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Sacred Journeys, Near and Far

Sacred Journeys, Near and Far

Last updated on: January 21, 2016 at 9:42 pm by Lori Erickson

Sacred Journeys, Near and Far 2016-01-21T21:42:43-06:00 Lori Erickson

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Reese Witherspoon stars in the movie Wild, which chronicles a pilgrimage on the Pacific Crest Trail.

Now that the holiday season is past, I’m back to Rovering again here at the Holy Rover. But even during my break away from writing, the theme of pilgrimage kept coming up. Today, near the beginning of this new year, I want to share some of those gleanings.

The first is the Reese Witherspoon movie Wild. I’ve been a bad girl, I’m afraid, and didn’t read the book first, but I loved the movie. It’s based on a memoir by Cheryl Strayed, in which she recounts her 1,100-mile walk on the Pacific Crest Trail. She is perhaps the most woefully underprepared hiker ever to complete this challenging route (the scenes with her ridiculously heavy backpack are worth the price of the movie). But as the film went on, it became increasingly obvious to me that she was on a pilgrimage. I don’t think the word was ever used specifically, but her journey had all the hallmarks: the seeking after meaning, the desperate need to recover from trauma and heartache, and the healing that slowly happened because of the journey. It’s a splendid film, one I highly recommend.

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PBS’s Sacred Journeys series explores six of the world’s great pilgrimages, including Shikoku in Japan. (Sacred Journeys image)

And then there’s the new PBS series by Bruce Feiler, author of books that include Walking the Bible. His Sacred Journeys is a six-hour documentary that takes viewers along on some of the world’s great pilgrimages: Lourdes in France, Shikoku in Japan, Jerusalem in Israel, The Hajj to Mecca, Kumbh Mela in India, and Osun-Osogbo in Nigeria. Like the Wild movie, this series is wonderful, full of personal stories of those making the pilgrimages as well as gorgeous photography and thoughtful meditations on the theme of spiritual journeying. Each of these hour-long episodes can be viewed for free through the PBS website. I recommend all of them.

Bruce Feiler wrote a lovely piece for the New York Times on The New Allure of Sacred Pilgrimages. In it he talks about the surprising growth of pilgrimage travel around the world despite declining levels of commitment to organized religions in many countries. The United Nations estimates that of every three tourists worldwide, one is a pilgrim, for a total of 330 million people a year. These figures include 30 million to Tirupati in India, 20 million to Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico, 15 million to Karbala in Iraq, and four million to Lourdes.

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Kumbh Mela is the world’s largest pilgrimage, held every 12 years on the flood plain of the Ganges and Yamuna Rivers in India. (Sacred Journeys image)

Part of the reason for this growing interest is that International travel is far easier today than ever before But Feiler says that even more important is the increasing fluidity of religious identity. People are seeking out their own answers to questions of faith and tradition. He quotes a pilgrim who had made the journey to Israel: “The moment that you stop questioning,” he said, “is the moment you stop growing. You’re either walking in the direction of God or you’re walking away.”

I especially like what Feiler has to say about the need to be active in one’s spiritual life: “So much of religion as it’s been practiced for centuries has been largely passive. People receive a faith from their parents; they are herded into institutions they have no role in choosing; they spend much of their spiritual lives sitting inactively in buildings being lectured at from on high….A pilgrimage reverses all of that. At its core, it’s a gesture of action. In a world in which more and more things are artificial and ephemeral, a sacred journey gives the pilgrim the chance to experience something both physical and real. And it provides seekers with an opportunity they may never have had: to confront their doubts and decide for themselves what they really believe.”

So as 2015 begins, perhaps the idea of pilgrimage is blossoming in your life as well. It may be a journey across the world or to a retreat house close to home. It may be an interior pilgrimage, one of illness, grief, or loss. It may come near the beginning of your adult life or near the end. But today I hope you’ll take a minute to ask yourself, “Where am I called to go? And what do I need to learn?”

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A pilgrim at Lourdes in France takes part in a candlelit procession. (Sacred Journeys image)

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