Rediscovering Peace: A Veteran's Path on the Camino de Santiago with Father Steven Rindahl

Ever wondered how a pilgrimage can help heal the wounds of war? Father Steven Rindahl, a retired Army chaplain, joins us to share his transformative journey from the battlefield to the Camino de Santiago. After a career in the Army and a life-changing pilgrimage, Father Steve founded Warriors on the Way, a nonprofit that leads veterans grappling with post-traumatic stress (PTS) and moral injury on a 180-mile trek across Spain. He reveals the genesis of this healing initiative, the meticulous preparation involved, and the remarkable blend of physical, emotional, and spiritual support it offers veterans.

Our conversation covers the rigorous selection process that ensures veterans are ready for the physical and mental demands of the pilgrimage, starting with applications opening on October 15th. Father Steve also sheds light on the intricate differences between PTS and moral injury, emphasizing the unique ministerial support provided to help veterans reconcile their combat experiences. Don't miss this heartfelt exploration of resilience, healing, and the unyielding spirit of those who've served. Listen in for a powerful, inspiring story of faith and recovery.

Chapters

• 0:00 Combat Veterans on Camino De Santiago
• 10:50 Pilgrimage Application and Selection Process
• 19:54 Understanding Moral Injury in Combat

Transcript

Larry Zilliox: 0:15

Good morning. I'm Larry Zilliak, director of Culinary Services here at the Warrior Retreat at Bull Run, and this week's guest is Father Stephen Rindahl. He is with Warriors on the Way. It's a nonprofit organization out of Texas and they take combat veterans who have issues with PTS and moral injury on pilgrimages to Spain. They go on the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage, which is a series of routes throughout Europe. I believe it's the Way of St James, if my memory serves me correctly. But, father, welcome to the podcast. Hi, larry, thanks for having me on. Well, I really wanted to start with a little bit of your background, and you're a retired Army captain and so I'm interested in how you came to join the Army and then as a chaplain came to join the army and then as a chaplain.

Fr. Steven Rindahl: 1:24

All right, yeah, I joined the army, actually when I was 17 and I only had two goals in life, and the first one was jumping out of planes and the second one was going off to war. And, as it turned out, I was jumping out of planes a few months later and didn't go to war for 20-something years later, and when I got there I was trying to figure out why I was in such a hurry. When I was younger, started out my career on being enlisted and returning to the Army as a chaplain, was in the reserve component for a little while, allowing the opportunity to go to school, get the required time in a local parish setting and then return to active duty as a chaplain. Where I finished my career included my deployment to Iraq from 2006, 2008,. October 2006 to January 2008, and ultimately retired a few years ago, retired out at the rank of major. So chaplain, major, retired, wow.

Larry Zilliox: 2:38

When did you decide to take combat veterans on these pilgrimages? Was this something you did while you were a chaplain on active duty?

Fr. Steven Rindahl: 2:47

No, not at all. It was really a side effect of my own personal pilgrimage that I took upon retirement. What led into it is I, as a member of the faculty at the Army Medical Center in school, which is located in San Antonio, at Fort Sam Houston. The course that I developed was the chaplain corps curriculum for how to provide a ministerial response to moral injury and in doing that that built on some previous research I had done on providing a response to combat trauma. And during the previous three or four years about four years I had become aware of the Camino de Santiago as a pilgrimage route and looked interesting to me. It was appealing to me and I wanted to go and make that pilgrimage. But I didn't have the luxury of the availability of time because it takes at least a couple of weeks, if not a month or more, depending on which route or which segment of a route that you take. So upon my retirement I thought well, this is the, this is the perfect time I can, I don't have anything pressing on my calendar, I can go and I and I can do exactly what I need to do. After spending decades in military service and not ever having thought about doing anything else in life, I need to think and pray and try to get some sort of vision for what's going to come next.

Fr. Steven Rindahl: 4:29

And in the process of that pilgrimage I realized what a cathartic and healing experience it was for me and thought that other combat veterans ought to have the opportunity to do something similar. And so there, while I was in the last week, week and a half or so of my pilgrimage, I started putting together my mind. Well, if I was to bring other vets on this type of opportunity, what would it look like? And just sort of put the skeleton together of a pilgrimage program. And then got home and talked with some friends and said what do you think of this? And, if you like the idea, can you help me get it started?

Fr. Steven Rindahl: 5:08

And got a lot of wonderful support from people I trusted, helped develop the 501c3 on the official legal side on the official legal side and got some help from a wonderful friend of mine who's a clinical psychologist to deal with the PTSD part. I was already well-versed in the moral injury part but to bring balance to the healing process, how to incorporate a PTSD healing aspect as well as a moral injury healing aspect to the pilgrimage. And then that psychologist has co-led pilgrimage with me as well as another, just have a wonderful team of people at this point who are supportive of the program. As you know from your own position, you got to bring a good team together in order to get good results. As you know from your own position, you've got to bring a good team together in order to get good results, and the Lord has really blessed this pilgrimage program Warriors on the Way, with amazing people with outstanding attitudes that have formed into a terrific team, all for the sake of helping others recover.

Larry Zilliox: 6:16

And the route that you take. Is it primarily in Spain, or which route do you take?

Fr. Steven Rindahl: 6:21

Yes, we take a route that's entirely in Spain, as we mentioned earlier. It's kind of a misnomer and people say the Camino de Santiago as if there's only one, when in reality it networks all across Europe, even outside of Europe, extending in every direction. But we do want what is probably the most popular of routes, which is the Camino Frances, the French route, and we start in the city of Astorga, which is 180 miles roughly from Astorga to Santiago de Compostela, the cathedral city, and we do that 180 miles in two weeks. We average 15 miles a day of hiking. The theme that we go with, with the idea that we're trying to convey to our programs, is that you can do a 180 in your life in 180, playing off that 180 mile marker and how many warriors usually make the journey with you we can bring a group size up to 12, and that is that is based on a few things.

Fr. Steven Rindahl: 7:34

One, we're always limited by whatever donations are. For any particular year, we can't exceed the amount of money that we have to spend on the project, but regardless of the amount of donations that we receive, we're limited to 12 logistically. Many of the albergues, which are hostels that are unique for pilgrims, many of the albergues we stay in are our homes and other historic buildings that have been converted for pilgrim use, and in more than a few, our group basically fills their capacity, and so we do have a logistical max, even if that wasn't a concern. When you get beyond 12 pilgrims all walking and each person having their own pace and thoughts for the day, it can get to be unwieldy, and so we have a logistical and just an operational limit of a total group size of 12.

Larry Zilliox: 8:33

And how many of these pilgrimages have you made?

Fr. Steven Rindahl: 8:37

We have made pilgrimage with groups every year since 2018. So that's 18, 19,. Just like the rest of the world, we took 2020 off. So 18, 19, 1, 22, 23 gives us five there.

Fr. Steven Rindahl: 8:56

But then we did receive a grant to do program expansion by another veterans organization, and so we made a small pilgrimage a small number of people-wise, because it was focused on bringing other military chaplains on this same pilgrimage in order to be sort of a vision casting for them how they can take this same concept and apply it in their field of ministry, and then also with the hopes that it would inspire some of them to join our program and lead additional iterations. If we have enough in the way of donations, can we then turn that into multiple iterations per year? In order to do that, we're going to need more leadership as well as additional funding, and so it was part of a team building as far as our own leadership team and also a dispersed growth of the program in taking these pilgrimage principles of healing back to their different ministry settings and finding ways to apply them. So that makes six so far, and we've got our seventh scheduled for the last few days of September and the first couple of weeks of October this year?

Larry Zilliox: 10:18

Wow, how long does it take you logistically to set one of these up? If you're on a pace to do one a year, when do you start working on it? Is it two months out? Six months out?

Fr. Steven Rindahl: 10:32

Terrific question. I will make next year's reservations when I'm on the Camino this year, next year's reservations when I'm on the Camino this year. So every place that we stay we've got a wonderful rapport built with those Albergues and so we'll make next year's reservations this year. So that part gets done almost immediately.

Fr. Steven Rindahl: 10:51

Then we start taking applications for the next year's pilgrimage on the 15th of October each year, and complete applications have to be turned in no later than the last day of February of the year of the pilgrimage. That gives us March and the first part of April to review all the applications, to contact the applicants if there's anything that is missing or needs to be clarified, and then make selections. And then we have found out the hard way that if you want to get a dozen people all on the same flight and know for a fact they're all going to get on the group selected, everybody's contacted and occasionally it happens that a person has had a change in their life situation and they have to decline. And then we go to a waiting list because we always have more applicants than we have slots, and so we will then go to the waiting list or the secondary list, I guess, depending on how you want to look at it and we'll have our group clearly identified by the first week of May and shortly thereafter by the tickets for that September flight.

Larry Zilliox: 12:08

And for a trip that you have planned, let's say, for 10 to 12 slots, how many applications do you typically get?

Fr. Steven Rindahl: 12:16

Well, we will get well over 100 inquiries and then all inquiries receive the same form letter response, because there's a lot of confusion and not confusion so much, as there's a lot of different ways of looking at what a pilgrimage is. For example, people have heard of going on pilgrimage to Rome, or going on pilgrimage to the Holy Land or something like that, and it's large, involves flying to their location, some kind of motorized transport to the actual spot where they're going to be, and then activities in and around that area which don't necessarily demand a lot of physical exertion, which don't necessarily demand a lot of physical exertion. So what we do is we respond to everybody and say, okay, you requested information, but we want to make sure that you know what you're asking for. This is a hiking pilgrimage and we're going to be hiking 15 miles a day on average through the mountains, with these kind of elevation gains, and is that what you're looking for?

Fr. Steven Rindahl: 13:24

And and right off the bat, we'll lose half of our inquiries right there. They're like oh no, he's gonna fly in and take a bus, um, don't send an application, uh, and the other half, on the other hand, will receive. You know, they'll contact back and say yes, I understand what I'm asking for. Yes, I do want an application. We send them the application packet and as long as they send it back, completed no later than the last day of February, it gets considered and sadly there's not a lot but a good enough number that we have to be on the watch for it.

Fr. Steven Rindahl: 14:02

There's a number of people who will turn in applications and they'll answer some of the questions in a vague way and basically they're not actually qualified but they're trying to see if they can slip through the cracks. So we'll lose anywhere from five to 10 of the applications just determining that a person isn't actually qualified expectations, just determining that a person isn't actually qualified. And so now that brings us down to 30 to 35 strong like okay, person's qualified person wants to be there. They understand the physical demands of the pilgrimage. How do we put the best team together? And that's when it gets to be a more challenging part making that drawdown of the people who are in all ways qualified. And we're just trying to make sure we put the best team together based on either what they express about themselves, what they're trying to accomplish as a goal of the pilgrimage, what their specific combat experiences were. Those all play into that discernment process.

Larry Zilliox: 15:03

What's the criteria for being eligible to come?

Fr. Steven Rindahl: 15:08

A combat deployment really, that's in the ability to make the hike. If you're physically capable and you have a combat deployment, then you've hit the base eligibility and your application is going to get considered.

Larry Zilliox: 15:23

And so there's no disability rating requirement or any sort of particular religious background. Nothing like that.

Fr. Steven Rindahl: 15:33

No, we don't have a requirement for disability rating. Some people make a point of including their rating in their application. Other people don't discuss it at all. That is what the applicant is willing and comfortable in sharing, and it varies from one to another. We don't have a faith background requirement. We do have a faith component.

Fr. Steven Rindahl: 15:59

The pilgrimage itself is made up of multiple aspects of activities that have been proven to work well individually for the sake of reducing PTSD and moral injury symptoms, as well as working well together, and those are things as simple as going outside to a peaceful environment. If you go outside in a peaceful environment, your symptoms go down. If you are around other people who have a same and similar experience in order to create a support network, your symptoms go down. If you place your body under a positive physical stress, also known as exercise, your symptoms go down. And positive spiritual practices and this is the one that people will frequently say oh yeah, well, your bias is on that one, but it's been proven. There's amazing research out of the University of Pennsylvania, as well as other locations, under the leadership of the neuroscientist Andrew Newberg, who really doesn't care what your faith practice is, as long as it's positive. He can show, through CAT scans, pet scans and a variety of other test tools, that positive spiritual practices help your symptoms go down. And so we put all of them together in our design of this pilgrimage and have been getting amazing results.

Fr. Steven Rindahl: 17:20

So, yes, there is a faith component to our pilgrimage, but we don't require faith of the individual. We have it where each morning starts with being a priest, each morning starts with the mass, and nobody is required to participate, but everybody to be present. So if you don't want to participate, you can just sit near the back, because it is during that time that we will give, like, here's your healing thought of the day, here's what we want you to be thinking about and how this can be incorporated into your life. And we do that right off the bat, first thing in the morning, so that that is the thought that you have and that you're able to consider and meditate on and contemplate and discuss with your fellow pilgrims as you walk those miles of that day. No, you don't have to have any kind of faith background personally. There is a faith component which we ask you to be present, whether you participate or not, so that you hear that healing message and are able to interact with that healing thought of the day as you walk.

Larry Zilliox: 18:26

The webpage. I want to direct our listeners to the webpage, which is warriorsonthewayorg, and specifically, I know our regular listeners hear me say this all the time when we're doing podcasts that involve nonprofit organizations, but they're pretty much. Their webpages are pretty much all the same. You look up there in the right-hand corner and a lot of them say donate. This one says support. I really want our listeners to be clicking that button and donating whatever they can. This is an amazing program. Do you get any corporate supporters at all? Pretty much just donations from individuals.

Fr. Steven Rindahl: 19:09

We have gotten, other than the one grant which was from another veteran organization that specifically raises the Disabled Veteran and Military Foundation, which specifically raises money in order to distribute to other veteran organizations Other than that one, everything that we do has come in through private donations. We'd love to gain a corporate sponsor. That'd be a wonderful boost to our economy, but as it is through the kind and generous donations of lots and lots of individual people out there that recognizes the value and wants to put another warrior on the way to healing, I'm assuming that the September, october one is going to go off without a hitch.

Larry Zilliox: 19:55

The weather will be great right this time of year over there it ought to be.

Fr. Steven Rindahl: 19:59

Yeah, when we first arrive, it'll still be cool in the morning and warm, trending towards hot in the afternoon, and by the time we're done a couple weeks later, it'll be chilly in the morning and it'll be cool to warm in the afternoon. We kind of hit that transition point of the weather's calendar. During our time frame, while we're there, should be mostly dry, although we'll probably have a rainy day or two. Well, again.

Larry Zilliox: 20:33

That webpage is warriorsonthewayorg. I encourage everybody to check out the webpage. If you know somebody who would benefit from this program, send them the web page, tell them to make an inquiry and hopefully submit an application and have something for them to be considered and maybe get to go on this and maybe get to go on this. I think it's just an amazing program and for sure, hit that support button, make a donation, whatever you got $5, $10, $25, $100, $1,000. If you work for a company that's looking for a way to support veterans, send the boss this webpage.

Larry Zilliox: 21:27

I think it would be a shame that each one of these pilgrimages isn't filled to its max capacity of 12 because of a lack of funding, and so there's no reason going forward for that at all. Our listeners, I know they can support something like this. One of the things I did want to ask you about, because of your background and what our listeners don't know, is that you're created a foundational course for chaplains on a ministerial approach to helping active duty soldiers under their command with dealing with moral injury, and our listeners are, of course, very familiar with post-traumatic stress and PTS. But if you would, could you just kind of briefly give us your definition of moral injury?

Fr. Steven Rindahl: 22:16

Okay, thank you for asking. It is not a well-known topic when people hear about it, and so I'm glad to be able to share and get that clarified a little bit. For people, moral injury is when a person has been involved in something, either through direct participation, knowing that it's going on, feeling a need to stop it, not being able to stop it, or a sense of the system put me in a position of moral betrayal in which they believe something has been done, maybe that they've done it themselves, maybe it was that they'd witnessed and they couldn't stop but a violation of their personal moral code and as a result of that, they feel a sense of guilt, they feel a sense of shame, they feel a sense of angst, and it can be debilitating, it can be outright debilitating. For a lot of people, the challenge that we have in getting people to really understand and maybe seek out the help that they ought to receive, and for those who are in a position that potentially could help and just recognize what's going on, is that we have an in general, underlying attitude that if you went and you did the right thing and you followed all of the rules the rules of engagement, the laws of land, warfare, the Hagan-Geneva Convention, things like this, that you really shouldn't have any kind of moral violation, and the reality is that that's simply not the case. Those that we hold as good and as important as they are, that's an ethical decision-making process. Those are ethical restrictions upon activities, but it doesn't mean that the person doesn't have some moral unease with what's going on. We grow up in an environment where you don't hurt other people and suddenly you're thrust into the environment of combat and it's okay to hurt other people as long as the government says so. There are. A majority of people can figure out how to find a way to make peace with that within themselves, but the minority that does exist is substantial. It's a substantial minority. It's a minority, but it's a substantial minority. People who just really have a hard time taking and reconciling what I was doing in theater and what I was raised to believe, what I was raised to do.

Fr. Steven Rindahl: 24:44

You get that resultant guilt, shame, angst, and those symptoms are unique to moral injury. And here's where the challenge comes in. On the PTSD side, you've got the fear, you've got the startle reaction, you've got the hypervigilance, and so the PTSD side is really easy to identify in those symptoms and the moral injury is really easy to identify when a person just straight up says I feel guilty or I'm ashamed of what I did, or something like that. But then you've got this huge overlap in the middle of depression, of invasive thoughts, of nightmares, of self-medication, which may be reflective of one, may be reflective of the other, just depending on the individual and the reality of combat. That people were trying to hurt you, creating a legitimate fear response, and you hurt other people, or at least were involved in one way or another, potentially creating a legitimate guilt response.

Fr. Steven Rindahl: 25:43

You have a compounding effect in the combat environment in which you can have an individual that has been put in a position to experience both the PTSD side and the moral injury side, which is why it's so important, within our context of Warriors on the Way, to have both the moral representative, which I feel as a member of clergy, no-transcript, because if it was just a matter of finding all the rules and nobody would, or following all the rules, nobody would come home from war with any problem, because we've got a very professional military, we're vast, vast majority of the time, people follow the rules of engagement and all that comes with it, and yet people still come home bothered. So it's not just about following the rules. There's more to going on combat than just following the rules.

Larry Zilliox: 26:53

Yeah, you bring a ministerial aspect to it as far as the treatment protocol goes. So what does that look like generally for either an active duty service member or a veteran?

Fr. Steven Rindahl: 27:07

The primary thing is helping the person find where, within their own priority set whether it be specifically guided by faith or whether it is guided by something else In finding a way to receive and feel and actualize a reality of forgiveness and grace and mercy, and recognize that what you have done, what you have witnessed, that's not who you are. There's a big difference between who you are and an occasion or an event of something that has been done. And to help people sort through who they are in their essence versus who they are in their existence. To get kind of fancy and academic on it, we have in many ways been hurt by. We have in many ways been hurt by existentialism how I exist, defining who I am. Well, that has ripple effects throughout all of society at many different levels. But in the specific occasion of a combat veteran, the person existed in bringing violence upon other people, existed in bringing violence upon other people, and so they start identifying themselves as that purveyor of violence. I was like no, don't look at the existence, look at your essence. You are a man, you are a woman, you're created in the image of God. The wonderful thing about the creation account you get six days of well. God said this, created this, it was good all the way until humankind and humankind. God created humanity and said it's a very good right, there's a unique relationship, uh, as a result. And so to to give people the opportunity to see their essence as defining who they are rather than simply a moment of their existence. And then, with that, okay, if you feel like who you are has been violated through some sort of activity, some type of event, then let's look at means by which you can bring that back to right and just help guide people through the process. But it all starts with what you have done, or what has been done does not define who you truly are in your essence. Who you are in your essence is one who is made in the image of god.

Fr. Steven Rindahl: 29:48

There's a great, there's a great story from the church fathers where a soldier goes to one of the desert monks and we're talking like 8100 ad 150, you know first couple hundred years of the church and he says to this desert father he says can the lord forgive me for what I've done? And the monk looked at the soldier and says if you damage your tunic, if you damage your clothes, are you going to throw it away? And the soldier says no, I'll mend it and put it back on. And the monk says well, if you can care that much about a shirt, how much more will God care about his own image? And so we just really emphasize that God wants you to heal. We can't make you be willing to receive that healing, but God does want you to heal.

Larry Zilliox: 30:37

Yeah, wow, I just wish it's very hard sometimes to convey to people how complex an issue it is, but the really good thing is that more and more, the issue of PTSD, tbi, moral injury as a result of combat, even when you're not actually in combat but you could be part of a system that inflicts harm mistakenly on children, that inflicts harm mistakenly on children there's just so many pieces to it. It's wonderful to see that the chaplaincy core is beginning to understand it as an issue, beginning to address it as an issue, and the work that you all do with Warriors on the Way is just amazing. Again, that's warriorsonthewayorg and the support button is right at the top on the right-hand side. Just go ahead and hit it. Make it the first thing you do when you visit the webpage is to hit that support button and donate. But, father, I just want to say thank you so much for joining us. It's just been a wonderful talk.

Fr. Steven Rindahl: 31:52

Well, thank you, Larry. I really appreciate you inviting me to be on.

Larry Zilliox: 31:56

And hopefully we'll see you at the retreat again soon.

Fr. Steven Rindahl: 31:59

Yes, I think there's something scheduled for mid-October or so mid to late October, I think. I believe so I do. I look forward to being out there. You've got such a beautiful facility there. It is a great place for healing too.

Larry Zilliox: 32:15

Yeah, yeah. Well, until then, I can't wait to see you again. For our listeners, we will have another episode next Monday morning at 0500. Episode next Monday morning at 0500. If you have any questions or suggestions, you can reach us at podcast at willingwarriorsorg. Until then, thanks for listening.