Are you the Baby Jesus?

Hey Sam,

I’m not a religious person. I wasn’t raised that way and I don’t identify with any particular religious order, I’m not even baptised. Neither are you actually but there is one distinct difference between us. You go to a Catholic school.

Your Mum went to a Catholic School and she says there were Nuns, but not the flying type that I imagine. Her nuns were grounded and must have been nice enough because your Mum also says that, for a hot minute in her youth, she wanted to be one. If we ever spot a nun in the real world, your Mum is always keen to look at them, to check them out, as if they are an example of a life she might have lived. A life, I guess, that wouldn’t have involved either you or me. From your perspective it would have sucked actually, because you wouldn’t have been born, but all of this is still not the reason that we have sent you to a Catholic School.

The real reason for that was that we heard the school was good and kind, and since sending you there, considering the difficulty you have with fitting into our education system, we think it’s a pretty good choice. Ok, we’ve been conflicted at times but despite me not being baptised and your Mum not a nun, we have been mostly happy with the religious aspects of your education. We just tempered the overtly Christian side of things with visits to Buddhist and Hindu temples and mosques when we travelled. In Singapore we took you to the Hell Museum, in India to the Hare Krishnas, and on the way to school, on the back of our electric bike, we listened to Black Sabbath’s War Pigs.

The whole spectrum.

Despite this there was one moment, in grade one, where you came home from school and declared you were the Baby Jesus. I was Joseph, your Mum Mary, three of our artistic collaborators, the three wise men, and your uncle Grayson, the donkey. I worried (Grayson also a little bit) but it was really only a passing phase. You didn’t hold onto the whole Baby Jesus thing but now, approximately

400

kilometres into our camino, since you received three gifts from strangers, I’m beginning to wonder if we should have paid more attention.

Last night we stayed in the Ermita de San Nicolas, a 13th century church by the side of the way, a medieval stone building that squats next to the camino like a… well, like a church…

It’s just before a bridge which crosses a small reedy river and a dirt road which heads into the next town. We’d read about this church before we came and wanted to stay there, even though we knew they only had 12 beds and that we would inevitably arrive late when it was already full. It was a donativo, a donation based pilgrim hostel that can’t be reserved in advance. On the Camino there are different accomodation options, ranging from expensive hotels to simple bunk beds, sometimes with forty plus people in one room. You can book ahead for some but others are on a first come, first served basis, prioritising walking pilgrims over people on bikes or horses. That includes the donativos which usually serve a communal dinner as well. It’s an old custom, to feed and house the weary pilgrims on their way to Santiago.

At this church there were two old Italian brothers. I say brothers, even though I think they were just volunteers, because they looked a bit like brothers and felt a bit like monks. We turned up late, which wasn’t unusual for us because our pace was slower, much slower, than most. We walked later in the day also because we never got away as early. Even when we tried it was always 8am by the time we hit the road and most people were long gone by then because, as we discovered, pilgrims like to leave early to get the walking done before it gets too hot.

Smart plan.

By the time we were approaching the church it was getting late. You had developed a habit of going slower the closer we got to our destination, so that our goals had a way of turning into exponential nightmares of distance, drawing further away from us the closer we got to them. It was as though we entered some kind of quantum physics calculus where you multiply the exhaustion of a ten year old against the degree of kilometres walked and time spent, adding in a factor of zig zagging across the path, doubling the distance by adding legs half the size.

On this day you’d started limping and we were trying to keep you distracted so you wouldn’t notice. You and I had already co-created our first Netflix series, The Thistle Man. It’s about a young man called Kevin, who hates his parents, is turned into The Lord of Weather after a drunk Zeus accidentally drops a lightning bolt out of the sky and down onto his family’s farm, where it strikes young Kevin on the head while he is out doing chores. At the same time another boy (note to examine the gender bias before we get to pitching stage), who has lost his father (of course) falls asleep in a mushroom patch after ditching his Mum on a bush walk and, due to a toxic waste spillage by a truck driver (gender unknown) who is momentarily distracted by the blinding flash of a lightning bolt in the distance (see the link up?), becomes The Mushroom Man.

The Lord of Weather and The Mushroom Man hate each other and the world is in the balance.

But in a mid to late season twist, neither of these super heroes is our actual protagonist. That role falls to a young thistle plant that Kevin was trying to kill with weed spray when the lightning bolt hit. Bits of bolt deflected off Kevin and landed on the thistle plant, bringing it to consciousness. Over the course of the first season The Thistle Man (definite gender bias), becomes a sidekick to the human super heroes, learning their ways and slowly crafting his own plans to destroy the human world because he is sick of being treated as a weed.

“What’s so good about fucking flowers? Huh?” (Ok, I didn’t swear on the Camino, but I feel like we could pitch this as The Boyz meets Plants versus Zombies. Give it an R rating, make it edgy, just a thought…)

The Ermita sits all by itself. When I first saw it I had walked ahead, you were zig zagging  and limping and your Mum had taken up the role of chief distractor. I crested a hill and saw the building that we knew had no electricity, but the brothers cook for you by candlelight and, in an ancient ritual, wash your feet.

Yes that’s right, they wash your feet. We didn’t tell you that part at the time, just booked you in when you limped down the hill. They were booked out (of course) but took pity and let us sleep in camp beds on the nave, the raised platform before the altar and, while dinner was boiling away, they gathered us altogether in a semi circle. One spoke a prayer while the other removed the socks and shoes from our right feet, poured some water from a chalice (have to use that word), wiped it dry with a towel and then kissed it.

Yes. Kissed. Your. Foot.

To your credit you didn’t laugh or pull your foot back, even though you have a thing about your toenails, which you don’t let us cut, and which look like raptor’s claws. That’s a topic for another letter (or for your therapist later in life) but I think you held your discomfort at bay because of the importance of the ritual, the way the brother prostrated himself before you, and the pure and overwhelming selflessness of the act.

Also I think it was because the same brother had already given you the first of your three gifts.

He placed it around your neck and said, “You are a true pilgrim Sam”.

 Then, outside, sitting on the wooden bench, you posed for gift number two.

I love this drawing, you were so still when the young Italian guy drew it, I even think I can make out your raptor claws if I look closely enough…

Then the third gift…

We had met The Director the day before, he’d slept at a church ruin, under the open air and we met him when we stopped there for water. He had a black, beret, black shirt, black pants, everything black and you said he looked like a director, so we called him that. He told me his past was as dark as his clothes. A DJ from Holland who had gotten into some very troubled ways before he found Christ. I suspected addiction of some form, maybe because he was now addicted to Jesus and was so driven to proselytize all the time. We walked with him a few times and you and he had debates about belief and imagination.

He had a stick, a magic stick, he called it when he showed you. He said it had appeared when he needed it, when he had a bad foot another pilgrim had gifted it to him. Then his foot got better and he lost the stick, but when the foot injury recurred, the stick magically reappeared.

“Maybe it was a coincidence.” You told him.

“There are no coincidences.” He said.

“How do you know?” You asked.

The stick was named Jesus and had writing on it, Jesus’ name and some faded blessings, in green Texta. The director walked slowly so we managed to keep up. He was taking everything as a sign, every moment, because he was experiencing, in all the things, the voice of God. I envied him his belief and tried to mirror the way he was making every detail important, the smallest things, the shape of a cloud pulling away over a field as though the field itself was moving, the places we come to rest, the shade of a tree, an accidental meeting, the choices we think we make.

What if it all the voice of God? Or Gods, or the universe, Mother Nature, Mother Mary, take your pick, no coincidences.

How do we know? How can we tell?

Your third gift was lying on the path the next day. We were walking and there was the magic stick, lying on the dirt.

On it was this note.

When we arrived in the next town we stopped at a café (as usual on the Meseta, it was the only one) for lunch. Everyone in the café sprang to life when they saw you. “Sam!” They all shouted, because every one of them had passed that stick as they walked that morning.

They all recognised you as the boy who walking with a magic stick.

Buen camino,

Ragnar.