Sole and Soul - the practice of pilgrimage

I should be on a walking pilgrimage right now. However, the plans I had made to walk from Glasgow to Iona, via Kilmartin Glen, had to be postponed. My pilgrimage companion, my dog Wallace, is too poorly to walk 15 miles a day for two weeks just now.

As I look out at the heavy August rain here on the Isle of Mull, on one level I’m quite relieved that I’m not going. The level that enjoys being dry and warm and cosy. But on a deeper level I’m disappointed. The level that appreciates the simplicity, rhythm and ritual that pilgrimage provides.

The healing practice of pilgrimage

I find pilgrimage a really helpful way to process, prepare and pray. It is solved by walking, the latin words Solvitur Ambulando suggest. Soothing might be a more apt word than solving, but I don’t know the latin for that. One of my favourite movies is ’Wild’. Reese Witherspoon reenacts Cheryl Strayed’s incredible, and ultimately healing, journey of walking the Pacific Crest Trail. ‘The right place, walked at the right time, can heal, energise, restore and inspire’ as Annabel Streets describes in ‘The Walking Cure.’ Regular articles pop up in national newspapers reminding us of all the psychological reasons for why walking is so good for us.

Pilgrimage does not have to include walking. As our earlier blog on pen labyrinth’s offer.

And pilgrimage has something to offer beyond walking. A subtle distinction between pilgrimage and walking often arrives at the idea of intention. The question, the wondering, the hoping we walk with. I resonate with that. And I also find that I need to exercise a healthy measure of curiosity as to what or whose intention that may be.

I often find that the intention that is set, or why we think we are going on pilgrimage, may not always coincide with what surfaces or is revealed along the way. Another reason often reveals itself, nudged by a noticing.

Pilgrimage itself becomes the intention. 'The journey not the destination’ is a familiar trope for a reason. It is a both/ and. Pilgrimage becomes a simultaneous walking towards and with.

Micah 6:8 has been my go to scripture as I reflect on the pilgrimage practice that has become so formative for my evolving faith.

He has told you, O mortal, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?

For many years, particularly working in international development, the outworking of my faith was on doing justice and loving kindness. The practice of pilgrimage has helped me learn about what it means to also walk humbly with God.

When you are at the mercy of the elements, strangers, a crumpled map or the next way marker hubris transforms into humility. A humility that helps and holds, rather than judges and condemns.

In practicing pilgrimage we are learning to walk towards and with the three mile an hour God that Kosuke Koyama describes:

Love has its speed. It is a spiritual speed. It is a different kind of speed from the technological speed to which we are accustomed. It goes on in the depth of our life, whether we notice or not, at three miles an hour. It is the speed we walk and therefore the speed the love of God walks.

And so as I reconcile myself to not being on an epic two week long pilgrimage along the west coast of Scotland I learn to practice pilgrimage in everyday life.

Setting an intention to notice, to wonder, to be curious. To draw on the wisdom already shared in our blog on micro pilgrimages

Today that looked like taking my ponies out for a three mile walk this morning, at less than three miles an hour! Walking slowly at Freya’s sauntering pace. Revelling in Mackie’s curiosity and paying attention to what he was noticing. All in the glorious downpour of a Scottish August summer.

And pausing to recognise that not getting to go on pilgrimage is in itself a journey and destination. An invitation into that first stanza ‘Wild Geese’ by Mary Oliver:

You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

And if you’re preparing for a pilgrimage, or processing a pilgrimage experience. Or wanting to delve deeper into the practice of pilgrimage in everyday life, perhaps one of the spiritual directors here could be your companion on the way.