This was taken from the back of the Notre Dame Cathedral that overlooks this city of 1.6 million inhabitants.

There are thirty of us who are going on this pilgrimage, and only four of us will go all the way to Santiago, have selected Lyon, France as our starting place.

Evidence has been found that shows Lyon to have been consistently inhabited since prehistoric times. Indeed, yesterday we spent hours touring the largest - six floors! - museum of Roman artifacts I've ever seen. The second settlement of Christians in the Roman world settled here in 177. The church that sits atop this highest part of the city, the "Mary Church," is much like Sacre Coure in Paris in that it was built in response to a promise made to God that if the city was spared the horrors of WWI such an edifice would be built.

Here are three representative photos.

There is evidence that at the time the first pilgrims began going to Santiago, Lyon was a starting place and a way-point for those who made the journey.

As I write yesterday, those who first conceived of and made this pilgrimge were seeking comfort and healing that met their religious and spirituals understandings of the time. Those who make the journey today do not have the same concerns but are seeking both deeper meaning and deeper reality in a world where meaning seems mostly focuses on the material and reality seems so superficial.

We pilgrims met in Lyon and traveled to Le Puy-en-Velay which was the original starting point of the pilgrimage in the year 950.