The metaphor of journey or pilgrimage is a familiar one across a range of religions and spiritualities. Unlike a ladder, which has discrete steps and a direct destination, a journey is more fluid and uncertain. Of course, the focus is more on the travel itself than the destination, which may be known, but one’s state of being at the point of arrival is undetermined. In other words, how you travel shapes who you are when you arrive. The journey itself is (almost) everything – a pilgrimage is NOT directionless or purposeless, even though both of these might not be entirely clear until one is on the journey.
A pilgrimage is about moving forward, not upward. The new places to which you go might not be qualitatively ‘upward’ by any means. In fact the journey can often take you to dark places and through deserts of doubt. Nevertheless, the call is to go on through whatever comes ahead.
Pilgrimage is about discovery rather than attainment: it is about working out what questions to ask of the terrain, or your companions, and of yourself. On a journey, one undertakes both an inner and an outer quest – self-knowledge comes as one encounters the ‘other’ within.
I want to suggest that such a metaphor is deeply sacramental, in the sense that it is incarnational. The divine is present in and through the pilgirmage – in the dying and the rising, in the brokenness and the fullness. God is in the here-and-now of daily travel.
Pilgrims need fellow-pilgrims – not just companions, but guides who have travelled the way before, or at least mentors who will support and encourage even if they cannot share the journey themselves.
Where have you experienced this notion of spiritual growth as a journey?
Where are you called upon to be a guide or mentor?
