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A pilgrimage is a journey. It's a journey to a place of personal significance. It's a quest for clarity and transformation. T.S. Eliot famously noted of pilgrimage: "We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." Eliot's observation of a pilgrimage's end, "We...shall know the place for the first time," most often describes a richer self-knowing. Some pilgrimage to places regarded as holy; some pilgrimage to places attached to their ancestral or philosophical roots; some of us pilgrimage to old ball parks.
There are a handful of elements essential to pilgrimage, among them: intention, discomfort, simplicity, determination, prayer, reflection, and journaling. It's also common to return with a small, physical memento that will serve as a reminder or a metaphor of the journey and its discoveries.
We are, as I write, nearing the end of a pilgrimage of sixteen days and some five thousand miles. The occasion of the journey was twofold: the fifth anniversary of our move from California to Louisiana and the memorial for my nephew Ricardo. We deliberately chose to drive and to frame the journey as a pilgrimage. Since our move five years ago, Kathy and I have lost eleven members of our family: Tom, Kitty, Gracie, Bonnie, Mark, Bob, Ray, Barbara, Lucy, David, and Ricardo. This trip has given us the space and time to discern these movements and their affect upon our lives.
But that small, physical memento proved rather elusive for a time.
Along with a few books and a journal, I bought a wooden jigsaw puzzle to work on during the evenings along the way. The image of the puzzle is Van Gogh's signature piece, "Starry Night." It's a remarkable work of artistry. Van Gogh painted the image from memory while present in an asylum at Saint-R�my-de-Provence. His use of color--a rather limited but effective palette; his expression of movement and energy; the balance and peace he communicates. It's humbling.
It also makes for a very difficult puzzle to assemble.
I worked on it in hotels in Texas, in New Mexico, in Arizona. I continued to work on it in California: in Barstow, in Salinas, in Cambria, and finally in Anaheim while visiting Disneyland. Before dawn on our final day in California, I placed the last handful of pieces. I sat back in my chair and observed the finished puzzle. My attention moved from the rather foreboding cedar tree in the foreground to the stillness of the village to the swirls of energy to the radiant crescent moon, and--finally--to the pulsing stars in the heaven. Instinctively, I started to count them:
"One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven."
Eleven stars in the heaven.
"Tom, Kitty, Gracie, Bonnie, Mark, Bob, Ray, Barbara, Lucy, David, and Ricardo."
I had found my memento to remember this pilgrimage.
I had packed it before we began the journey, unawares.
Pilgrimages can yield provendipity.
God loves surprises.
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