The Tasty Pilgrim

“Direct across from the Pilgrim Office in St. Jean Pied de Port is a super auberge.”

This comment which I found on the internet, takes the words right out of my heart. It is about the hostel L’ESPRIT DU CHEMIN beloved by so many. On its website we read the description “ a hostel, for and by pilgrims, which offers hospitality and accommodation, in a tradition of simplicity, quality and inspiration”.

The idea for L’Esprit was created by Arno and Huberta, a married couple who themselves once walked the Camino and have fallen under its spell. Do visit the website and read how they acquired the house, renovated it with the help of lots of friends and how it has blossomed into this wonderful home where pilgrims are met with hospitality. The COD gives us that explanation what hospitality really is.

“Hospitality is the friendly and generous reception of guests or strangers. “

To do so for pilgrims starting out on their journey is indeed in the tradition of the disciple Jacob. Most people tend to overlook that the holy Saint Jacob buried in the cathedral at Santiago de Compostella is by legend this person who walked with Jesus. The tradition of care is maintained here at L’Esprit. In the course of centuries the motivation to care has changed. Today’s suspicious, sceptical and highly individualistic world places pilgrims at its very margin. Religious and communal, the pilgrimage does not easily fit into the neat definitions that define our lives. The re-awaking of the pilgrimage to Santiago has helped recover far more that the historic route. Pilgrim hospitality has become a vital tradition within the Camino. In the Christian tradition hospitality meant extending a quality of kindness others might reserve for their family and friends. It transcends boundaries of status, privilege and wealth. Welcome extended in such a way was an image of Jesus’ own actions of drawing to the poor, the maimed, the blind and the lame. Today lots of people work a few weeks in a refuge for pilgrims as a volunteer. When asked for their motivation the answer is just “to give something back”. On the Camino pilgrims experience a form of welcome rarely encountered in our “normal” society. The welcome given and received runs counter to the norm of our society. We assume there is a hidden agenda, a hidden price for each act of care. But there is none. All the volunteers have themselves walked the Camino once. It could be argued that the hospitality is not being offered to strangers at all, if by strangers we mean those who are, “without a place”.  We do not live in a meaningless world !

A sure sign that the word pilgrim means “stranger”. The river runs deep here. Stranger, to be without a place is to be detached from basic, life-supporting institutions, such as, family, work, church, community, and to be separated from the networks that sustain us. Those who commit themselves to the Camino assume entirely new sets of relationships. The impulse to practise hospitality is, in part recognition of the power the Camino has to change our lives. The offering of shelter, advice, support, even food and drink is an expression of the belief that the Camino is an extraordinary experience and therefore worth making this effort to care.

The hospitality that L’Esprit du Chemin practices binds these strangers into the living vibrant tradition of the disciple of our Lord. What better way to start your journey here.

“Direct across from the Pilgrim Office is a super auberge”.