Happy Easter 2020

Tons of Nuns

Santiago de Compostela is the capital of northwest Spain's Galicia region. The cathedral in the main square centers the town and is the ultimate destination for those completing the popular route of the Camino de Santiago from France to Spain. A grueling journey, pilgrims have been determined to conquer the winding route for centuries. The walk takes about a month, if you walk endlessly every day. I arrived in Vigo, Spain, by cruise ship, because walking endlessly on any day disrupts my preassigned pampering schedule, prearranged by an onboard concierge. Cruise ships are more comfortable than gravel roads through tiny towns.

A fancy air-conditioned limo bus whisked me from the ship to the church. The countryside of Spain, mesmerizing enough, is nothing compared to the first glimpse of the Cathedral de Santiago. I wasn't prepared for the magnificence.

I'd been given instructions. I'd been told by the ship's crew who knew: what to wear, how to behave, even who to light a candle for and what to pray. But the splendor of this church, the size and significance it carries within the Catholic religion, the crowds gathered ... something about the atmosphere signaled that this church might be the Mother Church. It is knock-you-over stunning at first sight, and though I'd seen pictures and been coached about everything (because I was leading a passenger group tour), the initial entrance into the square and the first glimpse of the enormous church caught me more than off guard.

The traditional first thing one does is stretch out flat on the several thousand year old pavement stones in front of the church and look backwards up and over your head. Literally, lie down on the dirty pavement and look upside down at the church. Not keen to do this, nor did I believe most people would do it (except lemmings, of course), or that there was anything to see. But there they were. Throngs of people, every shape and age and size, rows of them. Lying on the ground in every manner of clothing, flexing in all kinds of contorted positions to stare up, over and backwards at the church. They looked locked on something.

OK, I thought. I can do that too. Then I did. It made me giggle. There is something to see. But I won't spoil it for you and tell you what, because like me, you'll want to experience that moment for yourself if you ever get to Santiago.

Time to go inside. As ours was a prearranged tour, we had access to a special side door, and I'd been instructed to enter through that different door to check in. The front door to the church had lines that stretched for blocks around the town square. It moved slowly. Worshippers threaded in through the huge, oddly slender front doors, and walked the length of the long church, with their mouths held agape at the majesty and sheer expansiveness inside the towered church, which is filled with relics and color and smells and older set back sections, unseen splendors everywhere an eye lands, even above. Especially above.

I went to the side entrance exclusively used for VIP visitors or clergy of the church. This early afternoon, clergy clogged that side door portal into Santiago. There were tons of nuns. I never saw so many nuns at one time, indistinguishable from one another, except for the different color wimples worn on their heads.

I looked out of place. Gathering my headscarf tight, covering every hair on my head, I tied it up as Marcus had instructed. He said I had to be covered up completely to go in with the nuns.

As if I were going to innocently blend in with tons of nuns. My sins smelled. I felt so out of place. But I stood there, all swaddled in my secret sanctity.

Meanwhile, it was warm. Getting hotter by the minute, as I stood solemnly, waddling side-by-side along with the line, perspiring nervously, moving inch by inch, quietly ahead, all wrapped up like the only person who didn't belong in the nun line.

As we approached the arched entrance, I saw each group of nuns enter and then go off into their own groups or disappear deep into the church to pray. Looking around, the red glass of the hundreds of lit candles cast an eerie glow over the entire church. A smell of old and holy mixed with man-made fabrics and tourists from everywhere and new candles being lit flooded my nose, right before I saw two priests swing the largest incense burner I've ever seen, filled with fiery incense, across the entire length of the church. Intense! Both the incense and the scented assault, not necessarily unpleasant, just too much at once on my various senses. There were many sights and sounds and smells all at once. My covered head needed to burst forth and experience all these surreal scenes. Icons and saints and windows and throngs of people and tons of nuns. Nuns were everywhere. Praying filled the sanctuary with a buzz, words in every tongue imaginable.

But only one tourist was covered up like a nun. Only one looked completely out of place in Santiago de Compostela that sunny Monday afternoon.

Me.

It was a joke. Marcus and the others had set me up to look like a religious zealot, but there are no official dress codes to come into Santiago de Compostela. I took off the scarf that covered my malleable brain.

My group laughed. Strangers laughed. I freed my hair and my soul at the same time. With a laugh, of course.

And among those tons of smiling nuns, I hope at least one of them offered up a prayer for hapless me.

We are all just struggling to make it. To do the best that we can. It's good to have fun. I know. Because I asked a nun. 

Just Another Lori Story