praying with our feet: pilgrimage

PRAY ALL WAYS: Praying with our Feet on Pilgrimage

NOTE: We're on a wee post-pandemic pilgrimage to a place that has nourished us often during our days in ministry. Today's live-streaming, therefore, was not done at my home setting, but on the road. Here are my worship notes with a link to the Facebook video here: https://fb.watch/6oBqZsO4-R/

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The Trappist visionary and mystic, Thomas Merton, understood that “the geographical pilgrimage is a symbolic acting out of our interior journey.” Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel taught that “faith is not the clinging to a shrine but an endless pilgrimage of the heart where the road to the sacred al-ways leads us through the secular.” And J.R.R. Tolkien wrote that: “Not all who wander are lost.” I have discovered that by nature, disposition, training, and choice I am a wandering pilgrim with the soul of a Celtic monk.

+ If you participated in our extended Advent series, you’ll recall that Celtic monks, unlike more linear seekers, practiced a pilgrimage of wandering without specific goals or destinations. By following the thread of synchronicity in their lives they believed God would lead them into places of personal resurrection and renewal.

+ That SO rings true for me as ordinary shopping trips become a pilgrimage of discovering beauty in unlikely places, wisdom in simple conversations, and opportunities to share a bit of tenderness in familiar settings. The older I get, the more these outings become holy ground where the ordinary becomes extraordinary just like Sister Joan Chittister said.

Fr. Ed Hayes calls this entering places with a sacramental physicality: praying with our feet – body prayers that incarnate our quest for authenticity, nourish our hunger for spiritual depth, encourage our openness to God’s presence all around us and support us as live into Christ’s call to trust the sacred spontaneously, simply, and quietly like a child at rest on her mother’s breast. Some Zen masters call this caring consciously for each moment with the same lavish tenderness you’d bestow upon a newborn. To be sure, praying with our feet is an acquired way of being – it takes practice – and when I thought about how I learned to do it I was taken back to 1968 when my high school church youth group began our annual summer mission caravan trips.

Our pastor, Sam Fogal, told us that it was time to see what our faith tradition looked like in action. So, in late June, some 30 teens and our adult advisors left suburban Connecticut to visit and en-counter a variety of church related mission projects. The first year took us to a Pennsylvania Dutch residential farm that was an orphanage for adolescent boys and girls; a community organizing proj-ect in Appalachian coal country; the Church of the Savior’s coffeehouse outreach to countercultural artists in Washington, DC; and a once all-white, German Evangelical and Reformed congregation that was now an inter-racial community of faith in a transitional urban neighborhood in Baltimore.

+ It was on that pilgrimage, just two months after Dr. King’s assassination, that I sensed a call to ministry – and when I heard Aretha sing on the radio during our trip home: you better THINK ‘bout what you’re trying to do to me, O Freedom – I took it to be the Holy Spirit sharing a gospel choir confirmation with me.

+ Our second caravan in 1969 found our crew in an old, rented, yellow school bus schlepping our way from New England through the Deep South. Our destination was the Back Bay Mission of the United Church of Christ in Biloxi, Mississippi. Along the way, we slept in church basements each night, heard about life on the street from local civil rights activists, and prac-ticed praying vespers at the close of the day. In Mississippi, we painted and helped repair some of the Mission’s buildings in the morning, participated in peace and justice Bible studies in the evening, and went swimming each afternoon.

As I thought about my early experiences with pilgrimage, I was reminded of how formative they were for me: at an impressionable age, my church made a commitment to put me in contact with the wider world of action and contemplation – and it was life-changing. So much so that I incorporated pilgrimage into the work I did with young people after ordination. In the early 80s, we took 50 youth and their parents to Soviet Russia in pursuit of people-to-people peace-making. A few years later we replicated that trip for adults marking the millennium of Christianity in Russia and Ukraine. Other youth trips included music-making mission events, border trips in the desert Southwest, and even a confirmation class encounter with the same coffee house ministry of the Church of the Savior to artists in Washington, DC that changed my life. The more I participated in pilgrimages, the more Merton’s insight spoke to me: a geographical pilgrimage is a symbolic acting out of our interior journey. A catalogue of my outward spiritual sojourns suggests a life-long quest to find the shifting balance between the inward/outward journey.

+ In seminary our young family took up residence in Costa Rica to study and pray with liberation theologians; the following summer I travelled to Mississippi to discern if my ministry would include community organizing or traditional work in a parish.

+ Four different times I’ve been on peace-pilgrimages to Soviet Russia; after 25 years of ordained ministry, we made a pilgrimage to the island of Iona to worship with that community – and along the way took two equally holy side trips to pay homage to the Beatles in Liverpool and my ancestors in the wee village of Lumsden outside of Aberdeen, Scotland.

+ Di and I regularly made an annual pilgrimage to the Ghost Ranch retreat center which always included time for prayer at the chapel of healing in Chimayo, New Mexico. Early in our relationship, we spent a full month wandering sacred sites in the desert Southwest to sort out the wisdom of the Spirit to grieve and celebrate the end of one way of being and the possibilities of another.

And nearly six years ago to the day, we prayerfully travelled to jazz liturgy centers in the US as part of a sabbatical that eventually took us to Montreal where I discerned that just as I was once called into local church ministry, now I was being called out. As a result, I’ve been traveling regularly over the past five years to the L’Arche community of Ottawa, Ontario where my heart’s been opened through participation in community life and sharing worship in that sacred place. The point of all this autobiography is to affirm what Lacy Clark Ellman, spiritual director and author, has learned: pilgrimage can take many forms. Some are traditional, others are highly personal, but all awaken us to the presence of God beyond the confines of our regular boundaries and borders. She writes:

We are all on journeys that take us beyond our borders and inform our spirituality. Sometimes our journeys are literal, but we journey in many other ways as well. We journey through careers, relationships, ups and downs, highs and lows. We journey through obstacles and toward accomplishments. We journey through seasons of life and formation. We journey from birth through childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and eventually death. And as we traverse this landscape, we all ask the same essential questions, whether we know it (consciously) or not: Who am I? Who is God? Where is God? What is the meaning of my life—In the bigger picture? In the day-to-day? What makes me come alive? What do I long for? These are sacred questions, and when we ask them with intention and actively engage the search that burns within us, our journeys are transformed. These sacred questions that guide us today have been the shared questions of humanity for thousands of years.

Ellman suggests that there are at least ten different ways to actively pray with our feet in pilgrimage. So let me first summarize her insights, then add some nuance from Fr. Ed Hays, before wrapping things up with some rubrics I have found to be true in my journey. As you may have surmised, praying with our feet is my preferred form of prayer: it is earthy, incarnational, profoundly personal yet always grounded in the mystery of God’s love and grace. Each of the following types of pilgrimage are pregnant with blessings and wisdom and I want to encourage you to try them out if you haven’t already done so, ok?

First there is the traditional pilgrimage: a journey to a well-known Sacred site. The most significant traditional destinations in the Christian realm are the Holy Land, Rome, and El Camino de Santiago de Compostela. Holy places of healing like Lourdes and Fatima are often places for a traditional Christian pilgrimage. Fr. Ed notes that going to these places opens us “to the grace and energy that has spoken to people throughout the ages… At these shrines, many have felt physical, emotional, and spiritual cleansing and cures.” Other sacred sites for other faith traditions include Mecca for Muslims, Kumbh Mela for Hindus, Bodh Gaya for Buddhists, and the Western Wall for Jews.

Second is the ancestral pilgrimage. “We all come from somewhere,” Ellman writes, “and as we seek to know more of ourselves and God, it’s likely that a time will come when some of the answers to our questions lie in the past, in lands that our ancestors once called home.” She adds that “ancestral research and pilgrimage reveal more than a place from which our ancestors came—they reveal a story in which we are participants. And this story is far greater than we ourselves because it not only tells us where we come from, it can also inform and inspire where we are to go.” When one of our daughters returned home from Scotland, she said with a sly smile: “It was so nice to be in a place that recognized our last name as normal!” I know that when we were on sabbatical, and quite by accident found ourselves standing on the same steps where my father had once held me during his graduation 63 years earlier, I felt like Moses when he stumbled upon holy ground at the burning bush. Taking stock of our roots is a vital form of pilgrimage.

So, too sabbaticals: a third type of pilgrimage. These mostly take place in academic settings, but the Hebrew Scriptures teach that the land was the first to experience sabbatical when it lay fallow and wild for a full year every seven years. A fourth type of pilgrimage is the solidarity pilgrimage: made to learn from and experience the world through the eyes of another. In this we give up a measure of control and seek to humble ourselves, broaden our perspective, and respond with compassionate action. There is a pilgrimage of personal or cultural significance – like our trip to the birthplace of the Beatles – or my commitment to visit City Lights Books when-ever I am in San Francisco, for it is the home of the beat movement and their critical cultural critique of bourgeois values. I made a point to get back there just this past May while visiting my brother in North Beach.

“What ignites your fire in ways that are unique to you” is at the core of this pilgrimage that invites us to trust “the spark of creativity and go deeper into the sacred.” There are nature pilgrimages that let us step out of the busyness and into the wild solitude of creation. Threshold pilgrimages marking our journey from one season of life to another in ways that resemble rites of passage. Discovery pilgrimages that open us to new lands, peoples, customs, and insights. Simple retreats that can become mini-pilgrimages to help us care for body and soul. And finally what Ellman calls the interior pilgrimage and Fr. Ed names a rocking chair pilgrimage: this is the inward spiritual journey of the pilgrim. “It is the foundation and inspiration for all other journeys… It is the journey of a lifetime, the journey of a season, the journey of a day, and the journey of a moment. For when we forget that we are on an interior pilgrimage, we go off course.” The interior pilgrimage is the journey that reconnects our outward experiences to our inner sacramental practices. Fr. Ed writes in his little guidebook, Pray ALL Ways, that: 

We don’t have to go to deserts or shrines… Could we not begin our pilgrimage to the place of our birth or that of our parents or grandparents? Our personal heritage is holy… for God has touched our lives most strongly at these places and at these special times of birth, family, and death. In a society that tends to forget its connection with the past because of busyness and mobility, a family or threshold pilgrimage could bring a sense of direction and focus to our lives.

Each and all these journeys are ways we can pray with our feet on pilgrimage. The singer-song-writer, Carrie Newcomer, captures this wisdom in her poem: “Because There Is Not Enough Time.”

I used to think that because life is short I should do more. Be more.

Squeeze more into every day. I’d walk around with a stick ruler with increasing numbers as the measure of fullness. 

But lately I’ve sensed a different response to a lack of time.

Felt in my bones the singular worth of each passing moment.

Perhaps the goal is NOT to spend this day power skiing atop an ocean of multitasking.

Maybe the idea is to swim slower – surer –

 dive deeper and really look around.

There is a difference between a life of width and a life of depth.

To recognize consciously and sacramentally the difference between a life of width and a life of depth, Fr. Ed suggests some spiritual practices we might incorporate into our exploration of pilgrimage. “We close the door to our home,” he writes, “the door to what is familiar – to all our possess-ions and goods – we say goodbye to family and friends and walk away with the idea that we may never return for we have now placed ourselves in the hands of God.” G.K. Chesterton once stated that the purpose of all trips is to come home – but wisdom keepers teach that on pilgrimage the purpose is to come home with new eyes to see and a new heart to feel and understand our connection to God and one another.

I think the poet, R.S. Thomas is spot-on when he tells us: The point of travelling is not to arrive but to return home laden with pollen that you shall work up Into honey the mind feeds on. “If we return home just as when we left, then the pilgrimage has failed. Perhaps it was really more of a pious vacation where shrines could just as well have been nightclubs.” To guard against this, pil-grims are invited to practice the following to keep the prayers of our feet on track.

· First, travel simply: only take what is essential...

· Second, say good-bye to what is familiar and be open to the unknown: this is practicing trusting God more than self…

· Third, treat the journey like an adventure: it is essential to have fun and rest as well as pray and explore…

· Fourth, search out the joy with childlike awe: a pilgrimage is NOT a burden or work and never an act that makes us grim…

· Fifth, give yourself time to see, smell, taste and feel the new world: this is contemplation at its most rich. Eating new foods, taking in new music, art, culture, listening to the stories of those in new places is all a part of how we pray with our feet… where is there beauty? Taste and see the goodness of the Lord…

· Sixth, be aware of the challenges – even the dangers. Trusting God is crucial, so, too making wise choices. It is one thing to honor the Lord our God with openness and love, it is another to test God to do for us what we must do for ourselves. You may recall the Lenten stories of Jesus in the desert and Satan’s temptations… On our journeys there will always be risks to be assessed – such is part of the discernment – and acquisition of wisdom. Psalm 23

· And seventh, trust God and look for the holy. There is a passage in Hebrews that invites us to be kind to strangers because in so doing some have entertained angels unaware. We know the story of Abraham and Sarah who encounter three angels in disguise who disclose God’s promise of a child after they have been welcomed into the safety of their tent and fed with true hospitality. (Tell the story of “angel” who helped us get a fan belt and then disappeared.)

If we intentionally use these practices on our occasional external pilgrimages, we will train our-selves to discern the mystical and sacred wisdom in our everyday, quotidian lives, too. In another of his books, A Pilgrim’s Almanac, Fr. Ed writes that we are everyday pilgrims in three ways:

· First, from the womb to the tomb we are on a holy journey…

· Second, because we come from God and are always journeying back to our Sacred Source, our key life events are sacramental times…

· And third, as an earthling, we are traveling in space at a speed of 67,000 miles per hour in the Earth’s ancient 365 day pilgrimage around the sun…

“Here is the road,” wrote the poet, Arlene Levine, “the light comes and goes then returns again. Be gentle with your fellow travelers as they move through the world of stone and stars whirling with you yet every one alone. The road waits. Do not ask questions but when it invites you to dance at daybreak, say yes. Each step is the journey; a single note the song.”

I have come to trust that when we incorporate into our everyday chores and outings the practices and insights learned on our outward pilgrimages, then even a trip to the corner convenience shop or hardware store can become a sacramental expedition. But as is so often the case, I must ready myself for the journey – and here are a few practical ways I do that:

· I have come to expect that each day holds a surprise for me…

· I must give myself adequate time to do ordinary chores: without time I’m too stressed out to see and respond to surprises…

· That means each day I try to do only one or two things rather than multitask…

· I watch and listen – I ask other’s about their story…

· And then I try to consciously return thanks to God with what Fr. Ed taught me is a berakah prayer: Blessed are you, Lord God, for…

Our tradition, like every spiritual path, anticipates and encourages us to learn how to pray with our feet: The ancient Psalmist sang, “I rejoiced when I heard them say let us go up to the house of the Lord” in Psalm 122. It is a hymn of anticipation marking one of the three annual pilgrimages made to the Temple in Jerusalem. The priests who edited Deuteronomy wrote in chapter 16: “Three times in a year (you) shall appear before the Lord your God in the place which God chooses, at the Feast of Unleavened Bread and at the Feast of Weeks and at the Feast of Booths, and they shall not appear before the Lord empty-handed.”
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph – and other faithful souls from the village – regularly went to Jerusalem for the Feast of Passover as Luke 2 reminds us. And the prophet Isaiah made a point of reminding ancient Israel: There will come a time when MANY people will choose to join you as you go up the mountain of the Lord (in Jerusalem) for prayer…You will have songs as in the night when you keep the festival, and gladness of heart as when as you march to the sound of the flute…

It is a grand, liberating, creative, and embodied way to pray. As the old TV commercial used to say: TRY it, you’ll LIKE it.