Pilgrimage Dress Rehearsals

Hail, inexhaustible treasurer of life!

- Akathist hymn to Mary

Seeing land again after seven days at sea was a welcome sight. I’ve decided to use these initial ports of call in The Azores, Spain, France, and Italy as “dress rehearsal” sites for the next parts of my pilgrimage. I’ve experimented over the past few days with dry runs to sacred sites in each port, and here are some initial observations.

• Slowing down and resting for the official start of the pilgrimage in Assisi while making these dry runs has been very helpful. Had I just left San Francisco, hopped on a plane, and began in Assisi, this pilgrimage would be disastrous. The Art of Pilgrimage: The Seeker’s Guide to Making Travel Sacred by Phil Cousineau (Conari Press, 1998) has offered a helpful perspective in this regard. Anyone can read this book and use it for pilgrimages afar and locally.

• I’m starting to understand the difference between being a tourist and a pilgrim. I have a new vision of travel, observing the ordinary in each place rather than the hot spots or the must-see sites. If travel well done is about seeing things anew, then a pilgrimage is about connecting with the life and spirit of a place anew, looking for the new thing God is doing in a place. As I’ve wandered the open-air marketplaces of Barcelona and Provence in the last two days, I’ve noticed that amidst he hubbub of the bartering and shuffling is a sacredness of life, of interchanges, of people about their daily work. My travel suddenly feels all grown up...I’m losing the childish ways of wanting to visit somewhere to collect a sighting. Instead, as an adult, I want to experience a place.

• The “Holy” is often not in the place where the long line is. I have experienced the sacred, liminal spaces so far in side chapels, in written prayer requests left by other pilgrims, in the quiet nooks and crannies of vestibules, and, yes, even outside of the four sacred walls. Why is it we so often look for the Holy in assigned spots?!?

• Because this pilgrimage is such an intimate experience, I need alone time in these sacred spaces. Being rushed, with a traveling companion or, even worse, with a tour group, doesn’t work well.

• Something I’m realizing is that I’m particularly being drawn to Mary, the Theotokos, the God Bearer, on this journey. Her images are everywhere--on the sides of houses, at high altars, on facades of buildings. Perhaps she is a part of that company of saints speaking to me?

• At each sacred place I’m visiting, lighting a candle and saying one particular intercession for a loved one in need, and then taking a picture of that candle along with an image of Mary, is helping me to focus my prayer time. I plan to send the image to the person I’ve prayed for. As well, these images help me have a “trail of prayers” to help me trace my journey.

• I’m taking less pictures than I thought I would. Each day, I’m keeping two or three images that I’m setting aside that will be my sacred images that I will hold dear.

Inspired by a fifth-century conversation between Zi Zhang and Confucius in the Analects, here are five excellent practices for those of us who travel on sacred journeys:

Practice the arts of attention and listening.
Practice renewing yourself each day.
Practice meandering toward the center of every place.
Practice the ritual of reading sacred texts.
Practice gratitude and praise-singing.