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.