Pilgrimage

jayree said:

Today I was reading "The Life You Save May Ne Your Own. An American Pilgrimage." by Paul Elie. It is a combined biography of Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day, Flannery O'Connor and Walker Percy. (Richard Rodrigues calls them 'the best Catholic American writers of the twentieth century'). At the beginning Elie defines his idea of pilgrimage as ...

"A pilgrimage is a journey undertaken in the light of a story. A great event has happened; the pilgrim hears the reports and goes in search of the evidence, aspiring to be an eyewitness. The pilgrim seeks not only to confirm the experience of others firsthand but to be changed by the experience.
Pilgrims often make the journey in company, but each must be changed individually; they must see for themselves, each with his or her own eyes. And, as they return to ordinary life the pilgrims must tell others what they saw, recasting the story in their own terms."

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@jayree thank you for sharing this description.

This has been a common topic or question over the years - what is a real pilgrim or what is a pilgrimage? I can appreciate this definition; thank you for sharing it. Also, I was not familiar with this book - thank you for mentioning it also.

As is common knowledge, the Camino de Santiago de Compostela has been a sacred pilgrimage for hundreds, a thousand years. Prior to the Christain pilgrimage, it was walked by others of other faiths. The point is that the Way has been a sacred path for a very long time. Each step we take on the Camino is a step through time and history. Thousands and thousands of pilgrims have walked where we walk today. How many tears have been spilled along this path we tread? Can we measure the joy that has been sought and/or found? If nothing else, this knowledge teaches me to listen, to be still at times along the Way and one may hear the steps of all those pilgrims putting one foot in front of the other, going the same way, and feeling so many similar things we do on our Camino today.

You have a big idea to walk the Camino. Two days out from Roncesvalles you are sore, disilluisioned, and lonely for your common comforts. But, the idea that put you on the trajectory doesn't die in two days, Facing the challenge of the road is every obstacle you may have never considered before. What pulls you up that long climb? Where is the inspiration that steels your resolve? An undefinable element is belief, not easily understood or explained. Each of us finds what inspires and lifts our souls in our own way.