Hicks on Camino

 I don’t consider myself a particularly graceful person. Do I have grace? I try. Am I graceful? Absolutely not. If you attend Catholic school, particularly a Jesuit Catholic school, you’ll hear a lot about ‘God’s Grace,’ which sounds like a good indica strain or a particularly heady IPA (note to future self). It’s one of those Catholic phrases where definition changes with context. It might mean the opportunity for forgiveness, an answered prayer, resilience, or a divine spirit.  My preferred…

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“We’re going to REI.”  My fiancée looked at me with a mixture of incredulity and resignation. “It’s your call. But your mom will never forgive you if you miss this flight.” She wasn’t wrong. At 1:35pm, a British Airways jet was planning to shuttle my mom and me from Seattle to Paris to begin our 40-day, 500 mile adventure. At 1:36pm, I had two possible futures: I’d either be on that flight, or excommunicated from my own family by an…

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