Blogging a Thesis

"How would you feel about me turning my thesis on pilgrimage into a blog?"  This was the question that I posed to my degree advisor at the beginning of this year, to her surprise. I knew that blogging was an unconventional medium for an academic presentation, but I also knew that it would allow me to explore the concept of pilgrimage in ways that would be impossible within a paper format.  Academic papers assume that you know all the answers; they are a polemic, not a discussion.  When I started my project, however, I knew that I didn't have all the answers; what I had were a lot of questions. That is why I proposed the blog.  It was a way for me to present my findings in a way that invited dialogue.  It was also a forum where I could discuss my ideas with a public audience, so that I could be challenged in my own assumptions and learn more through the wisdom, experience and questions of others. This blog is still academic, but it is also a platform for a greater learning experience that can only come through discussion and not just research.

Blogging this thesis has been a journey of its own for me. When I wrote my first entry I admitted that I had no idea about what pilgrimage was. I remember how excited I felt when I first realized that the common thread to pilgrimage in all traditions was the search for the transcendent.  Every entry I have written along the way has both challenged and informed me in some way, as I'm sure my conclusion has proven.  I also really appreciated those who took the time to provide comments and feedback on my work along the way.  They forced me to think outside the box of what I had presented and really utilize what I have learned. They brought up some really thoughtful and poignant points, and I am grateful that they chose to participate in this journey with me.

There was another reason why I really wanted to do this blog: I wanted it to be a platform for an ongoing learning experience that would continue even after I handed in the "official" part of my thesis. Now that I have done research on what pilgrimage is, I want to be able to learn about it first hand through its physical practice.  This May I am going to take a small pilgrimage in the form of a road trip to Vancouver. One day I hope to take a pilgrimage across the whole of Canada, provided I can scrape together enough time, money and maybe a companion or two.  When I go on these journeys, I hope to be able to blog about them here so that I can explore the experiences in the context of my research.  I'm sure that doing pilgrimage is a lot different than writing about it based off of others experiences, and that there is a lot more that I have to learn about this discipline than what I have presented here thus far.

Learning From Pilgrimage

A couple of years ago I decided I wanted to go on a pilgrimage back to my hometown of B.C.  Although I often took vacations back to my hometown throughout the year to visit family and friends, I was determined that this trip would be different.  Instead of just going to visit friends, I was going with a desire to meet God in the thin places that had been formational to my life in my childhood.  I would go visit that park by the river and sit on the rocks as I had done in my teenage years.  I would go to the lake where my family used to camp as a child and walk around the trails there.  I would hike up the mountain by the lake to the look-out where I had hiked with my father a few years back.  I would make a point of visiting every place that my soul recognized as holy.  Along the way I would pray, and when I reached my destinations, I would take the time to journal.  I didn't know what I expected out of this pilgrimage, but inwardly I hoped to experience a sense of divine clarity as I explored my sacred places.

The pilgrimage I took was a bit disappointing for me at first.  I experienced no great revelation that provided instant transformation.  I had no overwhelming encounter with God that revolutionized my life on the spot.  The trip was not something that directed me towards a dramatic change.  And yet, something did change with that trip.  It was my first time visiting home where I had truly felt at home.  It was the first time in years that I had experienced such a sense of peace and belonging in my natural landscape.  The connection that I felt with both myself and with God on that journey left a lingering affect on my soul and I realized that never again did I want to visit home with my old frame of mind that was always so caught up in distraction.  I wanted my journeys in the future to be just as intentional in seeking out the presence of God.  Arthur Boers writes in "Walking Lessons" that "authentic pilgrimage bears fruit when we return home" (24).  I think that this is true.  Pilgrimage is not something that will necessarily bring a dramatic shift in our lives, but it does bring about change in small, subtle ways that form us as people.

When I started this blog I announced my intention of using the research that I provided as a launching pad for my own experience of pilgrimage. I hoped that by exploring the spiritual discipline of pilgrimage, I might have a better idea of how to approach the practice in the future.  I admit, I have learned a lot:

• I have learned about how pilgrimage differs from tourism; that it isn't where you go but the attitude that you go with that counts.  I also learned, however, that pilgrimage and tourism can often happen side by side; that if we remain open to an encounter with God on the journey, He can co-opt control and meet us in any place. 
• I have learned that pilgrimage exists in many different forms for many different reasons.  Every great religion in the world has developed the practice of pilgrimage to some sense.  Regardless of the differences, however, the ultimate purpose of pilgrimage remains constant: we journey so that we might come into contact with the transcendent - with that which is greater than ourselves, or the One who is greater than us all.
• I have learned that practice of pilgrimage is an outward journey that mirrors an inward journey. It requires purgation, a cleansing of the soul, but it also offers a path towards illumination and union with God.  It requires sacrifice but it also can guide us towards fulfillment.
• I have learned that pilgrimage invites us to engage in other spiritual disciplines.  Silence, solitude and prayer are but a few of the disciplines that are often naturally experienced along the journey.  Pilgrimage does not force us to schedule these disciplines into our lives; rather, it provides the space for these disciplines to interact organically with our journey and with our lives.
• I have learned about the value of walking through the pilgrimage.  Walking gives our souls time to process the journey.  It gives us time to engage with God.  It slows us down so that we can breathe and experience the sense of quiet and solitude that our souls need to heal and be transformed.  Walking can be prayer.
• I have learned that pilgrimage gives value to the natural world.  It is one of the few rare spiritual disciplines that requires contact with the tangible in order to connect us to that which is intangible.  It immerses us into the reality of God as He is experienced in Creation.  Pilgrimage is a discipline that is not for the gnostic - it cannot be separated from the material.  Rather, it is the physical world that connects us with that which is spiritual.
• I have learned that pilgrimage is not a discipline that is easily undertaken alone. Meaning is added to the experience when we engage in the practice of pilgrimage as a community.  There are many aspects of community that may be experienced upon the road: we may experience community with those who have gone before us; we may experience community with those who travel with us; or we may experience community with the strangers that we meet along the way.  Pilgrimage is a discipline that only gives us the space to connect with ourselves and with God, but also with our fellow man.
• I have learned about the prominent presence of pilgrimage in Scripture.  Sacred travel is not something that should be alien to my Christian experience.  Rather, it has been formational to the development of my religion.  If it has been practiced by those such as Abraham and Jesus, how much more should I seek out opportunities for sacred journey in my own life?

Pilgrimage is not always an easy practice to engage in.  In planning for my short one-week pilgrimage in May I have realized that there is a cost that must be taken into account.  The first cost is time.  I must commit my time 24/7 to a practice that removes me from the rest of my daily activities.  The second cost is money.  Travelling is not cheap, especially in today's society.  For my own journey I have been forced to seek out those places of community along the way (such as staying with my brother) in order to keep my expenses down. The third cost is measured in sacrifice. In order to seek out God I have to leave behind my distractions and my guilty pleasures, and instead engage in more alien pursuits such as silence and walking.  I will be leaving behind what is comfortable in order to seek out what is real.  I choose to make these sacrifices, however, because I have faith that this is a journey that I am not taking by myself.  I believe God will meet me half-way, and by meeting Him I will not be the same person when I return as when I left.

Thin Places

When I was younger and lived in my hometown in B.C. I would often flee to a local park whenever I needed time to think, pray and catch a sense of God.  This park was located beside a river, and it had a small beach where the fine sand quickly gave way to behemoth rocks that were smoothed down from centuries of rushing water. I would climb up onto the dry rocks until I reached a secluded place.  Sometimes I would journal there; at other times I would read; and still at other times I would cry or pray. Whatever my choice of activity, however, those rocks were a place where I always met God. They were a thin place where the spiritual realm seemed much more closer and accessible than it normally was - where the haze that usually obstructed my vision was lifted so I could see with a bit more clarity the closeness of God. 

Thin places are places that are touched by the presence of God. They are locations "where the membrane between this world and the other world, between the material and the spiritual, [is] very permeable" (Sheldrake, 7).  They are sacred spaces that function as gateways, or peepholes, into the spiritual realm, where God is revealed to us "as both transcendent and immanent, beyond us and within us" (Hamma, 46).  They are places of inward formation.  The landscape guides us to an experience of the holy and leaves an impression on our souls.

A pilgrimage is a journey that is always connected to a material sense of place.  Every step of the journey happens in the physical world and has spiritual implications. We encounter God within the natural landscape of our journey.  God's presence is revealed through the beauty and structure of his wonderful creation. Pilgrimage is a ritual that helps us discover sacred dimension of place (Hamma, 46):

1. It prepares us to enter places that have already been recognized by others as being holy
2. It leads us to discover and mark out other holy places that are formative to our own lives
3. It engages us in the practice of awareness towards the holiness of place. It puts us in a frame of mind where we are more open and receptive to the sensation of the workings of God's Holy Spirit.

Any pilgrim who seeks God attentively throughout the journey will inevitably encounter a thin place.  It may be by a river, looking at a sunset, in the middle of a busy intersection,or kneeling in front of a shrine, but in those place God suddenly becomes more real. It is these places that impact our souls, connecting our spiritual journey to the physical realm.

The Bible is full of a sense of place. It tells a story that takes place in the context of Earthly locations where God's presence was revealed, changing the course of history.  Jacob's story from Genesis 28:10-17 is a beautiful example of a sacred encounter with God in a thin place.

Jacob left Beersheba and set out for Harran. When he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep. He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. There above it stood the LORD, and he said: “I am the LORD, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”  When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I was not aware of it.” He was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven.”

 Throughout the history of Biblical scholarship this story of Jacob's ladder has often been interpreted allegorically as a spiritual metaphor, representing the ascent to Heaven through virtue.  Hamma points out, however, that the Biblical text actually emphasizes a physical dimension, and not a spiritual one:

What the text actually says is that "the LORD stood beside him."  In other words, God is not at the top of the ladder, up in heaven, but at the foot of the ladder, on earth....Thus Jacob proclaims, "The Lord is in this place - and I did not know it" (emphasis added).  It is the realization that God was there that made it a holy place. (62)

Our lives our never separated from the context of place.  The Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset wrote, "Tell me the landscape in which you live, and I will tell you who you are" (Sellner, 32).  The land connects us both to our stories and to the greater story.  It roots our lives within the context of the here and now, but also holds a sense of memory.  Place stands testament to the passage of time; it has observed the comings and goings of generations long past.  It is a witness of God's presence here on earth, and it is intimately connected with our own formational stories. We leave our mark on the earth, but it also leaves its mark on us.

Prayer of the Heart

Pilgrimage provides a space for us to experience many of the important elements that shape our souls.  It is a path that guides us towards the disciplines of silence and solitude.  It is a situation where we must practice faith.  It leads us to a place where we discover the joys and benefits of hospitality and companionship.  Above all of this, however, pilgrimage is a journey that is formed by an experience of prayer.

Prayer is the sense of union and fellowship that takes places between our soul and God's.  It is "all the ways we communicate and commune with God" (Barton, 63).  It is "anything we do to be aware of God's presence" (Forest, 16). Some people think that prayer is all about talking to God.  Others believe that it is thinking about God.  Brother Lawrence, a 17th century Spanish monk, would declare instead that prayer is simply the practice of the presence of God.  It is the practice of a continual awareness of God's presence, an awareness that informs our every action out of a love for God. 

There is a Christian spiritual classic called The Way of a Pilgrim that tells the story of a Russian pilgrim who sought to make prayer a continual practice on his journey.  Confused about the commandment of I Thessalonians 5:17, which instructs the Christian to "pray without ceasing," the pilgrim decides to seek out the answer of how he might be able to pray continually in all that he does.  To do this, the pilgrim meets with many experts on prayer, but none of them have the answer for him.  Finally, the pilgrim encounters an old monk who teaches him the Jesus prayer: "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me!"  The monk instructs the pilgrim to repeat this prayer regularly throughout the day, in increasing increments, until the prayer becomes second nature to him, until the point that the pilgrim's prayer begins to fill every moment, beating with every heartbeat, even in sleep.  Essentially, the pilgrim's prayer had to move from his head down to his heart.

"The crisis of our prayer life," writes Henri Nouwen, "is that our mind may be filled with ideas of God while our heart remains far from Him" (1981, 71).  Real prayer must come from the heart. It must flow from our inner being out into our lifestyles.  Every mundane action on the road is an opportunity for prayer: whether it is walking, talking to a stranger, taking pictures of the scenery or kneeling before a shrine.  Forest writes that "nothing we do is meant to be 'merely' physical or 'purely' spiritual.  Every act has the potential of uniting the physical and spiritual" (7).  Brother Lawrence speaks of his own experience of prayer, "that he was more united to God in his outward employments than when he left them for devotion and retirement" (23).  The practice of the presence of God is what makes us aware of the sacrament of the present moment.  It is what helps us realize that every moment has the potential to become holy, because every moment is an opportunity for prayer.  Once we discover this inward state of communion, prayer becomes transformative, as the pilgrim in The Way of the Pilgrim describes:

As I began to pray now with my heart, everything around me was so delightfully transformed: the trees, the grass, the birds, the ground, the air, the light - all seemed to proclaim that they exist for the sake of man and bear witness to the love of God for man. (24)

The fundamental purpose of prayer, according to Ruth Haley Barton, is "to deepen our intimacy with God" (63).  This intimacy teaches us to see the world through God-coloured lenses. We begin to realize just how close God is to his creation, to us.  We begin to understand how much He loves us, not for what we do but for who we are. Through prayer, we are vulnerable to God.  We offer ourselves to Him and in the process find our very reason for being. Pilgrimage is given its sacred quality through the experience of prayer. "A pilgrimage without prayer is no pilgrimage at all" (Forest, 32).  If we cannot engage in prayer - in soul communion with God - then we will never find the One whom we seek.

Companionship on the Road

The road is a special place that embodies community. Jim Forest addresses the special feeling that one can experience while walking an old road: "the pilgrim may see no one else behind or ahead and yet be profoundly aware of not being alone.  Hundreds of thousands of others have passed this way, generation after generation" (4).  Roads do not only provide a map for our journey, but they also connect us to one another.  "The road is an invitation to cross frontiers, to start a dialogue, to end enmity.  Each road gives witness to the need we have to be in touch with one other" (Forest, 1).  Humans were not made to take the journey alone; roads are a testament of our desire for companionship. 

There is something both individual and communal about the practice of pilgrimage.  Pilgrimage provides an avenue for us to seek out silence and solitude, but it is also a journey that is rarely, if ever, taken alone. Taylor writes, "each pilgrim goes individually to find God, to find meaning, or, at least, to fulfill some indefinite hope. And yet we often go together, with other pilgrims, or, even if alone, where others have gone before us" (12). Sometimes it is a friend who is our companion.  At other times, we find a sense of companionship in the lives of the saints, whose journeys inform our own. We also find companionship with God, as our souls take the opportunity that the silence provides to communicate with Him.

Sometimes we encounter companionship unexpectedly on the road. When I was 19 years old I joined a missions group called LifeForce and travelled across the country with a group of strangers, stopping in towns across Canada to perform short dramas and give motivational talks at schools and churches.  As we travelled to different places, we would often spend time with other strangers in towns who would house us, hang out with us and minister with us.  I quickly discovered that community could be found anywhere, even in the company of strangers.  One of my favourite memories was in Winnipeg when serving as a camp counsellor for under-privileged kids.  I was one of three counsellors taking care of five girls.  There were times when that didn't seem like enough.  The kids that we were serving had come with so much internal baggage that the three of us were constantly running around without time to talk to each other other than to say a few words when our eyes happened to meet.  In the middle of this hectic crazyness, something amazing happened.  The three of us counsellors began quoting Scripture to each other everytime our eyes met, encouraging each other with  the word of God, telling each other not to give up.  Even though we were saying little else to each other, I became aware of an incredible sense of community, even among strangers.

Pilgrimage provides many opportunities to come into contact with strangers.  Every stranger that we meet is an opportunity for community.  There is a tendency in our society today, however, to be wary of the stranger: we lock and dead-bolt our doors; we avoid eye-contact; and we are reluctant to sit down at any seat that is within one foot of a stranger. In order to discover community in the company of strangers, therefore, we need to be able to convert our unconscious hostility into an conscious attitude of hospitality.  Henri Nouwen describes hospitality as "the creation of a free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy" (Nouwen, 1966, 71).  It is a place where we can share our gifts with each other and find a new sense of unity and life with each other.  It is a place "where strangers can cast off their strangeness and become our fellow human beings" (Nouwen, 1966, 65).  Hospitality leads us towards a sense of community in pilgrimage as we discover companionship with the strangers who are walking the same road as us, seeking the same sense of purpose.

Like all good things, pilgrimage is an experience that is best shared. Travelling with a companion provides a sense of solidarity, of mutual purpose for the journey. It also takes the edge off of loneliness.  Companions are people who can share in both our laughter and our tears.  They are people who explore the mystery with us. They help us to see God in unexpected places.  They help to point out moments of transcendence.  They share the silence with us. They encourage us along the journey merely by their presence.  The companion brings a greater depth of meaning and reality to the pilgrimage experience.

Every pilgrimage needs to have some balance between solitude and companionship. McGrath explains, "to journey on our own is to have the time and space to uncover ourselves; to travel with others is to allow them to identify the strengths and weaknesses we managed to hide from ourselves, and be supported as we try to engage with them" (9).  Likewise, regarding the inward journey, Mulholland writes, "we may be able to work through some of our bondage and brokenness alone with God.  But when God begins to deal with some of the deep distortions of our being, we need others.  In such times we confess our sin to one another, bear one another's burdens and become for one another means of grace to maintain the discipline through which God can bring us to wholeness" (146).  There are times on the journey when we need to be alone in order to listen for God's voice in the silence and to our own souls, but there are also times along the journey when we need a companion who can walk alongside us to provide encouragement, share our joy, and lend us strength.

The Community of the Saints

A traditional pilgrimage, in a medieval sense, often involves visiting the shrine of a saint. Saints are people throughout history who have been recognized as leading exemplary, holy lives.  Forest writes, "Reading the lives of the saints, one finds people who lived in poverty, served the homeless, devoted their lives to prayer, withdrew from worldly society, [and who] died rather than compromise their faith..." (55). These were unusual people who had a passion for God:

They were ascetic where we are hedonistic, spiritual where we are materialistic, self-sacrificing where we are self-indulging, God-centered where we are self-centered, focused where we are diffuse, single in purpose where we are scattered, absolute where we are relativistic, open-handed where we are acquisitive, full of gratitude where we are full of complaint... We do not want to live their lives, but we want very much something they seemed to have had - something we can't quite put our finger on.  Perhaps we want their clarity.  They were clear in their minds and hearts about the ultimate purpose and meaning of life. (Taylor, 74-75)

A shrine is a place recognized as holy through some sort of connection to a saint. Sometimes this connection is historical: the shrine is at a place where the saint once lived, worked or walked. At other times a shrine is associated with a saint because of a relic that is kept at that location: a personal item that either belonged to or that was part of the body of the saint.   Shrines play an important role in the tradition of pilgrimage, since they are places where people can experience "the visual and tactile embodiment of a reality other and higher than themselves, not just in a generalized sense of 'the holy', but in the form of contact with the continuing presence of the great departed" (Webb, ix).  They are places that allow us "to recall and revisit those experiences of great insight and human transformation" (O'Brien, 39).  The presence of relics at these locations "help make real what before may have seemed merely mythological.  They deepen relationships between us and those who have gone before us" (Forest, 51).  The shrine and its relics provide a tangible experience of the holy. No longer does God seem so far away because we are in the presence of those whose lives were transformed by the power of God.  The saints, for the pilgrim, are a link to the presence of God here on Earth. 

For hundreds if not thousands of years, saints have been both an inspiration and a companion for the pilgrim. Their lives inspire us to seek out places where their presence on Earth lingers. "The death of saints seems only to make them more present among the living. It is not simply that their memory is persistent, but that they become a leaven in many other lives. Their pilgrimage becomes intertwined with the pilgrimages of others" (Forest, 67).  Taylor writes, "the hope provided by the lives of saints comes not because they are unfallen but because being fallen does not prevent them from living faithful and powerful lives" (27).  On the journey, saints can become our companions.  They are a "cloud of witnesses" (Hebrews 12:1) whose lives inspire our steps as we seek to obtain even just a little bit of the clarity that they possessed regarding their own identities in relation to God.

Being a Woman on Pilgrimage

When I was 17 years old I decided that I wanted to go camping by myself.  I would take a tent to the lake where there was a free campground and spend a night there in solitude, just me and God.  When I presented the idea to my parents there was an immediate reaction: NO!  They thought it was too dangerous for a single young woman to go camping by herself (although it would have been fine if I was a boy).  I had to spend hours persuading them until they reluctantly gave their permission. The stigma of being a single woman on a journey continued to haunt me though, even after I got to the campground. In the middle of struggling to set up my tent, a well-meaning neighbor from the campground next door came to me concernedly to help and inquired if I was by myself.  When I said yes, he offered to share his family's campfire with me that evening because it wasn't safe for a woman to be alone.  While I can appreciate the concern of one person for another in this situation, I was also very frustrated.  I just wanted to go camping by myself and spend some quality time with God!  Everyone on every side, however, was telling me that this was a bad idea, and that it was something that I should not even consider doing by myself.  It was at that time I became incredibly aware of how difficult it is for women to engage in any sort of discipline like pilgrimage and retreat.  Although our society has become much more egalitarian than the past, women still have to cope with the restrictions of their gender when planning a journey.

In medieval times the restrictions that women faced against planning a journey were even greater than my own.  At that time, there were really only two avenues a woman could respectably pursue as a lifestyle: marriage or being a nun in a religious order.  If a woman married, she was expected to obtain the permission of her husband to go on a pilgrimage.  If she was unmarried then she needed permission from her parents.  If she was a nun then she was all but forbidden to take a pilgrimage. This restriction was enforced because ascetic religious women were not allowed to have contact with men, and any woman regardless of age, rank or social status was expected to travel with an escort (usually male). As Diana Webb observes:  "The respectable woman was obliged to travel in a respectable manner, suitably escorted according to her rank and marital status" (93).  Despite all of these restrictions, pilgrimage remained a remarkably popular practice for women.  Countless women embarked on sacred journeys as part of a vow, or on the behalf of a family member, or along with their husbands, or simply from a desire to experience an encounter with the historical Christ.

The prominent presence of women in the history of pilgrimage probably has something to do with the contributions of famous pilgrims like Egeria in the 4th century B.C.E.  A lot of speculation exists as to who Egeria was: most think that she was from Spain, probably from the upper-middle class, and perhaps a nun of some sort.  For three years Egeria toured the desert around the Holy Land, writing about her journey along the way.  She was driven by an insatiable curiosity to see all of the places from the Old Testament and New Testament that were relevant to her faith.  Her central purpose "was to vivify and confirm her faith in the truths of Scripture through personal contact with those places marked by the action of God on man" (Egeria, 19).  For Egeria, it wasn't enough to hear or read the stories; she had to go and visit those places, so that the stories of Scripture would become all the more real to her.  In order to see these places, she went to incredible lengths, often scaling mountains on her hands and feet to reach a holy summit.  Her example inspired many, even men. The Spanish monk Valerius, in the 7th century, extols her in a letter to fellow monks as an example of devotion, piety and courage (Sivan, 60).

　
Margery Kempe is a medieval woman who inherited the pilgrim spirit of Egeria.  Margery was an average, middle-class, illiterate housewife and mother of 14 children.  At 40 years old she (finally) managed to convince her husband to take a vow of celibacy with her so that she could consecrate her life to Jesus alone.  She also got his permission to travel as a pilgrim so that she could develop her passion for Christ, see the holy places in Jerusalem, and meet other passionate pilgrims like herself.  On her first journey to the Holy Land, Margery had an emotionally vivid experience where she saw in her soul the crucifiction of Christ.  This experience was so intense that "forever after, whenever she saw or heard something that reminded her of Jesus, she wept and cried out loudly and uncontrollably" (Armstrong, 80). After this experience, Margery continued to travel to famous shrines around Europe, developing a vibrant prayer life and a reputation as a prophet.  She made a number of enemies as well, although she was never successfully convicted of heresy.

 Just like Egeria, Margery was a woman who liked to take chances and push the boundaries of what was considered acceptable for female pilgrims.  Both of these women went on their journeys spurred by a passion to know more of Christ, and to be more like him.  For women today who might feel a little intimidated by the rigors of the road, these women can be inspirational models of what a woman can accomplish as a pilgrim.

The Model of Jesus Christ

For any Christians out there, here is a pretty profound statement: Jesus was a pilgrim.  He was constantly on the move; his life story is presented in the context of one sacred journey after the other.  Take the following for example:

• Joseph and Mary, Jesus' parents, travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem while Jesus was still in the womb.  (Luke 2:4-5) This was something that had been legislated by the Roman Emperor, but it also represented a sacred journey, because they were returning to a place of historical significance.  It was a place that tapped into the story of the Old Testament, and into the story of the kings of Israel. It was a place that sparked a hope for the redemption of Israel from the rule of the Romans.  It was a place to which the bloodline of the family was linked.  It was a place that was made all the more sacred in that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was born there.
• When Jesus was 12 years old, he travelled with his parents from Nazareth to Jerusalem, as part of the Jewish custom to celebrate the Passover (Luke 2:41-49).  This was a significant pilgrimage that all able-bodied Jews participated in, because it recalled an ancient story of a time when God rescued their ancestors from slavery and oppression in Egypt.  It was a feast that recognized the sovereignty of God and his faithfulness in delivering his chosen people.  Throughout the rest of his life, Jesus would participate annually in this Jewish pilgrimage tradition of sacred remembrance.
• Once he began his ministry, Jesus spent his days wandering the Galilean countryside, healing, teaching and preaching to the huge crowds that followed after him (e.g. Matt. 9:15). It was on these pilgrim journeys that Jesus declared the coming of the new and revolutionary kingdom of God. In many ways this pilgrim-wanderer lifestyle was counter-intuitive.  Jesus could have set up shop in a large town and made a fortune through his teaching and miracles.  Instead he made himself hard to find and the crowds were forced to follow him. He himself said "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head." (Matthew 8:18) 

Jesus' final pilgrimage was certainly his most difficult.  He was approximately 33 years old, and he was travelling to Jerusalem, once again, to celebrate the Passover.  Only this time Jesus knew that he was also walking along the road to his death (see Mark 10:32-34).  He knew that if he took part in this pilgrimage, he would be betrayed at the end of it and handed over to his enemies to be tortured and killed.  Despite all of this foreboding knowledge, Jesus still decided to take the journey.  Why?

The will of God meant a lot to Jesus. It was how he prayed: "Your kingdom come, your will be done" (Matthew 6:10), and "not my will, but yours be done" (Luke 22:42b). He knew God had a plan for the liberation and redemption of the world, and that his own life would be part of bringing that to pass.  He knew that "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life" (John 3:16).  He knew that this would require a sacrifice of his own life: "For even the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many" (Mark 10:45).  He knew what God would require of him if he took this journey and he still chose to go.  Jesus is perhaps the most poignant example we have of submission and obedience in the Bible.  Even though he knew that this final pilgrimage was going to result in his death, he wanted God's will to be done first.  The fate of the world mattered more to Jesus than his own life.

In previous entries mention has been made of the suffering that is sometimes experienced in pilgrimage.  Jesus takes the idea of faith and obedience in the face of suffering to a whole other level.  What is more, he calls those who would follow him, to follow his example as well: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me" (Luke 9:23).  A lot of Christians have interpreted this to represent in an inward journey that we take even while we are at work, or at school, or with our families, but sometimes this can refer to an actual physical journey as well. If and when you receive the call to take the journey are you going to be willing to leave everything behind, in search for the will of God?

In his book called Go Abraham Go, Earl P. McQuay presents 3 "road hazards" that nearly prevented Abraham from following God.  They were delay, difficulty and diversion.  I thought these hazards were really relevant to our own pilgrimage journeys.  There are times when we are too reluctant, or we get too busy, to set out on the journey so we choose to delay instead.  Then, when we finally get on the journey we experience difficulty, which makes us want to give up.  Sometimes we give in to diversion, which distracts us from the purpose for our journey and can lead us down a dead end.  Despite all of this, the important thing is that we still get up, brush ourselves off, and choose to continue with the journey.  Let us take the example of Jesus' obedience to heart, because pilgrimage is ultimately not going to be about our own will, but about will of God.

Abraham: Pilgrim of Faith

The Lord said to Abram, "Leave your country, your people and your father's household, and go to the land I will show you.

I will make you into a great nation

and I will bless you

I will make your name great,

and you will be a blessing,

I will bless those who bless you,

and whoever curses you I will curse,

and all peoples on earth

will be blessed through you."

So Abram left, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him.  Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Haran.  He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Haran, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there. (Genesis 12:1-5 NIV)

The word "pilgrimage" stems from the Latin word peregrinus which means "resident alien" or "foreigner." It can also mean "to wander over a great distance" (Jones, 151). If I think about pilgrimage in the Bible, the first name that comes to mind is Abraham.  His pilgrimage was unusual from a modern point of view.  Most holy places hadn't been invented yet.  He lived in an age before most of the world's major religions were founded (in fact, he was the founder of Judaism).  There were really no major shrines to visit or saints to venerate.  Also, he hardly packed light: he brought along absolutely everything he owned and his entire family. He did this because, unlike the modern pilgrim, he had no intention of returning from his destination.

So why did Abraham choose to leave everything that was familiar to become a pilgrim in a foreign land?  The Bible says it is because God spoke to him, both calling him away from his home and giving him a promise.  The promise was for land, for protection, and for an everlasting legacy.  All that God required from Abraham was a little faith.  Abraham had to believe that if he did leave and follow the pilgrim way that God was going to come through on His promise.

Hebrews 11:1 says "Now faith is being sure of what we hope for, and certain of what we do not see."  Boers defines pilgrimage as "faith-motivated travel" (22).  Taylor describes the pilgrim as "one who travels hopefully" (11).  Faith is an essential element of pilgrimage.  Without this expectation of the divine, pilgrimage becomes little more than travelling to see the sights.  Faith is what takes a pilgrim's attention off of the destination and puts it on the journey.  Faith draws the pilgrim to be aware at every moment and place for the ways that God is revealing Himself.  Hebrews 11:6 says "and without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him."

Stepping out in faith had a cost though. Abraham had to leave everything that was safe and comfortable about his home in Haran. At 75 years old, he had to travel thousands of miles to a land where he would be known only as a foreigner. In a previous entry I talked about the risk associated with pilgrimage, and Abraham was not an exception to this rule. Being a pilgrim required of Abraham a sacrifice: a sacrifice of time, of safety, of comfort, of identity and of control.  Abraham was no longer the one dictating his life; by choosing the life of the pilgrim he surrendered control to God.

Abraham seemed to have a really good sense of what made a sacred place. In an era where there were no shrines, Abraham set up his own:

"The Lord appeared to Abram and said, "To your offspring I will give this land." So he [Abram] built an altar there to the Lord who had appeared to him. From there he went on toward the hills east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east.  There he built an altar to the Lord and called on the name of the Lord." (Genesis 12:7-8)

Any place where Abraham sought or had a profound experience of God, he set up a shrine, an altar.  The pilgrimage was not for him just about the destination, but he was constantly paying attention for where he experienced God in the journey.  Sometimes when we travel we forget that every moment and every place has the potential to be holy.  We get so caught up our expectation what we will experience at our goal, that we do not recognize or mark the places along the way that are equally holy in character.  It is not popularity that makes a place holy - only the presence of God can do that.

Throughout the rest of his life Abraham was a wanderer.  In fact, Charles Foster argues that wandering was what made Abraham the person that he was (48).  Because there was nothing else constant in his life, Abraham had to cling to his faith in God.  He was a resident alien: the world was not his home.

"By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.  By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents... For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God." (Hebrews 11:8-10)

Trends Towards Pilgrimage

The concept of pilgrimage as a spiritual discipline has been all but absent in western Protestant culture.  Instead, the practice of sacred physical travel has been replaced with a metaphorical inward journey, as is exemplified with John Bunyan's literary classic The Pilgrim's Progress, which serves as a allegory for the Christian life from a life lived in sin to the final union with God in Heaven.  As I have done my own reading I have noticed the conspicuous tendency of people from my own evangelical Christian tradition to speak of pilgrimage as a metaphor for the inward journey.

The practice of physical pilgrimage was all but rejected by Protestant Reformers such as Martin Luther in the 16th century, who considered the discipline to be just as corrupt as the rest of the Catholic church (Foster, 194).  Many people in medieval times used pilgrimage as an excuse to escape their responsibilities at home and as a way to indulge their curiosity.  Many flocked to shrines and relics superstitiously, believing that being in the presence of these objects and touching them would actually provide some degree of sanctification for the soul.  In the meantime, other were making horrendous profits from service and entrance fees and the sale of bogus relics.  Pilgrimage was a big business; it was the original tourism.  The big difference between this and our modern tourism, however, was that people were claiming that the practice would actually help the average person obtain a degree of salvation.  Martin Luther and other Reformers believed that this claim was a perversion of Scripture.  Ephesians 2:8 declares that it is only by faith that we can be saved and justified.  Thus, when it came time to separate from the Catholic church, like so many other Catholic sacraments and disciplines the practice of pilgrimage was rejected and internalized.

After so many years of diminished presence, physical pilgrimage is becoming popular again.  I first became aware of this reality last summer, while listening to a temporary employee at work tell about her adventures in Spain.  While in Spain, she and her friend had hitch-hiked to many places, and somehow found themselves, for a short period of time, walking along the road to Santiago de Compostela.  It was a profound experience for her. She had been able to walk and talk with a number of pilgrims who were taking the pilgrimage to the shrine of St. James. Although she was not a Christian, their experiences moved her and she had a desire to go walk that road again.

My reading has shown the same trend:  more and more people are getting interested in pilgrimage, not just as a novel once-in-a-lifetime experience, but as an integral component to their own spiritual development.  Kevin A. Codd reflects on his own journey to Santiago de Compostela.  Daniel Taylor speaks of his pilgrimage experiences on the Celtic Islands.  Christian George tells stories about the number of different places he visited around the States and Europe that became an experience of pilgrimage for him. Arthur Paul Boers speaks of the growing popularity of pilgrimage, and how many scholars that modern European Christianity that it will be pilgrimage that reinvents and revitalizes European Christianity (22).  More and more people, including those within my own denominational tradition, are beginning to rediscover this ancient discipline. And, as they explore this practice, they are discovering how it is capable of transforming them.  Boers explains:

"This interest is part of a wider movement of reclaiming practices that cultivate the habits of heart, mind and body that form faithful Christians, build Christian character and enrich church life. Concretely physical, the ancient practice of pilgrimage pushes beyond the usual crop of spiritual disciplines that are only for the introverted, contemplative or intuitive." (22)

Up until this point in this blog, I have offered an introduction to the concept of pilgrimage as a journey in search of the transcendent, I have compared it to tourism, and I have sketched out how it functions as a spiritual discipline within our inward journey. For the next couple of entries I hope to explore a bit more about where pilgrimage appears in the Bible.  As Christians we seek out Biblical examples so we have some sort of guide in how to fashion our lives.  The practice of pilgrimage was rejected by the Reformers, but as we will see, physical pilgrimage actually has a very pronounced and prominent place within Scripture. Reading some of these stories we might be able to glean some insight, not only into how pilgrimage was done then, but also in how the practice should be approached today.

The Spiritual Discipline of Pilgrimage

I tend to not like the word "discipline".  It is a harsh word that often conjures flashbacks of the days when I had to face the big wooden spanking spoon in the bathroom, or of being grounded in my room, forbidden to watch my favourite television program.  "Discipline", for me, is a word that is associated with punishment. There are other meanings for the word, of course. Looking it up in the dictionary, one definition that jumps out is "an activity, exercise, or a regimen that develops or improves a skill; training" (dictionary.com).  This kind of discipline is self-inflicted, although it still retains strict adherence to the rules.

A spiritual discipline, however, has an added dimension to the definition of training; it is activity that we purposely direct our focus towards in order to "align our disoriented and dissatisfied lives with God's purposes" (Rumford, 98).  These disciplines are practices that we undertake that help to cultivate the soul so that we may grow inwardly.  Yes, they involve a bit of work - they not always easily achieved. Rumford writes that "often we see spiritual development as an obligation...we fear that it will add one more burden to our already overextended lives" (55).  If we stick with them, however, spiritual disciplines offer the reward of a step towards union with God - a step towards ultimate fulfillment.

Why are spiritual disciplines important to the Christian life?  Can we not as Christians experience fulfillment and sanctification without doing anything at all?  After all, Ephesians 2:8-9 says "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this not from yourselves, it is a gift of God - not by works, so that no one can boast."  If we can be saved without engaging in spiritual disciplines, why would we bother to do them?

St. Irenaeus once wrote that "the glory of God is man fully alive."  Likewise, Jesus says in John 10:10 that He came so that we might have life, and have it to the full.  The Christian life doesn't stop at the moment of salvation.  It is a process of transformation, a process whereby we discover how to become truly alive.  Spiritual disciplines help us in this quest because they function as guideposts that point the way to God.  They lead us down the path of spiritual formation.   They are "steps we can take to develop spiritual sensitivity - a sense of God's presence and a deepening awareness of the spiritual reality that exists in all of life and experience" (Rumford, 98).

Even Jesus engaged in spiritual disciplines.  He would frequently withdraw from the crowds that followed him to engage in the disciplines of silence, solitude and prayer.  He was also a pilgrim.  If Jesus engaged in practices like these, and we as Christians say that we want to be like Christ, then shouldn't we also seek to implement these practices in our lives? 

If some have an inclination to completely ignore the role of spiritual disciplines in the Christian life, still others may suffer the the temptation to turn these into a formula.  This formula should be familiar to many of us: read your Bible, pray to God, and go to church - if you do these things you will lead a spiritually fulfilling life.  But this assumption is wrong; God cannot be found by formula.  Spiritual growth is not something that we can control.  There is something unpredictable and organic about the growth that happens in the Christian life; it is something that cannot be limited to a formula.  M. Robert Mulholland Jr. writes,

"Often our spiritual quest becomes a search for the right technique, the proper method, the perfect program that can immediately deliver the desired results of spiritual maturity and wholeness...If only we can find the right trick, the right book or the right guru, go to the right retreat, hear the right sermon, instantly we will be transformed into a new person at a new level of spirituality and wholeness....but there is something about the nature of spiritual wholeness and the growth toward that wholeness that is very much a process" (20). 

Spiritual disciplines are tools.  They are ways which help us approach God and foster our relationship with Him.  They are not what provides fulfillment to the Christian life, however.

Pilgrimage is a spiritual discipline. It is "a conscious act of seeking a more vital awareness of God's living presence " (Forest, 13).  Like many spiritual disciplines, some are tempted to formulize pilgrimage: if you hit shrines A, B, and C and read this book and say that prayer on the road, then you will be changed.  People who do this miss out on what the point of pilgrimage is all about.  Pilgrimage is not a formula; it is an attitude.  The pilgrim goes hopeful that they will meet God, but that moment of union is not something that can be manufactured.  In fact, one could say that out of all of the spiritual disciplines, pilgrimage is the most anti-formulaic because it separates us from our traditional formulas and throws us into an unpredictable, spontaneous journey where God can be met at any bend in the road.  Without limiting the spiritual journey to a formula, pilgrimage is a discipline that organically draws us into other spiritual disciplines such as prayer, solitude, silence, retreat, community, hospitality and worship.  It provides the stage where our souls can be free to simply commune with God and grow.  Too much of Christian faith is planned.  Pilgrimage is a discipline that embraces spontaneity, because we let go of control and let God guide us along the journey.

A Walking Pace

Pilgrimage is a type of retreat. The distinguishing feature of pilgrimage from any other type of retreat, however, is that it involves movement.  There is travel from a place of departure towards a destination.  You have to pack up and leave, drive and walk.  Ironically, even though there is movement, pilgrimage is a retreat that calls us to slow down.  Pilgrimage separates us from the typical daily rhythm and calls us to a different pace of life, one that doesn't rush past in the inward movements of the soul, but that walks in tandem with them.

According to Tony Jones, medieval pilgrims generally spent anywhere from six months to three years on the road walking (154).  They did this without any stereo, iPod, portable DvD player, or radio.  Their only options on the journey were either to talk to their fellow co-pilgrims, to think or to pray.  Even though they were moving, they were drawn into a state of quiet and solitude.  The journey gave them both the time and the space to explore their inner self and see how it connected to God. With so much time to listen to the soul, it is no wonder that many pilgrims often ended up completely transformed by the journey.

Pilgrimage is so difficult in today's society because speed is considered an asset. We have so much technology that exists to cut down the time spent on the journey: airplanes, trains, and cars to name a few. Also, we are taught that a trip's value is determined by how many landmarks we see.  We feel the need to "get something" from our trip, and so we rush from destination to destination without actually taking the time to savour the journey. Michael Yaconelli talks about the damaging affects of speed in our life:

"What keeps many of us from growing is not sin but speed... Speed damages our souls because living fast consumes every ounce of our energy.  Speed has a deafening roar that drowns out the whispering voices of our souls and leaves Jesus as a diminishing speck in the rearview mirror." (Yaconelli, 124-125) 

Often when we travel we are tempted to do it at the same pace that we live the rest of our lives.  We think we need to rush the journey because we have to make it to our destination before the vacation time runs out.  By focusing on the destination, however, we miss the point of the journey.  We think that the moment of achievement happens when we reach our goal, without realizing that it is the time spent on the road that gives value to the pilgrimage.  By not allowing ourselves to slow down, we miss the opportunities that the journey provides for inward transformation. 

A pilgrimage, then, cannot be a hurried process. There must be time throughout each stage of the journey to savour the sensation of unhurried slowness.  Yaconelli writes that "If we want to meet Jesus, we can't do it on the run. If we want to stay on the road of faith, we have to hit the brakes, pull over to a rest area and stop" (125).  If we want to actually to have an experience with God on the pilgrimage journey, then at some point we have to be willing to slow down to a walking pace.

Walking is a very important part of any pilgrimage.  Even all of our technology today cannot replace the value of  "one of... life's most ordinary, least expensive and deeply rewarding pleasures" (Forest, 9).    Daniel Taylor writes that "Walking is the maximum desirable speed for seeing things fully enough to name them.  And when we name things then we begin to value them.  No wonder that we all want to be named and known" (37).  If we move faster than a walking pace then we miss the opportunity to find value in the journey.  If we are always focused on speed, then we will never be observe our own natural value within this beautiful world where God created us. 

The body was created to move, despite the sedentary lifestyle that so many of us now lead.  Believe or not, walking is an act that actually has the possibility of drawing us toward the sacred.   Jim Forest writes that "Nothing we do is meant to be 'merely' physical or 'merely' spiritual.  Every act has the potential of uniting the physical and the spiritual" (7).  There is a connection between our body and our spirits that is often ignored by today's intellectually compartmentalized society.  It often doesn't cross our minds that movement is good not only for the body, but for our souls as well.  Walking "is a physical activity that is meant to have spiritual significance" (Forest, 7).  It has the potential to draw us into a state of quiet where we can finally hear the the voice of God.

---

I considered carefully the value of walking when planning my own pilgrimage for this May.  Even though I am driving for a good portion of the journey, I have determined not to spend more than 4-5 hours on the road within a single day.  Also, when I get to my "rest stops" along the way, I am going to take the time in each location to just simply walk around, not with an agenda, but so that I can savour and value the place that I am in.  As I take this time to slow down, I think that I will realize just how close God is to me even in the most mundane locations. I will rediscover the regenerative power of quiet through the pace of my own walking step. I will be able to reconnect my body to my soul, as I unite them together in a sacred physical action.

Silence on the Road

Quiet. The silence that comes with the absence of noise. The stillness that comes with the absence of busyness.  The peace that comes with the absence of demands.  A truly, restful quiet, not only without in my surroundings but within the interior of my heart.  A quiet so rarely found and grasped in today's busy, demanding, marketing, success-driven world.  A silence that lets me expand and be completely aware of who I am in time and space.  This blessed quality of quiet - when was the last time I heard it?  When was the last time I felt it inside of me?
 
I have finally decided that this is something that I need to seek out.  After five years of being a full-time student and a part-time worker, always in a go-go-go environment, I am tired.  I have gotten so wrapped up in the busyness of life that I have forgotten how to listen both to myself and God.  In the process I have begun to feel lost and confused, like I don't know who I am anymore.  I need to rediscover a place of quiet.

This is why I have decided to take a pilgrimage retreat when the school year is up.  I have decided that I need to hop into my car and drive.  Driving is an experience of quiet for me, especially when I am driving through the mountains on an empty road.  With my radio off and nothing else but the road to distract me, there is only me, God and silence.  This trip is going to be both pilgrimage and retreat.  It is going to be both a journey in search of the transcendent and a withdrawal from the daily rhythm of my life.  I am going to places where I will find community, but I am also going to places where I will find solitude.  Through the silence of an introspective journey, I hope to experience a transformative state of quiet.

Pilgrimage is retreat.  Margaret Silf describes the essence of a retreat when she writes that "a retreat takes us closer to the core of our beings and to a space in which we also touch the reality of God" (Silf, 5). It removes us from everything that demands our attention in the everyday world, and gives us the opportunity to hear both the voice of our own hearts and the voice of God.

I am looking forward to the experience of retreat.  I am not going to bring my laptop on my journey; it is a distraction that prevents me from listening, from being attentive to the sound of quiet.  I am going to bring a few books, but they will be very limited in number - I do not want them to become a distraction, but to be  a tool that will encourage an inner state of silence.  Silence is "a regenerative practice of attending and listening to God in quiet, without interruption and noise" (Calhoun, 107).  I like that word, regenerative.  It suggests that silence has the power to heal.  That silence not only mends inward injury but also reintroduces a concept of health to the spirit.  For the spirit that feels battered, beaten, bruised, tampered with, broken and tired, silence is the medicine most often needed.  And yet, despite its restorative qualities, silence is also the medicine that is most often avoided.

Our society does not like silence.  It is too dangerous.  It can remind us of our loneliness.  It can make us  realize that our lives are not as fulfilling as they might be. Sometimes it seems easier just to cover up and ignore the sound of a wounded spirit then actually seeking out the isolation of silence. We need God but we do not always want Him, and thus, in an effort to shut out his voice, our existence has become inundated with noise.  Just walking through a transit station and noticing the number of headphones and earbuds that people are wearing alludes towards our addiction to sound.  Some people wake up to the radio and fall asleep to the same, not allowing one moment of silence into their lives.  As a result of all this noise we have forgotten how to listen.  We have forgotten how to listen to ourselves, to others and to God.

Silence, when it is embraced, draws us into a place of solitude.  Solitude is the opposite of loneliness. It is a state where we can discover inner fulfillment (Richard Foster, 84).  "Solitude opens a space where we can bring our empty and compulsive selves to God" (Calhoun, 113).  It is a place "where God's spirit and my spirit dwell together in union" (Barton, 32).  It is a place where we shed whatever masks that we might tend put on and allow ourselves to just simply be who we naturally are.  We allow our souls to communicate with God and discover that we are loved just for simply being.

Pilgrimage offers a place where I can experience both silence and solitude, and for my weary lost soul, this is exactly what I need.

The Risk of the Journey

"'When the poet says pilgrimage,
what world does she enter?'
I wave my hand - in my head,
explain to the sink and the mirror,
'The word, pilgrimage, brings
you into a world
where God is a possibility,
where a journey
to a place where God
is a possibility
is a possibility.

(Explain God? Silence. The silence
after the terrible whirlwind Never mind.)

So, a pilgrim pins a cracked scallop
shell to her ragged hat
and walks, stained feet, feet blistered,
then callused, sometimes bleeding,

(even after years on the road,
surprised by sharp rocks, broken bottles)

lame as old Jacob, hamstrung
from wrestling the angel,
walking toward his brother.  Pilgrim: anyone,
tired, head down, head up, on the road,
squinting hard into a bright silence."

~excerpt from poem "The Word: Pilgrimage" by Capers Limehouse

I feel a lot like the pilgrim in this poem.  After four and 1/2 years at school, running back and forth to work and classes, trying with all of my might to get everything done right and on time, I am tired.  The journey has gone on this long and I feel dirty, bruised and in many ways beaten.  The only hope I have, the only reason why I keep on this road, is because I hope for the possibility of meeting God at the end of it.  When I see Him then everything will make sense.  For now, however, my only experience of Him is silence. This is not the journey I was expecting.  For some reason I expected a much more fun and easy trip.  I thought that once I started out on the path everything would always fall into place and I would be supernaturally provided for until the end.  Sometimes it has been like that.  At other times, however, the journey has been a struggle.  It has been a fight to keep going and not give up as worries and difficulties have piled up.  No one has ever promised though that pilgrimage would be easy. 

One surprising thing I have learned about pilgrimage as I have studied it, is that suffering is often an integral part of the experience. This is because there is an element of risk in pilgrimage. You are going to an unknown land with unforeseen dangers. The journey is unpredictable.  The parable of the Good Samaritan that Jesus tells in Luke 10:30-35 exemplifies this risk.  In this story, a man who is travelling from Jerusalem to Jericho is attacked by a bunch of robbers and left on the roadside to die, both stripped and beaten.   As time went on other travellers came to the place where the man lay bleeding, but these men did not know him and had their own business to attend to, so they just left him there on the roadside. This certainly was not the journey that the man was expecting when he started out. As a stranger in a strange land he had lost all of his possessions, he was injured and dying, and the people who walked by him could care less.

Why do people do it then?  Why do pilgrims go ahead with the journey when they know that they could lose so much?  Why do they walk to the edge of danger and not stay where life is comfortable and safe? Why take the risk?

If there is no risk there is no progress.  If we are scared to move forward then we will never experience anything greater than the life that we are leading now. We will live in a narrow and isolated world that, in its safety, has become absent in meaning.  We will never be able to know what is real because we were too busy protecting an illusion.  We will allow our current reality to dictate our future because we were too afraid to look beyond it and dare to dream of what might be. We will be in control, but in the process we will never to find that place where God is a possibility.

Being a pilgrim means entering a place of the unknown.  It means entering a place of risk.  It means going to a place where everyone might not know your name.  It means entering into a state of vulnerability.  It means entering into a state of trust, hope and faith.  When the pilgrim sets out on the journey they trust that they will discover through the journey something that is real about their life.  They hope that the risks of the journey will push them to a place where they can learn more both about themselves and about God. 
There may be times when the landscape demands more exertion than they were perhaps prepared to give, but they have faith that the journey will be worth the risks.  After all, they have a profound understanding that life in itself is inherently risky.  Any sense of control or safety that we might have is essentially an illusion.  The world could change tomorrow.  That is why we need to live into the fullness of today.

To finish the story of the man who was left bleeding on the roadside, his journey did not end there.  Soon another person passed by who had pity on him.  Although the stranger was someone who was considered inferior to man's own Jewish race, the Samaritan still stopped to help him, bandaging his wounds, clothing him, taking him to the closest inn, paying for his room. It was unthinkable at that time that a Samaritan would help a Jew, and yet it happened.  That day, quite unexpectedly the injured man experienced mercy and love from someone whom he had always considered beneath him.  Perhaps his world expanded a little that day; maybe he met God in a place where he was not expecting Him.

And so, my own journey continues on.  Only a few weeks are left of my undergraduate experience.  It is true that I am afraid. I am afraid of failure.  I took a risk in coming to school; I devoted time, money and effort to engage in a journey, and I fear not being able to see the end of that journey successfully.  It is also true that I have suffered.  The journey has not always been as easy as I hoped it to be; often it has demanded more effort and creativity from me than I knew that I possessed. It has pushed me to the very limits of my abilities, but I tell the truth when I say that I walk away from this experience knowing more about myself.  I also have learned more about God, and how close He is.  My world has expanded; the risk and the pain have been worth the opportunity to live and to grow.

The Outward and Inward Journey

If a person types in the word 'pilgrimage' into a library catalogue they will usually get one of three things.  At the local university the word pilgrimage brings up scores of information about how pilgrimage was done in the past, whether in the Christian tradition, the Muslim tradition, in India or Japan, etc., or it will bring up comparative studies of how pilgrimage affects tourism.   Either way, the results are largely factual, based off of research, and have very little to say about what pilgrimage means for the average person today, other than how it fuels the tourism industry.  At my Bible College the word brings up an entirely different set of results: pilgrimage is addressed as a primarily spiritual journey.  Grand phrases appear like "the pilgrimage of life," treating all of life or the stages of life as a sacred journey.  These books are largely reflective, based off of experience and while they may impact how one lives today, they do not really address how one might go on an actual physical pilgrimage.

The thing with pilgrimage is that there are both physical and spiritual aspects to it.  Books tend to address one or the other, but when a person actually goes on a pilgrimage that involves travel, the idea is that this physical travel will reflect a spiritual journey.  Alistair McGrath writes, "traveling does more than lead us to the goal of our journeying.  A journey is itself a process that enables us to grow and develop as we press on to our goal" (8). 

Within Christianity this process of growth is called spiritual formation.  My professor says spiritual formation is "the ongoing process of the Holy Spirit forming the believer's life in Christ for the purpose of living individually and corporately to the glory of God" (Peasgood).  That's pretty heavy stuff.  I prefer to put it more simply: spiritual formation is a flowering from who you are now into who you were meant to be - who God created you to be.  It is soul growth from the inside out, and it happens because God is there directing you along the way.  Sometimes we resist spiritual formation.  We do not want to grow or change from who we already are.  We don't like the idea of abandoning the concrete "self" that each of us have individually fashioned for something unknown.  We fear giving up control.  On a physical pilgrimage we can go with good or even "holy" intentions.  If we are not willing to abandon the familiar, however, then we can reach the physical goal without ever even having taken the requisite inward journey. If we aren't willing to give up control during the journey to let God change and affect our carefully crafted selves, we may never experience the wonderful otherness that the mysterious God has to offer us in this world. We were not created to be stagnant creatures.  We were designed to grow.

The ultimate goal of spiritual formation is union with God.  Union is "complete oneness with God in which we find ourselves caught up in rapturous joy, adoration, praise and a deep peace that passes all understanding" (Mullholland, 97).  It is when soul draws so close to God it can taste Him, and that taste is so incredibly amazing that it can't help but leave a person changed for eternity.  Christians long for this union because we realize that there is something incredibly wrong about a life that is lived separately from God.  There is an inherent selfishness and sense of incompleteness that governs our lives and leaves us empty. For all of our attempts at self-gratification, we are never completely satisfied. Our life is not all that it could - or should - be.  We have realized that we are lost on our own. Other broken people cannot fix the rift inside of us, and we are helpless to fix ourselves.  Our only hope is seeking an encounter with the one whom we call Creator, the one whom we have come to call Saviour.

The journey towards union is not without its own demands and sacrifices. Union, itself, is recognized as the third part of the three stage journey within classical spiritual formation. Along the path towards union, we must also pass through purgation: the cleansing of the soul. As time goes on God begins to show us parts of our lives that are holding us back from drawing closer to Him. These may be blatant sins, little white lies, or deep-seated attitudes and behaviours, but regardless of the severity, all of these things can clutter our soul to the point that there is no more room for God. It is during the period of purgation that we learn to let those things go.

After purgation comes illumination, a time when we begin to understand really what is happening within the process of spiritual formation.  "The basic shift in illumination is from seeing God as 'out there' to an experience of God present deep within our being" (Mulholland, 95).  It is when the veil from our eyes slowly lifts so that we can see even more clearly how we relate to God and how God relates to us.  The revelation is often that God is much closer, and we need Him much more, than we initially thought. 

All three stages of spiritual formation - purgation, illumination and union - all happen simultaneously at various stages within the Christian life.  One experience of illumination or union could show us yet another flaw within our beings that demands purgation.  Our life becomes a constant journey of walking steadily towards Christ, towards the hope of our salvation.

Since pilgrimage is an outward expression of an inward journey, physical travel can mirror the process of spiritual formation.  First, we go through a process of purgation.  We leave everything behind that previously defined us before: our jobs, maybe our family, our t.v., our gaming systems.  This outward purgation of departure is accompanied by an inward purgation: when we leave everything behind that previously defined us, what are we left with?  What inward demons will we have to fight and wrestle with?  What sides of ourselves will we be forced to see and reckon with?  As we face and answer these questions, we walk into the realm of illumination. The landscape of our journey draws us in; we meet and talk to other people along the path, and suddenly we begin to realize the value in our physical journey.  There is a world out there greater than the one we left behind.  Inwardly we come to the same spiritual conclusion: there is a depth to the inward realm of our spirit that we previously could not see or fathom.  As we begin to live out this conclusion we experience union: those moments where the journey takes on a transcendent quality to provide a mental snapshot that will forever remain ingrained within our minds as a definitive moment in our lives.  Inwardly we experience that moment of transcendence. We sense God is in this place, and the place that we are standing is indeed holy ground.  In the process of all of this - this process of separation, discovery and wonder - we are transformed, and we return from our journey as different people than when we had left.

Tourism and Pilgrimage: a question of motivation

One thing that I am concerned about in my studies on pilgrimage is the materialistic undertones that this practice can be painted with.  In my previous post I spoke of pilgrimage as the search for the transcendent - that which is greater than oneself.  This seems to be a grand and noble purpose, one that surely resonates with many would-be pilgrims out there.  Yet, I have discovered that if I type the word "pilgrimage" into the Google search engine, I end up with something that looks something more like a tourism guidebook 9 times out of 10.  Why is this?

Perhaps a look into the traditional, academic definition of pilgrimage would be helpful. The Encyclopedia of Early Christianity describes it as a "journey taken as an expression of religious devotion to a place believed to be especially sacred or holy" (Ferguson, 734). Penelope Dransart helps expand the traditional definition of pilgrimage by listing 6 common types of pilgrimage: (328-329)

1. The devotional pilgrimage: an encounter with, and veneration of, a shrine divinity, holy person, or symbols.  Examples include Christian pilgrimages to the holy land.
2. The instrumental pilgrimage: the pilgrim travels to a shrine for a specific reason.  Examples include pilgrimages to shrines for healing.
3. The normative pilgrimage: a part of the calendrical life cycle of a person.  Examples include the annual community pilgrimages that take place in Latin American Catholic traditions.
4. The obligatory pilgrimage: an imposed pilgrimage, like the penitential pilgrimages that used to be proscribed as a form of punishment in the middle ages.
5. The wandering pilgrimage: does not have a destination, but the pilgrim sets out to obtain some spiritual illumination or to emulate a holy person who did similarly.
6. The initiatory pilgrimage: intended to change the social status of the pilgrim.  An example would be the Native American vision quest, where one travels and fasts to the point of instigating a hallucinogenic experience in order to be recognized as an adult within the community.

I find these categories helpful for understanding the traditional role of pilgrimage in different cultures.  They certainly do exemplify the point that there can be many different types of pilgrimage!  And yet these categories make pilgrimage seem easily compartmentalized and reproduced, as though one could sell the experience.

In medieval times Christian pilgrimage was regarded as an important practice for the sanctification of the soul.  It was thought that if one could go visit the places where holy people lived or died, a little of that holiness might rub off on the pilgrim.   Daniel Taylor writes that "the greatest danger of pilgrimage, always, is the temptation to live off someone else's experience with transcendence... We want to materialize and quantify the holy so we can keep an eye on it" (Taylor, 17).  This approach threatens to paint holiness as a commodity, something that can be obtained if a person can be the first one to visit all the holy sites. Eugene Peterson challenges this understanding with his definition of 'holy':  "the all-encompassing, all-embracing life of God that transforms us into a uniquely formed and set-apart people...It is something lived” (Peterson, 127). 

So why do you go on pilgrimage?  Is it to acquire something: to treat the pilgrimage itself as a form of currency for an experience of transcendence; something perhaps to write about in your journal?  Or, are you going because you want to be changed - to be challenged to the very core of your being to live a different, deeper and fuller life that is uniquely inspired by the transcendent God?  One way is totally selfish and plays into a tourism mindset, traveling for the sake of broadening my own experience.  The other requires sacrifice as one surrenders the self to a calling that is beyond what they can imagine, or control.

Jim Forest provides a description of pilgrimage that really resonates with me:

You can walk to some great shrine on a journey that takes weeks or months and fail to become a pilgrim.  Walking a pilgrimage route, wearing a pilgrim's badge, and sleeping in pilgrim hostels are not what make a pilgrim.  Pilgrimage is more an attitude than an act... Pilgrimage is a conscious act of seeking a more vital awareness of God's living presence.  As was said in medieval times, "If you do not travel with the King whom you seek, you will not find him at the end of your journey." (Forest, 13, italics my own)

I write these things not to downplay the importance of shrines and holy places in the experience of pilgrimage.  I write this so that we can examine our reasons, our motivations, behind taking the journey.

Looking for the Transcendent

"I'm a bit stuck on a paper topic," I admitted to a co-worker when she asked me how my schoolwork was going.  "What is the paper on?" she asked.  I told her.  "Pilgrimage?  Isn't that like with poor people?" she asked innocently.  I couldn't help but laugh.  I went on trying to explain this mysterious concept to her, memories from my reading echoing in my mind.

Pilgrimage is a type of travel that has an inward meaning,  Daniel Taylor calls it "physical travel with a spiritual destination" (Taylor, 16).  The pilgrim may not know or even understand their goal; it may be shrouded in complete mystery.  And yet, there is a sense of anticipation that fuels pilgrimage, a sense of inner expectation and hope.  The pilgrimage, in truth, is not about the destination at all.  It is about the journey.  It is not about the how, the when or the where.  It is about the why.  Why are you on the journey that you are on?  What are you hoping for?  Every pilgrim is looking for some experience with the transcendent - with that which is greater than themselves.  They know that there is something more to their lives than what they left behind, that is why they are on the journey.  They want to experience that greater thing with hope that it will give insight, purpose and meaning to the life that they currently live.

Pilgrimage, then, involves a shedding of the world that we leave behind.  It means stepping out of the comfortable box and role that we have been relegated to in daily life.  It means giving up your bed and the comforts of home; it means leaving the family and friends that command your attention and provide that sense of belonging and stability; it means giving up your job for a time and abandoning the schedule that has so predominantly rhythmed your life.  When all of this is taken away what is left?  When all the trappings of our lives are shed for the journey where will we actually find ourselves?  Will we be able to cling to the hope of the transcendent, or will we flee back to the comforts of daily life? 

Some might regard this talk of sacrifice as being rather extreme for a description of pilgrimage, but the ultimate purpose of pilgrimage is extreme.  As Taylor writes, "extremism is simply a method for searching for what is real" (Taylor, 32).  The pilgrim isn't looking for some feel-good experience, something fluffy and fleeting; the pilgrim is looking for something tangible, something that gives their lives meaning and purpose and roots them to this place called Earth and to this life.  They are looking for a meaningful and profound experience of realness that will change them.

With this in mind, Christian pilgrimage takes on an even deeper meaning. The search for the transcendent becomes a search for the God of Christian faith.  Scott O'Brien calls it "the search for the Holy in the process of active remembrance" (O'Brien, 39). Christian George writes that "[pilgrimage] moves us from certainty to dependence, it helps us discover God's involvement in human history, it challenges and stimulates our faith, and it invigorates us to be like our Lord in thought, word, deed and devotion. Pilgrimage is an outward demonstration of an inward calling - to follow Christ, wherever the steps may lead" (George, 25).  Christian pilgrimage, then, is not an isolated experience.  It is an experience that is linked to tradition, to history, to community, to Christ, and to faith.  Like others, the Christian journeys seeking the transcendent, but perhaps unlike others, the Christian knows the one whom they are seeking.

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I finished wrapping up my explanation to my co-worker and she stood there thinking.  "So then," she ventured, "your trip to this city, isn't that a pilgrimage? You said you came because of God."  I sat there for a moment somewhat stunned.  "I never thought about it that way before," I said, "but you're right."  I had come to the city blindly searching for the direction that God had for my life, trusting that he would lead me to the destination I needed. And He did.  Ever since I got here God has provided everything: first a church, then a job, then a place to live and then He led me to the school where I am studying now.  He has provided for me time and time again, sometimes uprooting me from my stability to take a new risky venture - a new home, a new job, a new church.  And yet, as I undertake this journey, I have experienced both Him and His faithfulness anew in so many ways.  Yes, the physical journey I took to come here was a pilgrimage, but it is not a pilgrimage that is over yet.  The journey I am on has a spiritual destination, only I have no idea about what that destination is.  My only hope is that in the process of the journey I will somehow experience the transcendent and come to know that which is truly real.

Introduction to a Project

For a long time I have dreamt about embarking on a long journey across my native homeland of Canada.  I want to sink myself into the history and spirituality of the myriad of people that comprises this great mosaic.  I want to be able to meet the people, talk to them, visit places of historical importance, and learn more about the common ground that unites us and defines us.  As I have contemplated this dream, I have recognized that this is not a journey to be taken lightly.  This is a journey that will require a lot of planning and foresight.  This is a journey that has the potential to stretch me to the limits of who I am as a person.  It is a journey that could stretch me to the limits of my faith.

As I pondered the particular consequences that this journey could have on my life, I came to the conclusion that this trip was not going to be some average tourist excursion.  A tourist goes to take pictures of an experience.  My trip will not allow me to be a bystander though; it will insist that I change deep down inside who I am as a person.  A pilgrim goes to be changed.  The journey I want to undertake is, at its core, a pilgrimage.

A couple of weeks ago I was talking to a woman in church and she asked me about what I was doing in school.  I began to tell her about the project I was working for in my guided study on pilgrimage.  "It's strange," I mused as I explained, "the more I read, the more I realize that people like to use the word 'pilgrimage' a lot.  They use phrases like "pilgrimage of the heart," and "pilgrimage through the Bible with my small group," or even "my pilgrimage to the Mall of America," but they all mean different things.  We like to use the word 'pilgrimage', but I think we do not always know what it means."  She pondered this statement for a moment and then said, "You're right.  Now that I think about it, I have no idea what that word means." 

I'm not ashamed to admit that I don't really know the meaning of the word either.  That is why I started this blog project.  What is pilgrimage?  What does it mean?  When I think of pilgrimage I think of a journey, but what sets the pilgrim's journey apart from every other kind of journey out there?  There are many kinds of journeys in our lives. Some of them are outward, like journeying to another country as a tourist or missionary, or taking a bus ride to go to work.  Other journeys are inward, such as the slow process of maturity from youth to adulthood, or the journey through the pain of losing a loved one.  The word 'pilgrimage' has been applied to many such inward and outward situations.  There is also pilgrimage in its more traditional sense: the medieval pilgrim travelling from Rome to Jerusalem to see the birthplace of Jesus; the visit to the shrine of some great saint; the walking of a path that many other pilgrims have walked before, in an effort to experience just even a small part of what they did.

All of the great religions of the world have held the discipline of pilgrimage to be of vital importance.  Thousands of years ago, Jewish pilgrimage was expressed in the journey to Jerusalem for the Passover meal once a year.  Buddhist pilgrimage started with the visitation to the four places marking the life and death of the great Master, and was fully expressed in the wandering lifestyle of its monks.  In Islam the Hajj, the sacred pilgrimage to Mecca once during a person’s lifetime, is recognized as one of the five main pillars of Muslim faith.  Christianity itself initially borrowed from the practices of its parent faith, Judaism, but the practice of pilgrimage grew as it began to recognize its own saints and holy places.

With all of these perspectives to sift through, I find myself recognizing that there can be no single meaning for the word “pilgrimage.”  It exists within a thousand different contexts and circumstances.  For the purposes of this blog, however, I will be directing my discussion towards the physical practice of pilgrimage as a Christian within a modern context.  I want to understand what the practice of pilgrimage means for me now, a Christian living in 21^st century Canada.  This is not to say there will be no discussion of history; not at all, for one needs to understand their past in order to have a clear perspective on the present.

My approach to this blog will be both topical and reflective.  I will be interacting with subject matter from the research I am doing, not only presenting it, but also responding to it on a personal level.  To keep up an academic style to this blog, however, I will be posting a bibliography of resources that I have read so far on this topic at the bottom of this blog - a list that may be expanded upon as time goes on.