The Yellow Arrow at the Intersection
A chance to become a waymarker
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Ten years ago my wife and I walked the old way to Santiago de Compostela, a path pilgrims have followed across Spain for a thousand years. Most of that way was easy to follow without help. But it was helpful to see, every so often, a yellow shell or a yellow arrow on a fence post or a stone wall alongside the path. Each time we saw one, we felt grateful for the time and effort that had been taken to help pilgrims stay on the route to Santiago de Compostela.
While in the country, those yellow waymarkers were easy to see. It was different in the cities. The waymarkers were painted onto sidewalks or the sides of buildings. If pedestrian traffic was low, it wasn’t too hard to find the waymarker and stay on the path to Santiago de Compostela. But when we reached the city of Leon, one of the largest cities in northern Spain, the sidewalks were filled with people on the way to work, restaurants, and shops. At one intersection, with streets heading in six different directions, we searched in vain for the waymarker. Needing to keep moving, we made a guess and started down a street. We walked quite a ways before we realized we had guessed wrong. Turning around, we retraced our steps and reached the intersection. Again, sidewalks were crowded, but when the traffic lights changed and the crowd began to cross the street, there it was, the yellow arrow pointing up a street, and we were back on the pilgrimage.
I have thought about that intersection in Leon often. It was no big deal that we got lost. Pilgrims get lost for lots of reasons. What has stayed with me is something practical that still fills my heart with gratitude.
Most of those yellow arrows can be traced back to one man, a parish priest named Don Elias Valina. He had spent years studying and walking the old way. He had become convinced it was worth saving from being lost. So, in the 1980s, he loaded his old car with cans of yellow paint and drove the length of that route, marking it with yellow arrows and shells for people like my wife and me he would never meet. That priest would die long before Lorri and I would ever get lost in Leon, but on that day, we were grateful for the arrow we finally found on a sidewalk at an intersection in that big city.
I want to tell you about an opportunity to do for others what Don Elias Valina did for us with his cans of yellow paint. I am creating an option on The Compass to become what I’m calling a Waymarker. It is a premium subscription opportunity that helps me make clear the way to a deeper life with Jesus. While the Spanish priest helped us find the way to the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela, Waymarkers on The Compass help me mark the way to a deeper, more transformative life with Jesus for those who are hungry for transformation through a life with Jesus shaped from the inside out.
Becoming a Waymarker is your chance to do exactly what Don Elias Valina did. You don’t have to write the post or lead the retreat. But the help that lets me publish an article for someone you’ll never meet, someone tired of shallow spirituality or who has lost the way to Jesus, is real. You will probably never hear their name, the same way Don Elias never heard ours. But you will have done for them exactly what was done for us.
In exchange for your premium subscription, you’ll get real perks. All the things paid subscribers already receive: a monthly spiritual formation practice tool, a teaching aid to help you get more from that practice tool, and a live conversation about the practice. Additionally, you’ll get a frameable photo of Montana mountain beauty once per month with a card helping you practice visio divina, an ancient Christian practice that helps you use beauty to open your soul to a deeper life with God. I’m also offering a spiritual direction session once per year to help you discern where and how God is pressing into your life in real time. Finally, I’m creating a space inside Substack itself where Waymarkers can talk with each other, not only with me.
The cost is two hundred forty nine dollars a year. If you’re already a paid subscriber, the fifty dollars you’ve paid this year will be credited toward that cost, so you’ll only owe the difference, not the full amount on top of what you’ve already given.
I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Leon, Spain. Maybe you’ve never stood at that intersection the way Lorri and I did, tired and lost, not knowing which way to go. But I think most of us know what it is to finally find our way again. If you want to be a person who helps me place markers so others can find the way to a deeper, more transformative life with Jesus, I would love to have you as a Waymarker here at The Compass. You can find out more information here.