Why Pilgrimage

By Matthew Neville

Movement, journey, travel, pilgrimage,

To be human is to move, from the earliest times we have been a people who travel; the urge to explore new places and new peoples has always been part of what it means to be fully alive. So often finding ourselves at a deep level requires an encounter with somewhere new, an experience which challenges us to think differently.

Of course this movement isn’t always chosen, today many people travel because they are refugees, or migrants searching for a safer or more secure life. These journeys can be struggle, involving painful goodbyes, lack of welcome, and physical danger.

Throughout the biblical story we constantly meet characters who journey; from Abraham, to Joseph, to Moses, and to Elijah. The overarching biblical narrative involves the story of a nation (Israel) which keeps moving, to Egypt in slavery, to Canaan through the desert, to Assyria and Babylon as slaves, to Palestine as returning exiles.

Jesus embodies this story of his ancestors. He moves. To Bethlehem and Egypt as a baby, to Jerusalem as a child. Then as an adult he traverses Galilee, Samaria, the Decapolis, Syrophoenicia, and ultimately Judea. Jesus is constantly on the move, never seeming to stop anywhere for more than a few days.

Over the centuries since, Christians have kept moving, taking faith with them to every corner of the earth.

Pilgrimage can to some extent be understood as the sacralisation of movement. It sits in complimentary tension with stillness. There are times to be still and silent, there are times to move.

Pilgrimage is a form of prayer, it involves the whole body, mind, body, emotion and spirit. When we walk we can place ourselves in the presence of God just as much as we might do in a church or chapel. We might equally say that prayer is a form of static pilgrimage.

Pilgrimage is about being out in the real world, it is not a retreat, it is not an activity which removes us from the world. On the contrary as pilgrims we pass through the world. So an essential part of pilgrimage is encounter with the world. We see new places, we meet new people we have never met before.

Pilgrimage gets us out of ourselves, it challenges us. If we choose to travel then we’re challenged to solidarity with those who don’t have a choice. We will meet bodily challenges, blisters, pulled muscles, sunburn, cold, rain, exhaustion; and maybe emotional challenges, homesickness, anxiety, overwhelm. All of this is to be expected, we walk as human beings, not spirits. Maybe the challenges are in themselves a healthy reminder that we are human.

Inherent in pilgrimage is a practice of simplicity. By necessity we lack all of the luxuries of home. We exist with less. In receiving hospitality we are required to embrace a mindset of acceptance, the food we’re offered might not be what we want, the bed we’re given to sleep in might not be as comfortable as that we have at home, even the brand of tea we drink just might not taste quite right.

Quite a picture of misery I am painting here?

No, not at all.

My experiences of pilgrimage, despite challenges, have been of immense joy. A time of increased vulnerability which has opened me, and those with me, up to deep sharing. A time for me to get to know both myself and those with whom I share the road.

The destination isn’t as important as the journey, we pilgrimage because the act of being a pilgrim is the point, not the arrival. When we stop part of us keeps on walking.