Each day is a pilgrimage.We forget this while brushing our teeth or making a peanut butter sandwich. Each day offers gifts unimaginable and challenges worthy of the human heart. We don’t take this into account when we look back over the events of any given 24 hours. We treat the minutes and hours as if they are retrievable which they are not. We gloss over and forget to pay attention to the beauty that walks up to us and looks us in the face begging, begging to be seen.

These last weeks have made me aware of this pilgrimage life as I and others have been preparing to venture off on an intentional walk to places we do not know well, seeking to be transported by place, people and the depth of what it means to be held by committing to be together, by learning from one another and placing our hope in the transformation that comes from being open to the movements of the One who breathes throughout time.

As I write this, I can see outside my window the silhouette of Messaggio Della Santa Casa di Loreto, The shrine of the Holy House in Loreto, Italy. I am in the company of 26 pilgrims who have chosen to pay attention to the gifts of walking the sacred paths walked for centuries. We are trying to offer our own intentions to the pathways some of those known by the Christian a household as saints…..Francis, Clare, Catherine. We are doing this as a way to be more attentive to the way this One has been named and claimed, witnessed and shared throughout time. It is the work of privilege. We know this and we are not taking the journey lightly.

Today’s journey took us to this exquisite cathedral that is said to be home to the house of Mary of Nazareth, the mother of Jesus. This small stone home, perhaps once a cave, is believed to have been carried by angels from Nazareth to this small Italian village on the Adriatic Sea. Pilgrims have come here for centuries to pray, to gaze at the Black Madonna that sit at the center of this shrine, and to find a touchstone from the past that brings meaning to the present. While the story itself may sound fantastic to our 21st century ears, I can say that the place itself holds something that continues to draw people of all ages to its walls. It was a sight to behold.A small room held in the center of a large cathedral. Simplicity among baroque fancy, gold-gilt and beautiful paintings. Something womb-like,strong and calm at the center of a large, active community.

This warm afternoon as I watched pilgrims from the other places around the world and those with whom I was traveling move through this sacred sight, I was once again overcome with the power of beauty and the depth of story to captivate the human imagination. In silence people walked among paintings and mosaics, past statues and wood carvings. Some stopped to pray with the religious who make this place home and place of ministry, those wearing the simple brown robes of ones from another time. Still others knelt in prayer or lit a brilliant, blue votive candle to send their prayers dancing in the flicker of flame onto the walls of the sanctuary.

What was the common denominator among us all? Certainly not language. Probably not economic status or politics. It is doubtful whether it was even the supposed beliefs of this faith tradition we claim to share. My sense is that the common factor that had drawn us all to the same place at the same time had much to do with the need to affirm our connection to the More, to once again say I am a part of a story bigger than my individual self, larger than the single details of a day. Like Mary who said “yes” to the movement of the Sacred in her life, we longed to make room for a little of her home in us. Some days it may seem as if angels….messengers of God….make that blessed delivery, full of miracles and acts that are void of reason. And yet, still it happens.
We closed our day with the words of Francis, another one who walked a path looking for the ways the Sacred showed up in the details of his walking around, eating and sleeping life:

Our hands imbibe like roots,
so I place them on what is beautiful in this
world.
And I fold them in prayer, and they
draw from the heavens
light.

And so it is. And so it was.