I think this worship played on the iPhone is really clever; couldn’t resist posting it.
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I’m having a rare day off. So far, apart from catching up with some jobs in town, I’ve swapped my blog from ‘Blogger’ to ‘WordPress.com’, and although I’ve imported several of my old blog articles, this is the first completely new post here.
I’m also experimenting with using Word 2007 as a desktop blogging tool, so this may or may not successfully arrive on my blog.
As I feel more leisurely today, it occurred to me that if I continue slavishly to go through Charles Foster’s theology of pilgrimage (1) it may take some time (there are 17 points altogether) and (2) it saves you having to get the book and read them for yourself (and the book is worth reading…I’ve already shelled out for a second copy as a gift for a like-minded friend). There are links to Amazon from Foster’s website (link above).
So instead, I’m going to try to précis Foster’s theology of pilgrimage and add a few thoughts as we go along…if that’s OK?
We’ve probably already established that God seems to have a special place for the nomad, the wanderer and the pilgrim, and that pilgrim’s often find themselves with others on the margins of life, where they are perennially unpopular with the static status quo, who find pilgrims both disturbing and dangerous. God’s liking for pilgrim people comes, it seems, in part from his own experience of life on the margins, particularly during the time God stepped into human form and lived and walked among us, and that to be a follower of Jesus implies just that…following in his footsteps in the kingdom movement.
So, to continue: at its simplest, pilgrimage is purposefully wandering after God, just like the people in the Bible, including Jesus himself. And, just as Jesus did, those who follow after him often find that signs of the kingdom that favours those on the margins often spring up around their path. Not necessarily, but often! And often the kingdom things that happen are new and unexpected.
Pilgrimage is very physical. It involves effort, blisters, pain. It is a great preventative of gnosticism, which sees the body as a useless waste of time and elevates the spirit above all. We are whole people, not disembodied spirits. Our bodies are sacred and spiritual too, and we can use them to seek and to worship God. Pilgrimage also seems to help sort out a range of other failings: selfishness, bigotry, self-righteousness to name but a few. And it keeps you fit…well most of the time.
Pilgrimage is a sort of backwards journey, a journey that can restore our childlike eyes, which is just as well, as the kingdom belongs to those who come as children. It is also a journey where the journey itself actually matters more than arrival or the destination. The relationship with God is already there, it’s just that as we walk together we are constantly learning new things. And old things that we had lost are being redeemed and restored to us as we go.
The omnipresence of God does not mean, per se, that sometimes the experiencing of that presence can be stronger at some places than others. All places are sacred, but some seem to be more sacred than others (I discuss this more fully on my web site page “Touching Heaven”).
It’s also true that not everyone can go on a physical experience, in the sense of going from A to B. But a pilgrim heart and mind can be had by anyone.
Pilgrimage changes you. It is radical. A pilgrimage of just a week may make it easier to imagine what it’s like to truly abandon all things and follow Jesus; to live on the margins in the heart of the kingdom and with kingdom people. And that taste of the kingdom can be addictive even on our return.
Salvation, it must be stated, is by grace through faith, not by pilgrimage. However, pilgrimage can create the conditions where grace works best.
So, what are you waiting for? Go read the book. Then get up, go out and follow.
Condensed and adapted from “The Sacred Journey”, p XV to XVIII
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I’ve been reading Peter Stanford’s new book “The Extra Mile”-a 21st century pilgrimage” (Continuum, London, 2010). In it he sets out to visit various sacred sites in the UK, and to experience various rituals and ceremonies at those sites, in a bid “to take the spiritual temperature of an age often described as secular and sceptical.”
And as he stacks up the miles and the experiences he discovers that our spiritual health is good. The range of experiences covers the Christian to Pagan spectrum and everything in between, from serious ritual to a party-type celebration, and makes for an entertaining as well as an informative read.
One of the things that most stood out for me, from across the traditions represented, was that there is still an insatiable hunger for mystery. The rationalism of the Enlightenment, the preaching of the fundamentalist atheists and the systematic theology of the academics have all failed to extinguish that deep longing for, and experience of, things that just defy all the analysing, categorising, mythologizing and ridicule. There are some things we experience that are as real as any part of our world but lack any explanation that our logic, tempered by years of incredulous scientific method, can offer.
Now, mystery is a dangerous thing; the mystic within a particular faith tradition has always been set apart on the edge, viewed with suspicion by the establishment; those who cherish mystery from outside the tradition quickly achieve the label ‘heretic’.
But for those within or without, to doubt, to question, to admit our finite limits is surely an admission of humility, and to be welcomed. Even Jesus seems to have frequently refused to explain and dogmatise…the parables are told so that those who have ears will hear, he offers not belief in a set of doctrines but a relationship with a person who claimed to be God. This was risky. The church spent years setting it ‘right’ until today belief in a set of rules seems to most observers to be what it’s all about, rather that a somewhat ill-defined but thoroughly life-giving relationship.
The question that immediately presents itself to me, a card-carrying follower of Jesus for many years, is how can we bring the sense of mystery, of not having it all taped, back into our faith. Jesus said he’d come to show us what God was like, so our faith is a ‘revealed faith’. People must be more than a little put off when we ‘ridicule’ their searching instead of encouraging it or when we treat them as if their spiritual experiences are of no consequence compared to our higher revelation. I’m glad I discovered Jesus, but that gives me no right to patronise and belittle other seekers. I’d like to think they might find what I’ve found, but there’s no guarantee.
As I already suggested,Jesus description of the heavenly Father was far from ‘exact’. It kind of suggested that once the introduction to God was made, you could spend a lifetime paddling in the shallows and never get to the bottom of the mystery, that you could enjoy the journey of life without having a definitive description of the destination. In short, I suppose, ‘knowing’ God was just the beginning of something much bigger and more eternal.
And I’m not conceited enough to think I’ve arrived, that I’ve got the whole package yet. There’s still more of the mystery of God to be revealed and discovered.
Pilgrim Traveller 