Pilgrimage: It Grounds You
Through the archetypal movements of pilgrimage, one finds deep meaning and spiritual connection through both the exilic wandering and the renunciations associated with the journey; moreover, as a result, one finds themselves deeply connected within the community of creation, and profoundly rooted and at home in their pilgrimage place.
The theme of wandering in the Christian spiritual life is one that is underscored by the centrality of pilgrimage within Hebrew and New Testament scripture narratives. God’s people wandered and in many respects, they seem to have been after a wandering Pilgrim-God.
These Divine-seeking journeys led people away from home-scapes and demanded a wilderness asceticism that placed trust solely in divine provisions while wandering and faith that the promised land (a deep belonging to a place) would ultimately be found.
God appears to prefer to be worshipped on the move rather than tied down to one place, judging by his words to Nathan the prophet when King David expressed his desire to build a permanent temple as his dwelling place, “Are you the one to build me a house to live in? I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but have been moving about in a tent and a tabernacle” (2 Samuel 7:5-6 New International Version). Jesus himself had led a wandering and unsettled existence to which his remark speaks: “the foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath nowhere to lay his head” Matthew 8:20
21st Century King James Version). Ironically, this place of promise, which was seen in the Celtic tradition as the goal of peregrinatio, ‘seeking the place of one’s resurrection,’ was only accessible through exodus and exile and in many ways, understood as martyrdom, a death to one’s self and one’s life on this earth. These early concepts of human relationship with God elevated a nomadic and dislocated sense of being. However, despite the rhetoric of exile and exclusion from this world, ironically,
There is evidence that the practice of pilgrimage, especially through a Celtic lens, grounded one deeply in a place.
While Irish monks’ approach to pilgrimage was based on a exilic biblical teaching, and specifically to God’s call to Abraham to leave his home and journey to a strange land, their Celtic constitution demanded that the natural world, and their place within it, mattered. Outdoor spirituality aligned with a wandering way and didn’t relegate things of the spirit to beyond the body. The elements, the land, the water, and the accompanying wildlife all became messengers of God and therefore were critical aspects of worship and understanding of the Divine. Even Colum Cille, or Saint Columba, while self-exiled to the Sacred Isle of Iona, practiced an engagement with the natural world that wasn’t dismissive of place as being simply a plain upon which one travels to find God. Quite the contrary, Columba became located to the particular place of Iona in such a powerful way that the landscape became imbued with legendary stories of sacred encounters and theophanies that spanned decades.
Through the archetypal movements of pilgrimage, one finds deep meaning and spiritual connection through both the exilic wandering and the renunciations associated with the journey; moreover, as a result, one finds themselves deeply connected within the community of creation, and profoundly rooted and at home in their pilgrimage place.
Go. Deliberately.
What might have started as a soft whispered call has now become a heart-throbbing desire to go and find the animus mundi--the Soul of the world! Pursue the wild place that makes your heart skip both with doubt and desire for here is where you will find your Answer covered in salty barnacles and cracked-leathered edges and God within the windswept moors and tangled trees.
“Since we are travelers and pilgrims in the world, let us ever ponder on the end of the road, that is our life, for the end of our roadway is our home.”
There is a general unsettling that is upon people these days, an agitation that is exacerbated by the daily news of political and environmental climate change. The traditional means and methods of creating and cultivating a spiritual practice that assuage this sense have gone stale. The weekly trek to church can be driven thoughtlessly as can the participation in the service’s rituals. It even seems, as the community that assembles for corporate worship are so compatible that carbon copies might seem a more appropriate categorization.
Despite these long standing traditions, there is a need to go and seek wisdom beyond the pulpit and outside of the walls! Don’t vacillate as that will only result in inactivity and indecisiveness. Resolution and an intentional move to initiate the journey activates the sacred archetypes and commences the re-membering this pilgrimage is bound to produce. You do not need God’s presence when sitting on the couch undecided.
Desperation for the divine ignites when you decide to go and commit to The Call. This is when the enlivening veriditas energy begins to flow in and through you, and synchronicities start and happen all around you.
Each of us has a unique and particular soul, yet the Western world teaches us to feed and nurture this inner-life by the most conventional and traditional of means. Pilgrimage, while as ancient as our bipedal designed bodies, is now seen as an unconventional expression in our culture. However, if we are going to give the soul the feeding it needs, we are going to need to go against the grain and go to where are souls are freed to search for, and re-discover the divine. This path of development and discovery ultimately is soul attunement, which integrates authentic expressions of our unique gifts and talents on behalf of a greater and common good as the result.
The response to The Call, which requires a threshold crossing, a leaving of sorts, is an action that leads to transformation, most often fulfillment and freedom, an alignment of our individual soul with the Divine Soul and communion with all of creation. What might have started as a soft whispered call has now become a heart-throbbing desire to go and find the animus mundi--the Soul of the world! Pursue the wild place that makes your heart skip both with doubt and desire for here is where you will find your Answer covered in salty barnacles and cracked-leathered edges and God within the windswept moors and tangled trees.