“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.” —T. S. Eliot, Little Gidding.
I find myself returning to Phil Cousineau’s book The Art of Pilgrimage: The Seeker’s Guide to Making Travel Sacred time and again, whenever I am preparing for a trip and hoping to make the journey a pilgrimage.
Cousineau’s family traveled a great deal in his childhood. He relates how his father thought travel was good for the mind, while his mother felt it was good for the soul. Cousineau reminds us that a traveler visits a place. A pilgrim allows a place to become a part of one’s inner self. As travelers we often plan trips, and then, upon getting to our destination, experience a sense of unfulfilled expectation. This disappointment results from the way we engage with the place, and is not due to shortcomings in the site itself.
The Celts would tell us to imagine the moment of our departure as the crossing of a threshold of a door.
Cousineau also asks us to imagine our first memorable journey. What images rise up in our soul? They may be a childhood trip to the family gravesite; a visit to relatives who live on a farm; or an outing to a religious site accompanied by our favorite aunt.
Do these feelings have any connection with our lives today? The author asks us if there are some places that are sacred to us and/or our family that we long to visit? He suggests that as we uncover what we long for, we will discover who we are.
Cousineau reminds us that we will reconnect to our soul, the part of God within us, by learning to be aware and to listen to our surroundings. On a pilgrimage we are to look—not overlook; and to listen intently to everything around us. We can practice listening to music in solitude in order to get back into the habit of listening to our surroundings. Keeping a journal may help us to look more closely as we seek to describe what we are seeing.
There is an old Nigerian saying that “the day on which one starts out is not the time to start one’s preparation.” We are to begin the Sacred Journey with our journal. We are encouraged to keep sacred a silent “alone” part of our day in order to write in our journal. Our journal can help us relive our pilgrimage; but we can also make it possible to relive the journey by bringing back pictures, stones, or shells, as Anne Morrow Lindbergh writes of in Gift from the Sea.
We are also to plan ahead how we will reenergize ourselves each day. It is important to be open to serendipity, coincidences, and even distractions that may take us off our planned path. I remember a time I spent at the College of Preachers at the National Cathedral. I was walking through the Cathedral near the entrance when a large group of elementary students of around ten years old hurried in. They were distracting my silent mediation. But then I most vividly remember one young boy tilting back his head and looking up at the high vaulted ceilings and immediately shouting out, “Wow!!” To this day, I can still see and hear that young prophet.
Joanna. Joannaseibert.com