For more than a decade I have experienced and embraced pilgrimage. This has included leading several groups on pilgrimages to Scotland, Ireland,  and Italy, to the sacred island of Iona, the holy sites of Glendalough and Inishmoor, the birthplaces of St. Francis, St. Clare and St. Catherine of Siena. I have walked a part of the pilgrimage path of the Camino de Santiago and been privy to the highs and lows of that ancient pathway. This pursuit of pilgrimage has, over time, shaped my life and my way of seeing the world. It has allowed me to call myself a pilgrim…someone who steps out each day perhaps with a plan but one that can be changed in a moment’s notice depending on the weather, my stamina, what resources are available, who shows up to walk alongside and who can no longer share the journey. While this way of seeing the world is not for everyone, but it has worked for me and I have found seeing our life’s travels with this eye has always had me seeing the presence of the Sacred in the midst.

When my daily work was in the church I loved that my life was governed by the seasons of the church year. Advent, Christmas. Epiphany. Lent. And the very long, season of Ordinary Time. I have always seen Lent as a pilgrimage, as a mirror of Jesus’ own pilgrimage of self discovery in the wilderness. As we are now in the season of Lent, I began these days by picking up again the book by a favorite author Barbara Brown Taylor, Learning to Walk in the Dark. Little did I know how prophetic this title would ring out in the days that have unfolded. Walking in the dark. It is what we are doing, aren’t we? Though the Sun arrives every morning as pure gift our days are drenched in certain inability to see what the next hours or even minutes might offer. As we find ourselves isolated not only from the regular activities of our days but from those we often did those activities with, we are learning to walk in new ways. For some this has brought acts of creativity and making our ways through the lists of things we had put off for another time. Stacks of books have been conquered. Puzzles have been figured out. Closets cleaned. 

But for others these days are not so productive and are shrouded with loneliness and furrowed brows. Our anxiety is a constant companion and we try to stare into our crystal ball to predict an uncertain future.  Brown Taylor writes: “To be human is to live by sunlight and moonlight, with anxiety and delight, admitting limits and transcending them, falling down and rising up.” Depending on the day, we can embrace the negatives of this statement with greater certainty that its positives. And yet each day the balance of anxiety/delight, falling/rising is held out to us, hoping not for limits but transcendence.  To allow ourselves to feel what we feel and to be okay with that is also a gift. How we dig deep to tip the balance in the favor of creativity, transcendence and light is perhaps our life’s work right now. 

When viewed through the lens of pilgrimage words by poet Pablo Machado has been a mantra for me. Truth be told it has been a mantra for many months. “There is no path. The path is made by walking.” And walking is what I have been doing. Each day what is not forbidden is walking outside in the fresh air, being present to the spring that is itchy to appear. I can feel it, can you? While I know walking outside might not be available to everyone, I am reminded of the days I spent on the Camino when each day we dedicated our walking to someone and held them in prayer as we walked. Arriving at chapels along the way, we lit candles to hold our prayer in light. A good practice for the days. A good practice right now.

This time in which we find ourselves is a pilgrimage path we did not choose. Of course, this happens all the time in our sunlit, moonlit lives. Illness arrives. Death surprises. Relationships end. Jobs are lost. There is no map for these paths. It becomes a path we make by walking. 

If we are lucky…or blessed…we witness the face of the Holy along the way. As companion. As faithful companion. And light is shed on a path that seemed dark only a moment before. May it be so.