Later this year, Kathy and I will be supporting several groups of retreatants in experiences of pilgrimage. These thoughts were initially written with those retreatants in mind but I share them here for anyone who wants to consider how the spiritual life in the Christian tradition is shaped like a pilgrimage.
My dear fellow pilgrims,
Pilgrimage is the metaphor for the spiritual life (and for life in general) with which I resonate most fully.
Since the beginning, pilgrimage has been an element of the Christian experience whether that involved walking the Holy Land, dreaming up our own Bethlehems and Jerusalems, or going on the great spiritual odyssey of the soul with its maker.
For the purposes of this little letter, my definition of pilgrimage is
traveling with God to God.
At Epiphany, I think of the first pilgrims: the magi.
They saw signs of the divine and followed to the house of the young king Jesus.
But really, the shepherds came first from a field nearby and were put on their path by holy angels who had, themselves, traveled from Heaven to proclaim the good news.
And before the magi and the shepherds and those angels, there were Mary and Joseph who travelled most literally with God to meet the Messiah in Bethlehem.
And before that journey, Mary made her way to Elizabeth, and was, herself, the sacred space in which God was reconciling the world to himself.
And before that, Gabriel came to her.
And before that,
and before that,
and before that . . .
Abraham was called by God to travel with him and to him.
(That's the beginning of the genealogy in the Gospel According to Matthew)
And even before that, Adam.
(That's the beginning of the genealogy in the Gospel According to Luke.)
Adam was already in the place of encounter with God.
But something happened and their communion was broken.
Barred from the Garden, Adam wandered into the world, without God, in a sense, and always at least a little bit away from God. Adam's path had became an anti-pilgrimage.
So all our pilgrimages involve a turning, indeed a re-turning: a turning back to travel with God and to God, a movement toward sacred spaces of encounter and communion.
It is a blessing to know that, even with our first steps on the road of pilgrimage, we are already on the re-turn trip!
