"A Pilgrim's Postcards"

We all have bad travel stories.

A few of mine come to mind:

        an impulsive, pointless, not very safe midnight trip to Atlantic City 

                in a borrowed car

                        when I was a college sophomore;

                                a lonely weekend surrounded by honeymooning couples 

                                        at a Bermuda resort;

                                                a night in Laguna Beach 

                                                        interrupted by the arrest made 

                                                                in the room next door.

I've been stalked in Paris

        and poisoned by mesquite in Hawaii.

And I've gotten lost almost everywhere I've ever been.

 

I never really knew how to travel well

        until I made an important, belated discovery:

                it is better to be a pilgrim than a tourist.

Each can take the same trip,

        but the pilgrim will see something 

                no post card can depict.

As we begin the summer travel season,

        I pass on to you what I have learned.

 

Pilgrims and tourists are not so different from each other

        in many ways.

They both venture into unfamiliar territory.

Unlike Antoine de Saint-Exupery's distinction

        between a geographer and an explorer,

                they both leave home.

The same sights pass before their jet-lagged eyes.

And yet – the differences are dramatic.

 

This was never more clear to me

        than in Rome,

                a pilgrimage destination if there ever was one.

Pilgrims are everywhere in there.

At the Scala Santa – the Holy Staircase,

        at the Basilica of St. John of Lateran,

                eager devotees ascend the marble steps on their knees. 

Elsewhere, pilgrims cross thresholds 

        of churches and catacombs,

                awestruck and rapt with appreciation 

                        not only for the beautiful art works adorning these spaces,

                                but also for the experience of being 

                                        in the spaces themselves: 

                                                sacred spaces,

                                                        where the holy is real.

 

I spent a month of study leave in Rome last year,

        so these images are still fresh:

                how the Jubilee Year 2000 drew pilgrims

                        from all over the world,

                                eager to pray and to confess 

                                        and to breathe in the air 

                                                of the great sacred places of their faith.

As you know,

        that's not why I was there!

I went to Rome on a pilgrimage of another kind:

        to walk in the footsteps of Margaret Fuller,

                the American journalist and literary critic

                        who got caught up in the revolutionary movement

                                for an Italian republic.

Still, I crossed paths 

        with many of the Roman Catholic pilgrims 

                and saw a great many churches along the way.

We may not have had much in common 

        other than our sojourn in that magnificent city,

                and the basic expectation that every pilgrim carries: 

                        that this trip will somehow change us.

 

Mary Morris, traveling by train across Poland,

        realizes that her trip – one of many –

                is a death and a rebirth,

                        the end of her childhood

                                as she anticipates a baby of her own.

She remembers that her grandmother was buried alive as a child,

        in a place not too far from there.

This grim bit of history jumps 

        to her own childhood,

                which had some of the joy squeezed out of it

                        by demanding parents,

                                and laid the foundation for quite a few lonely years

                                        as a young adult.

What goes on inside Mary Morris during that train trip,

        as she returns home to her husband

                and the arrival of their baby,

                        is what all pilgrims seek:

                                a journey that gives new life.

According to scholars of religion,

        a pilgrimage is a journey to a sacred place,

                which has the unique property

                        of allowing the traveler to cross over 

                                from the every day world 

                                        to the transcendent one.

Every religious tradition has its sacred places:

        the basilicas and tombs of the Catholic faith;

                the city of Banaras, 

                        where Hindus go to seek moksha, or release;

                                Jerusalem, Mecca, Lhasa.

Even the secular world has its shrines: 

        Graceland, the home of Elvis Presley;

                the monuments and memorials of our nation’s capital;

                        Ellis Island and Plymouth Rock.

People go there, 

        hoping to see and learn something

                that will change their lives in some way.

 

My own pilgrimage to Rome was not a conventional religious one,

        but the places I visited were more meaningful,

                if not exactly sacred,

                        because they were part of Margaret Fuller's life

                                and landscape.

Where she lived, worked and walked 

        were not simply tourist attractions for me.

They were places that gave me a glimpse

        of what the world looked like to her –

                to cross over into her reality

                        and try to imagine what it was like 

                                to be her in it.

Seeking to know her world

        as I read her letters and newspaper articles,

                and history of the Roman Republic,

                        gave me a sense of her life 

                                I could have acquired in no other way.

 

Along the way, I began asking myself 

        why was I so interested in this person?

I imagine we were quite different temperamentally.

And yet as I came to know her –

        and not just know about her –

                I learned some new insights into myself.

The qualities that intrigued me in Margaret Fuller –

        her gutsy, almost combative personality,

                her incisive, critical mind –

                        were not ones I shared;

                                the risks she took,

                                        I would not take;

                                                the fate she met,

                                                        I would hope to avoid.

If I came back from Rome changed in any way,

        it was in the depth of my self-knowledge

                as much as in the amount of information

                I had gathered about Margaret Fuller.

 

And self-knowledge is a valuable outcome for any trip.

Just as travel writer Mary Morris returns home

        from her epic adventure from Beijing to Berlin,

                aware of a new life growing inside her,

                        we would all like to feel something new

                                after going somewhere different.

We would come home having observed 

        not only the novel details 

                of others' lives in other places,

                        but new facts about our own.

 

Self-knowledge is good, 

        even transforming,

                but it is not sacred in the traditional religious sense.

A traditional pilgrimage brings the traveler to a holy place.

Simply having made it there is life-changing.

 

Diana Eck, a scholar of religion and authority on Hinduism,

        described a holy place 

                as a portal to the transcendent.

In the Hindu tradition, 

        it is where the gods 

                once made themselves known to human devotees.

The country of India is saturated with religious activity,

        and it has a sacred geography.

Holy places overlay the land.

Every place and every journey to it

        have more than one meaning,

                mundane and sacred.

 

My trip to Rome was different from other trips I've taken

        because my quest for Margaret Fuller

                overlaid the city with her geography.

A city apartment building had layers of meaning:

        that she lived there,

                and that she lived there when she was pregnant

                        with her lover's child,

and that she came and went from that place

        knowing that she would never be accepted 

                at home in New England ever again,

                        and that she could look out 

                                the window and see history being made.

The layers of life and meaning imposed on the places I saw

        may not have made them holy places,

                but they gave them something a pilgrim hopes to find:

                        a sense of the world as a place of revelation.

No gods appeared on the Via Del Corso.

But the world looks different to me 

        because I stopped and paid my respects

                to the place where a woman lived

                        and loved

                                and left her mark on history.

 

The world is a place of revelation.

Wherever we go, 

        it shows us an opening to an experience of life

                we just might miss

                        if we are only tourists.

Tourists see the things that are there,

        but they do not look for the layers of meaning,

                the connections between their own lives

                        and those they observe,

                                the sacred geography of interconnection

                                        that weaves us together as one.

 

Anthropologists have studied the sense of community

        that pilgrims experience on their journeys.

Because pilgrims leave home and enter unfamiliar terrain,

        and are uprooted and a little lost,

                the usual rules and norms don't apply,

                        relationships alter,

                                and a new, idealistic society forms 

                                        for those who travel together.

Among the devout,

        the context shifts from daily life to sacred time,

                and everything that happens in sacred time

                        is sacred.

The experience of community is profound

        under these conditions,

                leaving participants with the yearning for more.

And all people yearn for something like it,

        even if they never leave home.

 

People seek experiences such as pilgrimages

        to have an intense experience of community,

                to feel what it's like to be in the world

                        and not be alone,

                                to be bonded to each other

                                        in a sacred time and place.

To live in the world as a pilgrim

        is to search for this intense experience of community,

                its intimacy and its grace,

                        whether the threshold we cross is in Banares, India

                                or on 18th Street, Santa Monica.

It does not matter where you step through the doorway;

        what matters is what you are seeking when you do.

To look at the whole world as a place of revelation,

        its geography as sacred,

                its people as guides to our own true selves,

that is what it is to be a pilgrim

        on this vast and strange planet;

                to seek the layers of life and meaning

                        that lend depth and a glimpse of eternity

                                to what we see;

                                        to meet each other on the way;

                                                to be together in sacred time.

We can do that here;

        we can do that now;

                if we live as pilgrims.