Life as a Pilgrim

Yesterday was my sabbath, the day I practice doing as much nothing as I possibly can, so as to rest in God’s presentness and to “test the premise that I am worth more than what I can produce—that even if I spent one whole day being good for nothing I would still be precious in God’s sight.”[1]

I say practice both because it’s a discipline – an exercise one does regularly, like wrestling, singing or meditation – for the purpose of growing in “skill” (hence the lower-case “s”), and because I’m not especially good at either doing nothing or making time for doing it.

One thing I did was to work on my “Life Abundant” list (more on this another time). Then, I turned to the next page in the black and white composition book and started a Bucket List. I'd made one of these a few years ago, and I thought it might be interesting to make another and compare the two. Yet after writing four goals, I couldn’t think of another. I wondered what that means about me.

On sabbath days, I’m often at loose-ends, so at this point, I pulled out a book that’s been on my shelf about five years. I bought it on a particularly blustery day when Kay and I were camping near Bayfield. We'd gone to the Apostle Islands Booksellers where I bought a pair of books. I liked the cover art for The Art of Pilgrimage, and its topic intrigued me but, until yesterday, I’d never made it past the Introduction. 

I’m sabbathing (and at loose-ends), and I’m preparing for a trip that self-identifies as a pilgrimage (more on that one another day, too) and this book is on the reading list. It seemed like a thing to do.

Skip ahead about an hour. The Introduction is behind me. Among other things, I’ve read that pilgrimage is “a transformative journey to a sacred center.”[2] I've begun to learn things about the nature of travel, about the search for the sacred all around us, and about myself.

I now see that my flight to Navajoland after graduating from college was at least somewhat a pilgrimage. Backpacking the high country of Yosemite was also pilgrimage, thought I recognized neither by this name at the time. Also pilgrimage was standing in awe and trembling in front of a pair of Gutenberg bibles in Mainz, and in that stairwell in Florence gazing at that other Pieta (The Deposition).

When you're someone who is eagerly curious, you will seldom, if ever, be bored. Yesterday, the topic was pilgrimage. What will it be tomorrow?

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[1] From Barbara Brown Taylor’s An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith, edited to 1st-person
[2] Phil Cousineau, The Art of Pilgrimage: The Seeker's Guide to Making Travel Sacred.