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.