Why Pilgrimage?

My church will invoke blessings for me tomorrow, just 4 days before I depart on my pilgrimage in Spain.  They will offer beatitudes for my equipment and body, recite the prayer from the pilgrim's mass, and offer a prayer of blessing I wrote in the "Jewish style" over the prayers from friends and family that I take to Spain.  I have a chance to reflect on "Why pilgrimage?"  Here's what I've got so far: 

If my pilgrimage were simply a long walk in an exotic place, it would merely be a fine, fine, wild hair in the wind vacation.  If my pilgrimage were simply 7 weeks off from the normal routine, it would be a sinful deformation of the image of the very Creator God in me; an expression of ingratitude in the face of God’s gift of hands and mind that can creatively work, raise a family, and build community; it would be simple laziness. Instead of a lazy vacation, my pilgrimage is a journey towards home. 

You see, homelessness is the human condition, my condition. Oh, with the wife of my heart and desire, my family, source wonder and pride, my church, font of blessing beyond words, and my work, joy of my intellect, I try to make home—a place to use the familiar metaphor, of green pastures and still waters.  But all of my efforts to build home, well as Bruce Cockburn sings, “They tried to build a New Jerusalem and ended up with New York.”

 You see, I, and all of us, have been exiled from our true home: that lovely garden, those green pastures, and still waters, that mansion with many rooms,—the bible and our imaginations are full of images of what a true home looks like.  Yet there is no true home without each other, and my stubborn will to go my own way, not my wife’s way; my own way, not your way, my way,  well that makes homebuilding together quite impossible.  Thus I, and all of us, wander homeless. 

Pilgrimage is a leaving all behind.  Pilgrimage is an outward recognition of that inner state of homelessness. But pilgrimage is not without destination or purpose.  The father of our Faith, Abram was called to “get up, go” “lech lecha” to a place he did not know or imagine.  For the love of God’s name, he and his family, our family, became pilgrims, wanderers and strangers, but for a purpose--- both to be blessed, and to bring blessing to all people; to create a community, a holy nation as the bible calls it, that is to be truly at home in the world.

My pilgrimage, then, is an intentional journey over the landscapes of Northern Spain, landscapes walked by uncounted Christian pilgrims for 1,000 years.  My pilgrimage is an intentional journey into the inner landscapes of the soul to find the One who can lead me, like Abram was led.  To find the One who can transform me like Abraham was transformed.  To wrestle with the One Abraham’s grandson Jacob, wrestled with on that lonely riverbank.  To be fed by the One who sent ravens to Elijah’s aid.    To be found, even before I know it, resting under a fig tree, like Nathanael.  I seek on this pilgrimage to, like Abraham, be blessed, and in turn, to be made into a blessing for my wife, my children, my family, my friends, my church---my world.  Simply put I walk, pray, feast, fast, in pain, and in joy, I walk for these 40 days to meet God and find The Way home.  

 Pray for Peter and I; for health, for heart, and for home.  

En el nombre del Padre, del Hijo y del Espíritu Santo, Amén.