my teachers.
There were others on the Camino that joined us. We tried to explain how this road was tough and they needed better boots. They came anyway, with their talents and callings. They made something out of nothing alongside us, in the way that only faith and desire can do. Each one, an answer to prayer left their handprints on lives. A few held our hands and led us through the dark valleys where we hadn’t learned yet how to walk. A few taught me to value the role of mentor and guide, so one day, I could be that for others.
When I was young, on this Camino, I had unbounded energy and ambition. It was a deterrent. In my ignorance and pride, I would look back and see Jesus lagging behind. “Hurry!” I could feel myself shouting. Then, in my first encounter with ferocious suffering, my internal pressure was permanently altered, and forever after He was way out in front, promising He would show me the way. When He was too far out there, I would cry, “Where are you? I can’t see you!” Trust Me. Trust Me. I have learned to trust Him on this Camino.
Grandchildren have arrived. They are grounding influences in my life, reminding me that life is short; they carry the promises of God we have received along the way. A few years ago, I discovered where promises land, they are given to the generations. I put a marker in my backyard that notes those, the promises given and
I can’t help but ponder the miracle of my 70 years. I shouldn’t be married to the same man after 46 years, have beautiful children and grandchildren, a life filled with adventure and mission and anticipation of the next season. My life has been a series of providential interruptions, the Hand of Love preventing unequivocal disaster.
Meanwhile, I still have work to do. Not getting off the road yet. I am imagining the future in the same way we have lived, but different, if that makes sense.
So, for now, Buen Camino. Ultreia et Suseia. Love, kit
"Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds,
because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.
Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything."
Jas. 1:2-26
REFLECTION QUESTIONS:
How has your journey through life resembled a pilgrimage? Reflect on the moments when challenges or transitions have shaped your faith, perspective, or understanding of your purpose.
Kit describes the Camino as both a literal and metaphorical journey that transforms the pilgrim. What parallels can you draw between the physical act of walking and your own spiritual or personal growth? How might adopting a "pilgrim mindset" influence your approach to everyday life?
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