In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

202 Walking the Path On December 17, 2010, I began walking the ancient pilgrimage route, el Camino de Santiago, or el camino francés, as that route is known, from SaintJean -Pied-de-Port in France to Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain.1 The ancient pilgrimage route winds its way to one of the most visited holy shrines in the world, Santiago de Compostela, where the alleged remains of Saint James are enshrined. As I walked the five hundred miles, I did not necessarily think of it as a spiritual experience—that was not my reason for making the trek—but that is what it became, and in the course of the pilgrimage a number of events transpired that reinforced and reaffirmed many of my core spiritual beliefs. Walking along the Camino, I learned many lessons and experienced countless spiritual connections—epiphanies, if you will. One key lesson I learned from the Camino is that every step along life’s journey is indeed a step along a spiritual path. Living any life, I believe, is a walk along such a path, for we are spiritual beings just as surely as we are physical beings. Few recognize this fact that was made so visibly manifest during my walk—I was aware of my body and of my spirit. I felt that my mind, body, and spirit were attuned during restful sleep as well as during the physical hardship of walking in the snow or climbing up some of the highest peaks—el Pico del Perdón or the village of O’Cebreiro—to traversing the meseta with its ferocious winds. In this essay I explore how this sense of “spirit” has been an essence in my life’s path and how I have come to this awareness through experiences I am Living La Vida Santa My Chicana Spirituality and Activist Scholarship Norma E. Cantú Living La Vida Santa · 203 classifying as auditory and visual hallucinations.2 In narrating various incidents that may be classified as out-of-the-ordinary reality, surreal or extraordinary , I am laying out a framework for a discussion of my academic activist position. My writings, whether in literary or folklore studies, draw from the elements in my life; that is, as many writers do, I rely on my lived experience as fodder for my research and scholarly work as well as for my poetry and fiction. Instead of dividing these aspects of myself I seek to integrate them into a holistic and unifying self. Thus, the Camino has now become part of the resources I tap for framing theories of life and of literary or cultural analysis. Coming to an Awareness of Spirit I must have been about six or seven when I first became aware of this thing called spirit or soul. It baffled me. My family’s devout Catholicism meant that my spirituality was tinged with Catholic dogma, while the folk Catholicism my grandmother practiced made it even messier. As I attended the doctrina where I memorized long prayers and the list of commandments that began “Los mandamientos de la ley de Dios son diez” I had many questions. The nuns and lay teachers charged with making sure that we were duly trained and ready to make our first holy communion had no patience for my questions , though, and I soon learned not to ask but to memorize the questions and answers as provided. “¿Para qué hizo dios el mundo? ¿Cuáles son los sacramentos ?” Aside from confusion as to what the sacraments were, my utter bafflement at the idea that I would be eating the body and blood of Jesus in the Eucharist was only compounded by my disbelief that I could, in my frail, thin, six-year-old body, harbor God himself as Sister Consuelo taught us. But the theology and the official Church teachings formed only part of my spiritual training. At home, my maternal grandmother Celia Ramón, whom we called Bueli, taught me an alternative spirituality based on a belief system that included dichos (San Ramón ponle un tapón), folk prayers invoking Catholic saints and soundly based on folk belief. Such prayers might help one retrieve lost items (thirteen Our Fathers to the ánimas perdidas), or ward off evils such as the dogs that roamed our neighborhood (“Perro en ti, Cristo en mi, que la sangre de Cristo me libre de ti”). Additionally, my family instilled religious and spiritual practices in us, such as praying the rosary...

Share