Pilgrimage

"Why don't you just drive from town to town?" I've already been asked that a number of times. "Why walk?"

Believe me, on Sunday, about an hour into that hot day's walk, I was seriously asking myself that exact same question (interspersed with other heat induced comments I won't repeat here).

But, the simple answer is that this, for me, is not just sabbatical but pilgrimage.

Many people take pilgrimages to many places. But it's not tourist travel - travel to see the sites. A pilgrimage is traveling to move your soul.

When I'm giving instruction in why we do what we do in church, I use the phrase "what I do with my body affects my soul." We are connected beings. Body and soul. What I do with my body affects my soul. Sin. Kneeling in prayer. Dancing a little jig in the soft morning sunshine. Immersing my fingers in the soft fur of a beloved pet.

Sometimes pilgrims do what seem like strange things -walk up long hard stairways on their knees; get up in the very wee hours of the morning and walk up a mountain barefoot before the sun comes up. In the light of what some people do with their bodies to help take their souls on pilgrimage, simply walking seems like a minor thing!

I walk, because I'm on pilgrimage. My body slows down and watches, and my soul does too. I ponder and pray and listen. And, surprisingly to me who knows backpacking and walking as something to do away from people and roads and cars, my walk along the road today has been reflective and grounding and even calming, amidst the roar and whoosh of the passing cars and trucks.

So I walk.

Pilgrimages often have destinations that are generally recognized as sacred or holy - celtic thought refers to these as 'thin' places - where many have experienced the intersection of the mundane with the divine. Places where the veil that keeps us from experiencing the divine is thinned to such an extent that the divine breaks through.

My own pilgrimage is into our streets and our towns. Into homes and taverns and deli counters. How do we recognize the 'thinness' of all these places? How do we learn to live there? To inhabit this world in such a way that WE become thin places that help allow the divine to touch the lives of others.

So I walk on. On pilgrimage. My soul's journey.

(Written at a lovely little hot dog stand in Wilton, on my way from Peterborough to Milford.)