A Walk on a Long Road
Photo Credit: Ryan Roth-Klinck
By Andrea Lingle
Where would you be willing to go if you weren’t sure of what would meet you there? What journey would be worth embarking on if, at the end, were something mundane, unspectacular, decaf? What would you risk believing even if it turned out not to be?
Pilgrimage confronts me with these questions. Would I be willing to believe that I could be transformed by walking or sitting or ten slow steps? Would I set out knowing it could all be in my head? Here we are, on the edge of something possible, unsure. There is a tug in the center of your body that longs for the belief that: there could be something hovering over the deepest places of who and what we are, be true. But if not, would you be willing to set out anyway?
Air travel has changed the meaning of global accessibility. While it may not be easy to sit in seats that seem to be shrinking with every passing month while staring at a digital representation of an airplane moving across a map for hours because you simply cannot sleep in airplanes while the person next to you sleeps the sleep of the righteous, it is possible to cross an ocean in an afternoon (or, more likely, a night).
The combustion engine has changed what it means to live somewhere. I live within a spacious circle. No longer is a journey of miles a journey into another place. A journey of ten miles still has to be blocked off on my calendar as travel time, but I don’t have to plan ahead for it.
Journey, for most of us, has become metaphorical.
What does it mean to journey: to strive to reach another place? The pilgrim is one who believes that there is power in stepping away from the bits and bytes of life and placing one’s foot on the path of journey.
Do you have to go anywhere? Must you climb a mountain or cross an ocean? Must you journey ten thousand steps on your knees? Perhaps. You only have to go as far as it takes for you to shake off the power of the inbox, washing machine, newsfeed, todo list, and can-I-talk-to-you-for-a-second-life. So, perhaps we should shoot for Mars. Or Pluto. Journey is the process of entering a second space. A space where the rhythm is slower, exposing the depth of mercy all around, everywhere, all the time. If there is something that answers the longing that we feel, it is in all and through all. Pilgrimage is one way to learn to see it. Journey takes us there.