An Exploration of Pilgrimage: Past, Present, and Future
My Fellow Amerigrines,
You know that feeling when you come back from a walk and you think to yourself, “Wow, what a complete waste of time”? Yeah, me neither.
I think we all intuitively know that enjoying going for a walk, long or short, is built into our DNA as humans. Think of the brilliant "Bring Out Your Dead" bit in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Eric Idle is strolling his cart through the village, shouting “bring out your dead,” alerting the townsfolk that he’s arrived to carry their corpses away for nine pence. John Cleese comes onto the scene with an old dead man on his right shoulder and nine pence in his left hand. Though there’s one problem: the old man says he’s not dead.
As Cleese asks Idle for this tiny favor of going “against regulations” and taking the old timer prematurely, the not-dead man signifies not just his viability but his vibrance by telling the two, “I think I’ll go for a walk!”
The reason this joke lands is because walking is a universal sign of life. If he would’ve said, “I think I’ll have myself a sit!” then the audience would instinctively infer he’s running out of energy, on his way down. But to say you want to go for a walk shows your mind, body, and soul still have some things they’d like to do before they get placed on yonder cart.
But if we're moderately certain that walking is built into the DNA of humans, one thing I’d like to explore with this site is what happens when it’s built into the DNA of an entire society. It’s said that you know a people by what they love in common, so what type of a people are fashioned when what they love in common is walking?
But to go a step further, if you’ll pardon the expression, is the move from loving walking to loving peregrinating. There is a notable difference between going on a walk and going on a pilgrimage. No one hits their thumb with a hammer, walks away so they don’t curse in front of the children, then comes back to the garage and declares, “I have returned from pilgrimage!” Same with walking off nervous energy, or “getting your steps in,” or walking the dog, or taking the air to fight off writer’s block. Walking is polyvalent, a near panacea, a sign of life.
But an individual person or a collective people can be known for their tried and true love of walking, but have no concept of a love of pilgrimage. As I see it, that’s actually the state that many Americans find themselves in. Yet the term permeates into our news stories, shows, movies, etc. Since I finished Hecka Walk, whenever I hear the term on TV or read it, I take note. Sometime late last year, I saw this lead on Yahoo! News:
'Her fans are making pilgrimages': How Taylor Swift's Eras Tour became a near-religious experience
I was intrigued by the BBC using that quote as the hook, but the found the rest of the quote actually bore more significance:
“When Swift's Vienna shows were cancelled due to a terrorist threat, fans gathered in the streets to sing her songs and swap bracelets. "This is devotional practice and the fans are making pilgrimages," says Critchley. "It's almost as if the difficulty is part of the experience. If you think about medieval pilgrimages, they were really hard."
It sounds sacrilegious (in the best way), but these Swifties were implementing components of medieval pilgrimages. It may not be In Via to venerate St. James, but it certainly is on another way to venerate St. Taylor.
Personally, I think both walking and peregrinating are built into our humanity, though for different reasons and with different methods for cultivating those instincts. It’s not particularly rare or abrasive to argue the case for walking. Flip through any magazine while you stand in line at the store and you’ll see some type of “7 Things Walking Just One Mile a Day Will Do for You!” listicle. But in a society that has no traditional pilgrimages, no holidays which demand pilgrimage, nor pilgrimage sites, it becomes much more difficult to argue the case that peregrinating is a social good. It turns out that taking 500 years off of a communal practice makes it real tough to just bring back on command.
So here’s one way I put my argument for instilling the practice of pilgrimage into society: if you are a baseball coach and giving your 4th grade players drills to become better baseball players, does it do them any good to tell them to “follow your heart”? If a 6th grader came up to you and asked how to become a better basketball player, would a good coach tell them to just “be true to yourself”? Obviously not. You have to learn the practical fundamentals and mechanics of the sport in order to perform well. Vague nothings get you nowhere; box jumps, sprints, Pepper, George Mikan Drill, etc. will actually make you a better player.
In the same vein, when you’re talking to a fourteen year old who tells you they want to live a good life, is it actually good advice to say, “Do what you want to do,” or “Just be yourself”? Not really, because what if they “want” to join a cult, or by “being themselves” they devote themselves to drinking multiple Big Gulps per day? Ancient people knew that humans needed to be slowly cultivated through virtuous practices; so did Medievals; so did most civilizations, actually.
As Americans, we’ve become so enamored by the idea that “doing what you want to do” is the greatest of all conceivable Goods that we’ve forgotten to slow down and ask what makes us actually want what we want. Or what we think we want. (Spoilers: it’s advertisements.) In other words, we need to give young people better “drills and exercises” for living a good life. I argue going on a lengthy, arduous pilgrimage is one of the drills that cultivates good desires in the human heart.
If done in the traditional fashion, the lessons of pilgrimage are built into the process, and there’s simply no way to complete a proper pilgrimage and “miss the point.” You can no more evade the “gains” of wisdom of pilgrimage than you can evade the gains of doing pull-ups at the gym.
Through a combination of reading books on the topic, asking experts in the field, and discussing lessons I learned while on Hecka Walk, this site will eventually explore…
Pilgrimage and Kenosis
Pilgrimage and Ecology
Pilgrimage and Penance
Pilgrimage and Hospitality
Pilgrimage and Labor
Pilgrimage and Citizenship
Pilgrimage and Memento Mori
...among other elements that further the argument that pilgrimage is, in fact, an essential practice for those seeking to live a good life in flourishing communities.
If you find any and/or all of that intriguing, please, come saunter awhile!
