practicing pilgrimage at home and abroad
Learn more about the famed pilgrimage and how to tend to each stage of the journey in my conversation with Michael Snyder of Santiago de Compostela’s Pilgrim House, a welcome center and ministry for Camino pilgrims.
If so, it’s likely you’ve been creating mini altars of your own whether you were aware of it or not—little vignettes that house hopes and express longings. You’re not alone, after all; Seekers of the Sacred have been creating altars to mark experiences of Sacred Encounter and symbolize their Sacred Search for millennia.
The word “altar” literally means “high place,” and it is these high places that we as pilgrims journey toward, whether we’re walking the storied road to the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela or journeying to new places of awareness right at home.
For the pilgrim at home, altars are representations of the Sacred stirrings that are happening within. Just as the altars or Ebenezers created in Biblical times were expressions that “something Sacred happened here,” the altars we create today remind us that “something Sacred is happening here”—both in our travels and in our everyday lives.
Creating a mini-altar at home to accompany you on your journey can remind you what it is that you seek and hold your intention on your behalf as you go about your day. Create your own home altar by following these three steps:
Spiritual director Kasey Hitt and I talk about the messages of dreams and how they are considered “unopened letters from God,” making dreamwork a valuable and often underutilized spiritual practice.
In today’s episode, spiritual formation teacher Pat Loughery and I talk about how to “bring the journey home” and approach pilgrimage not only as a way of travel but as a way of life, including daily rhythms, practices, and more.
After all, many tourists travel to the holy isle of Iona for day trips each summer without ever truly sinking into the wonders and mysteries that the isle has to offer, and many groups journey to Rome each year participating in religious rituals and checking sites off of their list without ever considering how the journey and its particularities might influence life upon their return.
While most see pilgrimage is a type of travel with a multitude of tourist websites popping up with any web search (many offering to guide you in air-conditioned buses each step of the way), practicing pilgrimage isn’t simply limited to travels abroad—ultimately, it’s a way of life.