Hey Steph,
I watched this movie
last week called The Way. I highly
recommend it. You can find it on Netflix. The film is about a father journeying
on El Camino de Santiago, or the Way
of St. James, with the ashes of his son. The journey is a pilgrimage to Galicia
and the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. Santiago is the Spanish name of
James, the New Testament writer, and the cathedral is the supposed resting
place of James’s body. The film was a beautiful telling of a modern man
performing a timeless act of endurance and vulnerability. I’ve been thinking a
lot about pilgrimages recently.
Pilgrim: a person who
journeys to a place of spiritual significance for the restoration of their
soul, for strengthening of their faith, for the blessing of a miracle, or for
the deepening of their understanding
The idea of pilgrimage is a
beautiful one for me. I love the idea of setting apart an act to focus on God. I
love the symbolism of the Jewish tallit,
or prayer shawl, and its tzitzit, or
fringes, which remind wearers of the 613 commandments of the Torah. And Hindu and Buddhist Japa mala, beads used to recall the number of times a mantra is repeated while meditating. And the
Catholic thurible, a censer used to expel smoke toward heaven in representation
of prayer. And the Islamic Qur’an board used to help believers memorize
section after section of the Qur’an. The ink is scraped off again and again to
be replaced by another section of text. Tradition is that the boards grow more
sacred with each addition of text, just as the memorizer grows more sacred with
the words of the Qur’an held in their minds.
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| From top left to bottom right: Jewish Tallit with Tzitzit; Hindu and Buddhist Japa Mala, Catholic Thurible, and Islamic Qur'an Board. |
The beautiful thing about pilgrimages
is that nearly all religions practice pilgrimage of some sort. In a world full of stuff around us, it’s easy
for objects to lose their meaning, and I think that is the benefit of a
pilgrimage. While we focus on our journey, we take stride after stride in an
effort to be nearer to God. Our actions, not just an object, are set aside for
us to grow more godly, more pure, more at one with deity. The practice seems to
be somewhat archaic from our American perspective. When we think pilgrims we
think of Mayflower passengers coming
to New England or, for the more literary among us, of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and his odd group of
pilgrims. But every year some 100 million people take a pilgrimage. You can
find some great lists of pilgrimages here,
here,
and here.
And if you’re in the mood to listen to a song about a pilgrimage, check this video out.
Though the practice of pilgrimage
may seem more of an Eastern tradition, I see it in my own beliefs as a
Latter-day Saint. As part of LDS beliefs, believers make a pilgrimage of sorts
to a temple where they make commitments to God and learn more about their
spiritual selves. The journey to the temple is one in which believers set apart
a physical space to commune with God. Latter-day Saints who go to the temple
come after they’ve reached maturity and have journeyed far enough down a
spiritual and religious path to reach the destination of the temple. For these
reasons, I see the temple as a type of pilgrimage.
It makes me happy that not all the
richness of these religious pilgrimages are gone from American life; that I, too,
can set apart my strides to walk toward a place of pilgrimage and seek God in
physical actions. There’s something about this shared religious concept that
makes me feel connected across continents, religions, and time to the rest of
our human family now and throughout history. It diminishes the diameter of the
earth, and, in my opinion, that’s nearly always a good thing.
Cheers,
Amanda
What journey has changed your life? What’s the most interesting
pilgrimage you’ve learned about?
