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.