Pilgrims and the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela

campocella silhouettePilgrims come here.  They walk 100 km or bike 200 km in order to be certified as religious seekers.  They walk slowly so they can think about their lives and their souls.  They have been coming for centuries.    It’s a beautiful old place, smaller than the grand cathedrals but fraught with meaning and swimming in ghosts and souls.

 

The Nave cropped

pilgrims porch

Why is this “porch” above the main section?  So that pilgrims could sleep there and not have to pay for the privilege of coming from very far away to pray for forgiveness or a miracle.

The power of this place is exceptional.  Statues that pioneer portrayal of textile surfaces for clothing, and statues with facial expressions.  Golden altars, a bloody Christ,  St. James’ beautiful silver coffin – combine to contribute to the soulful mystery that hovers over it all.

solomonic columns fixedThese columns, for example,  are ornate and golden because they were meant to resemble those in Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem.   A saint sits atop two open-mouthed lions  who represent the (sadly premature) celebration of human victory over sin.  Moses joins the Apostles on the “Portico de la Gloria” that rises over the main entrance.

Pillars2 cropped

And is now, as are so many other wonderful historic locations, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

It’s awesome no matter what brand of faith one carries to a visit here.  It took centuries of prayer and construction and design and love to put this cathedral here and its power still surprises and moves visitors.

 

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Cynthia Samuels

Cynthia Samuels is a long-time blogger, writer, producer and Managing Editor. She has an extensive background online, on television and in print, with particular experience developing content for women, parents and families. For the past nine years, that experience has been largely with bloggers, twitter and other social media, most recently at Care2's Causes Channels, which serve 20 million members (13 million when she joined) and cover 16 subject areas. In her three years at Care2 monthly page views grew tenfold, from 450,000 to 4 million. She has been part a member of BlogHer since 2006 years and has spoken at several BlogHer conferences. Among her many other speaking appearances is Politics Online, Fem 2.0 Conference and several other Internet gatherings. She’s also run blogger outreach for clients ranging from EchoDitto to To the Contrary. Earlier, she spent nearly four years with iVillage, the leading Internet site for women; her assignments included the design and supervision of the hugely popular Education Central, a sub-site of Parent Soup that was a soup-to-nuts parent toolkit on K-12 education, designed to support parents as advocates and supporters of their school-age kids. She also served as the iVillage partner for America Links Up, a major corporate Internet safety initiative for parents, ran Click! – the computer channel - and had a long stint as iVillage's Washington editor. In addition, she has developed parent content for Jim Henson Interactive and served as Children’s Book Editor for both Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.com. Before moving online, she had a long and distinguished career as a broadcast journalist, as senior national editor of National Public Radio, political and planning producer of NBC's Today Show (whose audience is 75% women) where she worked for nine years (and was also the primary producer on issues relating to child care, education, learning disabilities and child development), and as the first executive producer of Channel One, a daily news broadcast seen in 12,000 U.S. high schools. She has published a children’s book: It’s A Free Country, a Young Person’s Guide to Politics and Elections (Atheneum, 1988) and numerous children’s book reviews in the New York Times Book Review and Washington Post Book World. A creator of online content since 1994, Samuels is a partner at The Cobblestone Team, LLC, is married to a doctor and recent law school graduate and has two grown sons who make video games, two amazing daughters-in-law and three adorable grandsons.

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