As I write this, I am freshly returned from a whirlwind of a week in the North of England. During this trip, I visited many locations deep in meaning, whether for reasons of faith, history, or beauty. So even though it was not a true pilgrimage, in that the whole trip was not spent to and from a particular monument or shrine, it still felt like one. So over the next couple weeks, I thought it would be interesting to reflect on my trip as a pilgrimage. Today I’ll start by reintroducing the concept.
I first discussed pilgrimage here way back in 2018 as part of my long series exploring different sacred practices. There I defined pilgrimage simply as “a journey whose destination has spiritual significance,” and listed three reasons why we might undertake one: 1. Intellectual curiosity; 2. As an expression of unity; and 3. “To step out of ourselves in order to encounter God…” (quoting former Roman Catholic pope Benedict XVI). (I think the post holds up, so if you’re at all interested, please give it a read.)
These three reasons work just as well with non-specifically-religious pilgrimages, since experiences of beauty and history are in their own ways encounters with the Transcendent that pop the bubbles of our mundane day-to-day existence and take us “out of ourselves” and reveal to us just how small our own personal ideas and dramas are compared to the bigger world around us. These senses are only heightened when that beauty and history has religious significance, places where God has been manifest in particularly vivid ways, or where generations of pilgrims have gone before us.
This universality is why pilgrimage of some kind or another has emerged across different faiths and cultures, from ancient Jewish pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the high holidays to the Muslim Hajj, the Christian Camino de Santiago, Buddhist pilgrimage to sites associated with the life of the Buddha, and Anishinaabe pilgrimage to Mnidoo Mnising (Manitoulin Island). It’s just something that seems inherent to the human experience.
And so, with all this in mind, I look forward to bringing you along on my recent travels and exploring this theme of pilgrimage with you further.
Matthew Root 