Pilgrimage
To travel without arriving would be as fruitless as arriving without having travelled
It’s always good to feel as if you’re going somewhere- on your own personal pilgrimage through life. The new Archbishop of Canterbury set off from St Paul’s and walked 87 miles in 6 days to Canterbury for her Installation. She walked in the steps of Chaucer’s Pilgrims, no doubt taking her inspiration not from any of the more rumbustious characters, but from the Prioress, “who was very simple and modest in her smiling, and very pleasant and amiable in demeanour.” However, 87miles pales by comparison with the subject of my University thesis- one Robert of Cricklade, who walked from Oxford to Sicily and back in the Twelfth Century– some 3000 miles or so.
My personal Easter pilgrimage was to Lindisfarne on Northumberland’s Holy Isle. (I went by car!) What a magical, spiritual place - the old Abbey, the Church of St Mary, the Pilgrims’ Way which is only accessible at low tide, and the destination of thousands of pilgrims like the Northern Cross ones who arrived on Easter Day having walked for 120 miles or so carrying a heavy cross.
Many years ago I caught a train over the Himalayas from Beijing to Lhasa in Tibet. I was rather ashamed of my easy travel by comparison with the devout Buddhist pilgrims whose life’s work it is to make the sacred journey to the Dalai Llama’s Potala Palace. They come from all over the Buddhist world, walking hundreds perhaps thousands of miles over many years. Every step of the way they prostrate themselves and knock their heads on the ground. All able Muslims are required to go to Mecca once in their lifetimes, and around 3-4 million make it every year for the Hajj; and many thousands of ailing Christians make the long pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela or Lourdes in the hope of a cure. There are all kinds of moral analogies with pilgrimages- putting yourself through hardship in pursuit of a final, usually religious goal; achieving Heaven, Nirvana, Jannah (Paradise).
But the curious thing about all pilgrims is that they know where they are going- Canterbury, Mecca, Lhasa. You wouldn’t just set off and wander aimlessly around. Perhaps that’s why we like pilgrimages- they give us a sense of direction, of purpose. Not only that, but you rarely hear any account of people travelling back from their pilgrimage destination. It’s the final destination which matters as it was for Bunyan’s Pilgrims progressing towards Heaven.
Life’s like a hurdle race, or perhaps a military assault course. Forward going momentum wins the race. Confucius was of the view that “It does not matter how slow you go, so long as you do not stop. Life is a pilgrimage. The wise man does not rest by the roadside inns.”
President Trump’s blasphemous portrayal of himself as Jesus Christ is beyond tasteless; and attacking the Pope as he did merely because the Pontiff is opposed to war was disgraceful. If he is so devout, perhaps Trump would benefit from a solo pilgrimage. Hairshirted and shoeless a pilgrimage to the far North of Greenland, thence Gaza, Tehran and back via Venezuela would do him a lot good as well as being of great benefit to the rest of the world.
