Day 19 on the Camino Way

Bottle of Wine Fruit of the Vine

I’m holding in my hand enough grapes to make about one cup of wine—give or take. That’s what the pickers told me, I think. it takes on average 400 grapes to make a bottle of wine and I have a cluster of about 100 grapes—give or take.

That’s me talking to the pickers. One of them was telling me to get lost, but the others where scolding him for being rude—I think. I’m pretty sure. He gave me the cluster of grapes I’m holding but tried to give me at least three times that many. These particular vines held their grapes close to the ground. There were mixed colors in this field—both red and white. They were very sweet, but with seeds. I know—picky.

Wine Press and Presser

This was the make shift wine press they were using to make wine/juice. This contraption was located on the main drag in the small village where we spent the night. When we first walked by I didn’t know what I was looking at. Then I remembered grape presses I’d seen in the West Bank/Palestine. If you look closely, you can see the crates on top of the grapes and this huge old stone column on top of the crates.

They were crushing the grapes to make juice. A blue plastic tarp was under the grapes and rigged to run the juice into containers. It was pretty good tasting stuff—very sweet. It reminded me of the grape juice served in most churches—very sweet too.

Many Vines—One Cup

So I got to thinking about church. In the Lord’s Supper liturgy you have the image of the church as many vines to make one cup. The fact is that one vine can produce ten bottles of wine and ten bottles would be a lot of cups. Therefore, it turns out then that many vines make thousands, even millions of cups of wine. All it takes is a cluster of one hundred grapes to make one cup.

All this makes me think about how we think about size when it comes to church. Does one hundred people make a church? How about 90? Would you shut down a church with only ninety people in it? How about 80? 70? How about ten? Would ten people make a church?

Do you know that you only need ten Jewish men, now in some circles women are included, to make a worshiping community—just ten. It’s called a ”minyan.” Ten is the number that Abraham stopped on when he was bargaining with God to spare Sodom and Gomorrah. The rabbis argue that Abraham quit too soon. He should have gone all the way down to one.

Nobody Home

Daily, we walk by churches, sometimes five or six. These churches are in towns and villages that are all but empty. The unemployment rate in Spain for young women and men between the ages of 18 and 25 is 40%. They’ve all left these small towns to go live in the cities where they have a chance to find work. Most of the churches are there for the pilgrims to come in and look at and take pictures. There’s a red candle burning in the front of the church indicating that Eucharist is celebrated there, but it’s primarily old men and women and not many of them.

So what?

Yeah, so what? That’s my question. What are we to make of this?

Did you know that the church collective in East Germany which was at the time made up primarily of old women and men was instrumental in bringing down the Berlin Wall? It’s true. You can look it up here.

It’s something to think about at least.

The Center of The Way

This old Roman bridge that Sally is standing on is the geographical center of the Camino De Santiago—the Camino Way. We were there yesterday and found out about this today. Pretty cool actually. This bridge was built in the 1st Century BCE. That makes it over two thousand years old and it’s still standing. The Romans knew how to do the arch. The arch, you see, was the key!

This old bridge we call the church is also still standing. It seems a little wobbly right now, especially in the West, including the United States. But there are still a lot of vines and a lot of grapes. I just wish these grapes were sweeter is all. Know what I mean? Yeah you do.

Buen Camino!