The Atheist Pilgrim - The Journey to the City of Saint James

Here you can read about an interesting and funny experience of an old man ridding a bike in the northern Spain mountains.

Traying to follow the steps of Saint James, the apostle of Jesus the old man makes a catholic pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, the holly city of Catholic Christianity.

As a strange thing, the cyclist isn't nor catholic neither believer but like everyone in this world he has his own pilgrimage.

Around mid-May, a solitary pilgrim struggled through the mountains of northern Spain in the province of Galicia.

He was heading to Santiago de Compostela, the holy city of Catholic Christianity, where the tomb of Saint James, or Santiago, according his Spanish, ID is located.

Since the pilgrim set out, he has been wrestling.

Wrestling with the rain that hasn't stopped for four days and the cold wind that always blows against him.

He grapples with the cold and fatigue, which, at a temperature of 4 degrees Celsius, quickly takes hold unexpectedly.

He contends with the mud-covered bicycle, becoming increasingly challenging to push it uphill.

He also contends with the years that have clung to his legs. At 70 years old, you're not the same as at 30, even if you don't want to admit it.

He wrestles with loneliness, with a language he doesn't speak, and with the thought that he might die there, alone, in a distant and poor country.

He struggles but continues to move forward driven by his faith.

It's not a religious faith because the pilgrim is an atheist. An orthodox atheist.

He is pushed, or perhaps pulled, by faith in himself, by the belief that he is capable of completing the entire journey and overcoming all difficulties to reach Santiago de Compostela.

And he succeeded.

Arriving at the Cathedral, he knelt at the tomb of Saint James not as a religious homage but as a sign of respect for the master of the house.

When you are in a foreign house, you must respect the house rules, and there the rule was to kneel at the tomb.

So, he knelt on a red velvet cushion, elbows resting on a small bench covered with the same velvet, closed his eyes, and waited.

He didn't ask for anything. Nor did he have anything to ask for.

Life had given him everything he needed. Moreover, as a bonus, it gave him a multitude of unnecessary things.

In the Cathedral, he asked for nothing and received nothing. Fair enough, as un old wise Chinese says.

It is said that a journey changes a person, and this is true provided it is a real journey, not a tour, a visit, or a city break.

Pilgrimage is such kind of a journey.

Camino de Santiago or Camino Peregrino - the Pilgrim's Way changes for the better, or at least changes, anyone who travels it.

The journey itself, the places he has seen, the people encountered along the way, and the events it has experienced, have changed the old pilgrim who, even without realizing it, has become another person, a New One.

Pedaling slowly on his bicycle, is now returning to his distant country another Atheist, a New One.

This book was written by the pilgrim in question.

Well, after he got off the bike.