The Brief

Rebekah Scott – President and CEO of Peaceable Projects Inc. – Rebekah was born 62 years ago in Pittsburgh, into a working-class military family that moved every three years or so.  Her parents provided lots of love and religious teaching, and she grew up strong. She was the first person in her extended family to graduate university.

Rebekah had two children, and worked for 22 years in daily newspaper and magazine journalism. She specialized in religion, art/architecture, and travel — and discovered the Camino de Santiago on a government-sponsored press trip in 1993. She finally walked the Camino de Santiago in 2001, and her life ever after was changed.

Rebekah moved to Spain in 2006 with Patrick, her English husband, and settled in Moratinos, a village of 20 souls on the main camino trail. They opened their home to pilgrims. (The story is told in “A Furnace Full of God,” a best-selling memoir.) As a board member of Fraternidad Internacional del Camino de Santiago, Rebekah continues working to keep alive the thousand-year-old Camino tradition of faith-based hospitality for all, without price-tags or tour guides.

Rebekah oversees staffing at three non-profit pilgrim shelters, and runs a volunteer litter pickup program that covers 100 kilometers of the path over four days each November.  Peaceable Projects is the umbrella organization for many of her initiatives.  She earns her living as a book editor for a major American publishing imprint and is a professed member of The New Benedictine Community, dedicated to interfaith understanding.

Beebe Bahrami, was not available to join us LIVE, but she provided a brief video that kicks off the panel. A Colorado native Beebe Bahrami is a writer and anthropologist with deep devotion to studying and writing about the landscapes and cultures interwoven by the routes of the Camino de Santiago in France, Spain, and Portugal. She has trained in languages, anthropology, archaeology, biology, history, art history, folklore, myth, and ritual. During her doctoral studies she specialized in the anthropology of religion, myth, ritual, and rites of passage, especially pilgrimage, focusing on the Atlantic worlds of France, Spain, Portugal, and Morocco. Before becoming a full-time writer, book author, and independent scholar, Beebe was a university professor, an archaeology magazine editor, and an ethnographic consultant, among other path-enriching work. In her research and writing, she is driven to discover the many layers of a place and people, including discerning the meanings of images and symbols in Romanesque and Gothic churches, unearthing old local folktales, exploring the earlier archaeology beneath medieval settlements and chapels, speaking to and learning from locals, and learning from the wild natural worlds as much as from the cultured ones through which the Camino runs.

Beebe’s books include travel memoirs, narratives, and guidebooks, among them, The Way of the Wild Goose (Monkfish Book Publishing), Moon Camino de Santiago (Hachette), Café Oc (Shanti Arts Publishing), Café Neandertal (Counterpoint Press), The Spiritual Traveler Spain (Paulist Press), and Historic Walking Guides: Madrid (DestinWorld Publishing). All her books are based, in one way or another, on her research and life on and near the trails of the Camino. Her essays and articles appear in many publications, including BBC Travel, the Pennsylvania Gazette, Wine Enthusiast, Perceptive Travel, The Best Women’s Travel Writing, Archaeology, The Bark, Bon Vivant, Michelin Green Guides and National Geographic books. In addition to sharing her discoveries through her writing, Beebe also enjoys sharing directly the rich worlds of France and Spain. She is a Smithsonian Journeys Expert on trips to France and Spain, and a Pilgrim Paths pilgrim host on treks to the Via Podiensis in France, and the Camino Francés and Caminos Finisterre and Muxía in Spain.