The Road Leads The Way
Pilgrimage Part 2 - Committing to the road
The idea of a pilgrimage keeps coming up for me right now. Sure, I’ve run long distances. But a pilgrimage puts those distances to shame with some people walking every day for a month or more. I know people who’ve done some of these longer pilgrimages and am in awe of them.
Right now, I’m leading a group at my congregation focusing on a pilgrimage journey as a metaphor for the life of faith. Over our four meetings we’ll discuss our spiritual journey of faith, share readings, and our own experience. We’re also deciding on a kind of pilgrimage journey for each of us to take on over the time we’re gathering and share progress and how we grow along the way.
I’ll share some reflections here from each week of our journeying group – what the journey means to me and how it’s going.
Read about the first week of pilgrimage reflections here.
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The Road Leads The Way
Going on a pilgrimage means committing to the path and letting the road lead the way. The destination is set, the address has been entered into the proverbial GPS. Now, it’s time to follow the route. And unlike using a GPS, following a pilgrimage route gives little opportunity to veer off course. When you commit to the destination, the road is the only way to get there.
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Jane Leach walked the ancient pilgrimage route along northern Spain – Camino Santiago de Compostela – and wrote of her experiences in Walking the Story: in the Steps of Saint and Pilgrims.
I’ve been drawing from Leach’s words through our group meetings. Leach reflects on being committed to the road. It’s a discipline to be solely focused on the way and following this one road. Even sights or destinations a few miles off the pilgrimage road aren’t even a possibility to the pilgrim on foot. The pilgrim has committed to the road, and everything else just falls away.
The road is in charge. The road leads the way.
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MaryAnn McKibben Dana contrasts the practices of pilgrimage and peregrination.
Dana writes of a significant peregrination: “It was the year 563. A monk named Columba received a vision to leave his native Ireland and board a rudderless boat with twelve other brothers and see where the waves and the Spirit would take them. They landed on a remote island off the west coast of Scotland, which would come to be known as Iona.”
The image of a rudderless boat is so powerful. Can you imagine setting out on the rough see, just trusting that you would get somewhere? And then the place you land becomes a famous pilgrimage site of its own for over a thousand years?
Sometimes, I can relate to the experience of a rudderless boat. Only I usually spend most of the time wishing for a rudder instead of entering into the spiritual practice of peregrination.
Drawing from her own experience on Iona as well as Celtic spiritual practices, Dana quotes Celtic teacher Dara Molloy who calls peregrination “a destiny rather than a destination.”
Tell me about it. In a pilgrimage, you set out with a specific destination in mind and commit to the road to get there. In a peregrination, your journey is to let the road lead and to look out for what the destination might be.
In both journeys, though, the path is in charge. Columba’s peregrination wasn’t on a road. My friend who’s a sailor tells me the closest nautical term is a passage. The open water lends itself to peregrination because the wind and water will take you where it will, and the passage is the way it takes you.
In Columba’s peregrination, he commits to the passage without knowing the destination. The passage gives him the destination. The road still leads the way.
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As I mentioned in my first post, there’s no better accompaniment on the journey, no better soundtrack for the road than the Songs of Ascents: Psalms 120-134.
Eugene Peterson in A Long Obedience in the Same Direction gives more background:
“These fifteen psalms were likely sung, possibly in sequence, by Hebrew pilgrims as they went up to Jerusalem to the great worship festivals. Topographically Jerusalem was the highest city in Palestine, and so all who traveled there spent much of their time ascending.”
The opening verses of Psalm 125 speak of the steadfastness we find in the road. Here, God’s unshakeable nature is compared to the unshakeable mountains that surround Jerusalem. I’m sure the pilgrims hiking up to Jerusalem thought a lot about those mountains and just how high and unmovable they were!
Psalm 125: 1-2 (CEB)
The people who trust in the Lord
are like Mount Zion:
never shaken, lasting forever.
2 Mountains surround Jerusalem.
That’s how the Lord surrounds his people
from now until forever from now!
Here again, God’s protection is on full display. How great to have mountains surrounding to protect you!
When I think about that kind of protection, my shoulders relax: I don’t have to keep scanning the horizon – I have mountains protecting me on all sides. And I can trust the road in the same way: the road knows where I’m going. If I just follow the road, I know I’ll get to my destination whether by pilgrimage or peregrination.
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How about my own pilgrimage?
So far, my own 40 mile journey* is off to a slow start. I’ve walked/run 9 miles of my 40 mile pilgrimage. I’ve noticed already how it’s making me slow down. Since these miles aren’t about hitting a certain speed to squeeze in the miles in-between things, it’s making me slow down and make the time for a walk or a jog. And instead of putting my earbuds in and pounding the pavement, I’m intentionally noticing what’s around me and yes, stopping to smell the roses.
*I chose 40 miles because it seemed like a nice Biblical number, and also something that’s doable but a bit of a stretch for me right now. This isn’t a getting-in-shape kind of thing but a deeper path to follow. I’ll continue to update on my progress, my journey, and what I’m learning along the way.
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A Long Obedience in the Same Direction by Eugene Peterson
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Beautiful and timely! Thank you!