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| Pilgrimage describes a movement, a type of journeying, which has been followed by millions of people for centuries. In the classic sense travellers follow an ancient route to a holy place, there to pray, to ask for healing, to gather with others. Pilgrimage is to be found in all the major world religions, not solely Christianity. Well-known Christian destinations include Rome, Jerusalem and Santiago; in Britain people walk on a journey to Lindisfarne, to Iona, Whithorn, Walsingham; to Bardsey, to Canterbury - and other places of significance.
Its essence is to be found in the travelling - often (and especially powerfully) in the company of others; hence the journey is an end in itself, not simply the arrival. The physical journeying is in a linear form, with overnight stays at a variety of stopping points, from church halls, to pubs, B&Bs to homes and churches. There is a risk involved unless you plan ahead, but that risk has been taken by pilgrims down the millenia, a risk that says "I shall find, by the grace of God, hospitality on the way". That is what Celtic monastic communities offered as one of their prime ministries - hospitality to travellers.
Now, in the 21st century, there is not just an awakening of a spiritual awareness and longing in society, but also a resurgence of interest in Pilgrimage itself. But more than that there is a growing feeling that many journeys can be travelled with a sense of pilgrimage about them; even the labyrinth is one kind of pilgrim journey, a stopping on the way for reflection around the paths.
Journeying began in the early 1980s as Pilgrim Adventure, with pilgrimage very much at its heart, literally sometimes, linear journeys being made e.g. from Applecross to Iona and to St David's. Our
journeys still from time to time include holidays of the classic pilgrimage-style, close to home and further afield, but on other journeys we enable people to take with them a 'pilgrim-heart', even though we may
not be travellers on the road with our rucsacs bearing down upon our
shoulders and our sandals scuffing the dust (or mud) of a British
summer.
And such is the current interest in the ethos of pilgrimage that it helps us as individual travellers (pilgrims) on our life-journey to read of other's interpretations on Pilgrimage from a variety of standpoints.
From this page will be accessed a variety of these reflections and we shall be adding to them from time to time.
Click on the titles below to access each in a new window
To be a pilgrim (Sally Welch 2010)
Walking the labyrinth
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