A Furnace Full of God

Book excerpt: Rebekah and Patrick, burned-out newspaper journalists from the USA and England, were captured by the generous spirit they found the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage trail. They sold up their American lives and moved to Spain in 2006, to a town of twenty farmers inthe middle of the 500-mile, thousand-year-old pilgrim road. They did their best to catch the ancient rhythms of seedtime, harvest, pig-stickings and saints' days.The year 2010 was a Holy Year, when more than 300,000 pilgrims walked to the shrine city of Santiago de Compostela. Some stayed at Peaceable Kingdom, the farmhouse where the couple offered a night's food and lodging in exchange for whatever the pilgrim wanted to give. They were nuns, bums, Oxford dons, mystics, fugitives, hippies, and lunatics, as well as greyhounds, barn cats, roosters, and donkeys. Most moved on after a day or two, but some came to stay."A Furnace full of God" is their story.