Kevin Sessums celebrates his:
I've been working on the penultimate chapter in my next book, I Left It On the Mountain. The chapter is titled The Pilgrim and concerns my spiritual trek across northern Spain for 31 days in May a couple of years ago when I walked the 600 miles of the Camino de Santiago de Compestela. On the 31st day as I was walking into Santiago I heard myself quietly singing – without really thinking about it – the hymn Amazing Grace. When I sang to myself the words, "… that saved a wretch like me …" something came over me – exhaustion? gratitude? an amazing moment of grace? – and I began to weep. I had to walk over to the side of the path and sit behind a tree and gather myself as I thought about all that those 31 days had shown and taught me.
It was, that moment of surrender, a kind of penultimate one itself. There was yet another I didn't quite see coming that was waiting for me because of that one.
But I had not reached that particular destination yet. I did gather myself that day outside Santiago, Spain. I fished into my back pack and pulled out my iPod. I put my earphones on and began to listen to my favorite version of Amazing Grace sung by the Soweto Gospel Choir. I had listened to it often during those 31 days when I was on my spiritual trek. I listen to it often still for the end of that 31-day trek was not an ending at all but the beginning of a the spiritual journey I remain on this very morning.
Indeed, this morning during the Eucharist when I was kneeling at the altar at St. Mary's Episcopal Church perched here on the harbor in Provincetown with my outstretched cupped palms humbly waiting for the rector to place the "host" into them and humble them even more, my mind stopped its meandering and went back to the shade of that tree on that last day on the Camino. I placed the host in my mouth and at that moment behind me the congregation began softly to sing Amazing Grace. Kneeling today I heard those words once more " .. that saved a wretch like me …" Something again came over me – exhaustion? gratitude? an amazing moment of grace? – and I began to weep.
The Dish 