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