This week in Cordoba has been full of cultural and religious experiences. It has also been a week of much walking. From the Mezquita-Cathedral, to the Jewish Cultural Center, over to the Archeological Museum, passing by the Botanical Garden,

we have seen much of the city on foot.

Granted, we are not walking nearly the distances of our fellow pilgrims on the Camino, but a few here in Cordoba have developed blisters in solidarity.

Tonight we will commence a hike of our own. Not on a section of the Camino, but to a hermitage up a mountain outside the city limits. We will be camping near the hermitage, before walking back down tomorrow morning. Cordoba has become our home for the past week, and we’ve grown familiar with it. But if there were a perfect time to challenge ourselves once again to experience something different, it would be now!

In preparation we’ve packed our bags, laced up our sneakers, refilled our water bottles and we are now watching movie. Watch a movie, you say? In preparation for a hike? What does a movie have to do with a hike?! More than you might think.

We are watching the French film, “Of Gods and Men,” a film which won the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Under threat by fundamentalist terrorists, a group of Trappist monks stationed with an impoverished Algerian community must decide whether to escape the threats or stay and accompany the community in this time of need. It’s the very essence of the topics we have been discussing over the past week: We are all not the same. We come from different backgrounds, different experiences, and different faiths. Asking and discussing these questions may be outside our comfort zone. Yet we share this earth we call home. How do we live together on it? In violence or peace?