CREEDE HINSHAW: Faithful Catholic creates his own ‘pilgrimage’

He laid out a pilgrimage path in his own backyard.

Congratulations to Phil Volker, who lives on Vashon Island at Puget Sound in the Pacific Northwest and was diagnosed with cancer in 2013. This faithful Roman Catholic, who had always wanted to walk the Camino pilgrimage route in Spain, laid out his own path instead, calculating that one trip around his path was some six-tenths of a mile, transposing his route onto the milestones of the Spanish pilgrimage site, and praying along his own route as if he were in Spain.

I read Volker’s story in a recent article about people finding and creating spiritual respite in their own backyards. Other examples were given, but Mr. Volker’s was the most inspiring. When I entered his name and a few key words in my search engine, many pages emerged. How had I missed his story? A documentary film has even been made on his story.

This is the kind of heartening story all of us need right now: A man of faith who approaches his own mortality with confidence and determination, finding a creative way to deal with death and dying while combining his own very real faith with practicality.

I don’t have 10 acres to construct such a path, but then again, most of us don’t have that kind of property. The main point is that each of us can find or create some meaningful way to address the bleakness of these times in our own setting.

I wrote last week about the prevalence of despair and the suicidal thoughts so many are facing these days. Since that column, I have been deeply saddened by the deaths of two young adults, both in the same family, by suicide. Our armed services have also recently reported the drastically increased rates (+20-30%) of suicide since the onset of the coronavirus. All of us, to one extent or another, are affected with sadness, grief, depression and sense of loss these days.

Phil Volker walks his pilgrimage route, rosary in hand, daily. He knows how many laps he needs to complete in order to have successfully walked an entire “virtual” trip on the Spanish Camino. He’s praying all the way, and his witness has given hope to countless others.

I have a woods behind my house and have enjoyed, in retirement, blazing a few trails in it. I am a charter member and the only member of my trail association, responsible for maintaining my routes. But it had not occurred to me to use my own small trail network as a pilgrimage path. Now I’m going to give it a try. I’ll report back to you how this works out in a future column.

Meanwhile, are there creative ways you are enhancing your own spiritual life in these days of isolation and disease? What is working for you? I’d be interested in hearing how you’ve adapted to and approached living victoriously in tough times.