Pilgrimage

In preparing for my Sabbatical this summer, I’ve been thinking a lot about the Christian concept of pilgrimage.

I read this book several years ago called, The Way Is Made by Walking. This was written by a guy who walked the entire El Camino de Santiago – an ancient, but also very current pilgrimage in northern Spain. It ends in the cathedral of Saint James.

Another author, John Philip Newell, writes about an altogether different type of pilgrimage, the ancient Celtic practice of peregrination – which is simply a pilgrimage taken without knowing for sure the final destination. You just set out!

He writes, “(Peregrination) often involved setting sail from one’s homeland as a pilgrim, from what was known and comfortable to what was unknown and challenging. (It) was sometimes described as ‘seeking the place of one’s resurrection,’ leaving the familiar in order to experience new birth, dying to the boundaries and security of home to be alive to what one had never imagined before.”

Of course, a pilgrimage does not always involve a physical journey, does it? It has long been a metaphor for the journey of faith. Have you ever had the sense that God might be calling you to undergo a pilgrimage of some sort?

Perhaps you are being called to go to a deeper place within your faith. Or perhaps, you’re being called to heal or to transform what has hardened or been wounded within you. Or it could be a calling to engage the world creatively in some new way… to grow or to serve or to give to meet the needs that God has placed on your heart.

And maybe that is sparked by hearing somebody else’s story. Maybe it is being moved by something we’ve heard or seen. Or you may have a calling arise out of a deep sense of loss and felt a need to respond – a moment when you think: Somebody should do something about this… Or, I have to do something to make sense of this or to redeem this.

My prayer for each of you, whatever stage of life you are in, is that you would ever be open to God’s calling. May you ever be open to whatever pilgrimage of body, mind, or soul God may lead you on next.

Let us pray: We thank you O God, for your calling on our lives. May our dreams and longings ever be in tune with yours. We ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.