Pilgrimage

Rev. Dr. Kate Winters, May 27, 2023

Jean, a dear friend, stopped by this week giving me a book of poems by David Whyte. I hadn’t read him before, so I immediately turned to the first one.

For the Road to Santiago

For the road to Santiago,

don’t make new declarations

about what to bring

and what to leave behind.

Bring what you have.

You were always going

that way anyway,

you were always

going there all along.

I was stunned. In nine simple lines, the poet broke through my lost stare and gave me a new way to imagine, a new word to name, this time I am going through. I gasped when I read it, and Jean just smiled at me.

I have understood that I am on a healing journey. But the poem speaks of pilgrimage, the road to Santiago being a well-traveled pilgrimage taken by thousands in Europe each year. In my mind, there is a difference between a journey and a pilgrimage. The purpose of a journey is usually to get somewhere. It may ultimately be life-changing, but its goal is more defined. The pilgrimage is entirely transformational in purpose. It is undertaken with change in mind. What kind of change? That is not up to the pilgrim to determine, but to the ability to give oneself fully over to the vagaries of the pilgrimage. To define it too clearly would be to close oneself off to all the possibilities. So “don’t make new declarations about what to bring and what to leave behind.”

I have surrounded myself these days with items and books that I had hoped would break through my emotional and mental stuckness. Topics and things I have been drawn to. Lot’s of John O’Donahue and other Celtic spirituality, candles and books about meditation, a tome about Elderhood which I have wanted to study, books given me by friends, even bought a new deep forest green journal! The book in front of me was given to me while I was still in the hospital – The 7 Deadly Sins of White Christian Nationalism by one of my favorite feminist theologians, Carter Heyward. This calls to my activist side, but now, in this current place, I seem unable to break it open. (Though at some point, I will!)

The truth is that I’ve been broken open and I don’t know what is still left in me of me. So, the poet writes, “Bring what you have.” At this point, I know I have this longing to be preset to what is and a desire to write. To connect. To discover what is inside now and how I can contribute to life. This pilgrimage demands only that I stay awake. Allow myself to be led. To be changed. I want to say “to find myself lost in love.” To find myself lost. I am part way there.

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Author: Dwelling in Presence

Striving to live in the present where Spirit is found, I get (t)here most often by writing. It keeps me grounded in both the silence and in my senses. So, welcome to my journal. With a home on mid coast Maine, I have recently retired from 18 years as copastor of The First Church in Belfast, United Church of Christ, with my spouse, Joel Krueger. My spiritual formation has been nurtured by the sensual and sacramental faith of the Roman Catholic church, the heady intellectualism of Yale Divinity School and doctoral studies at Northwestern University, and the justice activism of the United Church of Christ in which I am ordained. Yale Divinity gave me the opportunity to study with pastoral theologian Henri Nouwen who I continue to think of as spiritual mentor these many years later. I have begun this blog to be certain to reach out in a time of great transition and chaos. We are suffering a worldwide pandemic, a global climate crisis, a war-damaged world and great upheaval in the church. With these reflections, I want to share what gives me joy and that which gives me pause. I look forward to hearing yours comments.

3 thoughts on “Pilgrimage”

      1. I got the whole message now. It made me think of my trip to Jerusalem. I had heard that there is a difference to being a tourist and being a pilgrim. I didn’t want to go as a tourist although there was beautiful scenery and a vacation like feel. I wanted it to change me. I wanted to be a pilgrim. There is no way you can go through what you did and not be changed from the inside out! You were rearranged. You are a pilgrim. Love you, KC

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