Book Review: Bringing the Camino Home
Bringing the Camino Home
by Lisa K Swallow
Kintsugi Press, 2025
252 pages (paperback and Kindle editions)
on Goodreads
Reviewed by Amy Horton | Warrenton, MO
This book hit my desk just when I needed it. Camino magic, perhaps.
At work, we were amid an IT system transition that disrupted our established business processes. Our team was struggling with change, and I increasingly found myself getting exasperated with the system, others, and myself. One morning as I read a few pages of this book over a cup of coffee, these lines were the cold water in the face I needed: “The Camino is often romanticized as a journey of beauty, connection, and simplicity—and it is all those things. But it’s also a masterclass in discomfort and unpredictability. It strips away illusions of control and invites us into the raw, messy reality of being human.”
Since reading this book, I’ve aimed to be more intentional about approaching this work journey with curiosity, patience, and presence. Some days I’ve been more successful at that than others, and Swallow suggests there’s a Camino lesson in that, too: “Presence is not something you achieve; it is something you choose, moment by moment […] Although presence can feel harder to access at home, with intention, presence can become a practice—a habit of returning to the moment, even when life feels overwhelming.”
Swallow has organized the book in four parts: Making Your Life a Camino; Making Your Home a Camino; Making Each Day a Camino; and Resources for the Camino of Life. This work is part philosophical guide, part vision board. It is also a practical resource chock full of ideas for making your home and each day a Camino—suggestions for giving back to the Camino; ways to create a sense of pilgrim sanctuary in your home or garden; a Camino wine guide; recipes to recreate favorite Camino flavors; pilgrim blessings and prayers; and more.
Swallow writes that, after her first Camino, the lesson she most wanted to incorporate into her life was seeing everyone she met as a fellow pilgrim (not always easy in our increasingly divided society). Swallow’s journey to integrate this lesson into her life led her to found a national nonprofit that helps people develop and practice skills that make talking across differences possible. She shares insights from that work, including understanding why it is harder for us to see some people as fellow pilgrims and ways of cultivating a habit of curiosity to experience others as companions on the path.
During and since the pandemic, I’ve participated in several social media communities and informal videoconference events with similar intentions as Swallow’s book: how to integrate Camino lessons back home and approach daily life as a pilgrim. So, while the concepts in this book weren’t novel to me, her organization and presentation of them struck me in a novel way. If those small-group discussions have served as seminar classes on the subject, then this book is a useful textbook for bringing the Camino home.
Editor’s note: Find Lisa Swallow’s reflection “Walking Away Stereotypes: My Camino of Listening” in the Summer 2025 La Concha.
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