People: Different Every Time

A core component of pilgrimage is "communitas" the web of relations in which the pilgrim journeys.
There are one's fellow pilgrims, organized perhaps by the same leader, church or tour group.  There are those pilgrims with whom one is not formally connected, but who are going to the same destination.   Then there are the fellow travelers; seat mates on an airplane, commuters sharing the same bus, pedestrians along the sidewalk. Finally, there are those service personnel without whom the  project would be impossible:  drivers, translators, waiters, pilots, bathroom attendants, flight attendants, guides, etc.

This communal aspect to pilgrimage is something I resist.  I'm basically an introvert, and jealous of my personal space and time. I arrive at a high mountain lake and consider it overrun if there is but one other party there.  I wander off from the group, sometimes deluding myself that I can still hear the guide on my headset AND take in the wonders he is passing by and I am miraculously discovering on my own.  I indulge in the oldest American spiritual sin, that of rugged individualism.  "God helps those who help themselves."

Yet it is through other people that I have had the most profound experiences.  Other people crack me out of my easy assumptions faster than anything else.  I found after my Turkey trip that it was the unexpected encounters that later kept me awake at night.  Sometimes it was trying to get my head around radically different understandings of life, theology and politics.  Sometimes it has been praying for their safety as the political situation in Turkey has deteriorated.  Sometimes it is just sheer wonder that such fascinating people and I crossed paths.

I'd be remiss to talk only in general terms about the people.  There was the goatherd who, despite the failure of Google Translate, let me photograph him and his animals.  There was the retired English widow with her 22 year old very pretty Turk boy-toy zooming from bar to bar on his motor scooter in the dead of night. The English tourist whose partner had long since gone to bed after a long day of longing on the beach, who, observing my nervous carefulness with my drink and my hypervigilance of strange situations told me "Get yer bloody head outta yer ass!  And buy me a drink!"  There was the highly educated polyglot civil servant who, while counting himself an agnostic, detailed me the story of Lut (Lot) and the Koran's anti gay take on the Sodom story, mixed with his sadness at only falling in love with unavailable married straight men.

Of quite a different impact are those one intentionally journeys with.  I must confess to not having paid due attention to them.  Perhaps it was knowing that it was only a temporary set of relationships that made me avoid deep connection. Probably some of it was my introversion, where holding myself apart seems like the path of emotional safety.  Yet they provided structure around the journey.  Some was as simple as my roommate putting up with me drying sink-laundered clothes all over the balcony.  Others were as profound as Marianne Borg asking when I came out of Goreme's Dark Church,
"What did you think?"  "I'm speechless, " I replied.  "Struck mute."  Her simple question helped me crystallize an otherwise overwhelming experience.  Companions help us see, help us articulate, help us attend to what I'm experiencing.  And help find the right airline gate and the nearest bathroom!

So on this trip:  I commit to pay attention to the people among whom God places me.  I've worked to set up opportunities to meet with gay people, Israeli and Palestinian, with a particular focus on those who are maintaining their religious identity (Jewish, Muslim, or Christian).  I commit to be present to those in my class cohort, as wildly diverse as it appears we are (Catholic and Protestant, from very conservative to radically liberal).  Not to pre-judge anyone by labels, but to let the relationship between us unfold naturally.

So God of Jesus, the one who welcomed all:  give me an open heart to those you bring my way.  Amen.

PLACE.... An Elusive Goal

The place seems pretty straight-foward -- pilgrimages go to a sacred place, a place where the divine and human seem particularly close together.  The places are often associated with a thick set of sacred narratives -- the acts of prophets, saints or Christ; the story of God's people as they have struggled to live faithfully; stories of prior pilgrims approaching the same place.  Sometimes the place doesn't look like much, and sanctified imagination is needed to reconstruct the ruins into a once living community.   Sometimes the place is where something is honored or memorialized, even if the odds of it being the correct historical location are nil.  Yet the faith of communities have sacralized even a 'wrong' place.  (I think of Mary's house near Ephesus as a prime example of this.  The beautiful gardens, chapels and grounds, hallowed by Christian and Muslim prayers, was only identified in the 19th century -- by vision of a nun in Germany!  Yet the Spirit is thick in the place.)

Virgin Mary's House, Hills above Ephesus

 
And many places are layered, even contested -- the same site that was once a Canaanite temple became an Israelite high place, then a Christian shrine, a Muslim mosque, a Crusader church, a mosque again, and the current edifice was built by the Franciscans in the 19th century and completely remodeled in 1958!  Or the place is even currently contested, as Abraham's tomb in Hebron.  Or shared, as the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.  So what is before your eyes, the goal as it were of pilgrimage, is not necessarily (ever?) what one expects.  Place is not so simple after all.

The very idea of pilgrimage places is challenging.   After all, don't I believe that God is everywhere, that God is as present to me as my own breath?  Couldn't I throw a dart at a map, follow where it lands and go on a pilgrimage to 3rd and Elm in town, and experience God every bit as fully as if I'm kneeling at an ancient altar?

I think this is why pilgrimage involves the other two aspects -- the journey and the people.  Journey takes the place out of the ordinary flow of our lives, and gives it intention.  And the people provide a tapestry of narratives that go far beyond what I myself might bring to a place.  I'll explore these further in subsequent posts.

ABOUT THIS BLOG

I've always loved travel.  Backpacking and camping trips were one of the highlights of my childhood.  Two college summers doing missionary work in France -- and hitch-hiking solo to the Alps, backpacking and then hostling across Switzerland and Austria rate as one of my greatest adventures.  Subsequent years have brought journeys as diverse as a conference in Australia, Caribbean and Alaska cruises, and vacations in Canada, London,  Paris, California, D.C, and New Orleans. 

But in recent years, there has been dawning a more spiritual edge to my travels.  I've always wanted to see the sacred places -- the cathedrals, museums, and wild peaks.  Some places I've returned to again and again precisely because they have been places that let me feel closer to God.  Cottonwood in the John Muir Wilderness, Sequoia National Park, Ring Lake Ranch in Wyoming, and Ghost Ranch in New Mexico have become prime pilgrimage goals for me.  Then in 2014, I had the incredible privilege to go on a structured pilgrimage to Turkey with Marcus and Marianne Borg, and Dom and Sarah Crossan.  This was the first that the language and literature of pilgrimage really started coming into focus for me. 

Now I am on the eve of departing for a far longer pilgrimage, to the Holy Land.  I will spend a month with a cohort of pilgrims based at the Tantur Ecumenical Institute in Jerusalem  www.tantur.org.  The program is particularly attractive to me because it is a mix of classroom instruction and field trips to holy sites.  It is also attractive because of the ecumenical, interfaith, and multicultural makeup of faculty and fellow pilgrims. While operated by the University of Notre Dame, on land owned by the Vatican since the 19th century, Christian, Jewish and Muslim voices come together; Israelis and Palestinians enter dialogue; the very traditional and the radically liberal sit at supper together.  When my month there is done, I will have a week on my own to explore sites in Jordan.  This whole pilgrimage will be just shy of six weeks long. 

In subsequent posts, I want to set the stage for what I expect to unfold in these coming weeks.  Pilgrimage is a dynamic relationship, unique in each incarnation, woven from the place, the journey and the people involved.  I'll explore each of these:  Place, Journey, and People.  This analysis of the essentials of pilgrimage shaped the title of this blog.  I hope that this helps me make sense of the experince, even as I hold open space in my heart for the unexpected.  For pilgrimage by its very nature cannot be prescribed, it must be received.  I pray that I am receptive!

 Tantur, Main Gate