Jerusalem Bound. Rodney Aist

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СКАЧАТЬ The spelling, Sion, which reflects the historical usage of the pilgrim sources, will be used throughout the book, except for biblical quotations, e.g., Mount Sion, Holy Sion (a church on Mount Sion), and Sion Gate. Biblical quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version.

      1. Fosdick, A Pilgrimage to Palestine, 23.

      2. See Aist, Voices in the Wind and Journey of Faith.

      3. See Aist, The Christian Topography and From Topography to Text. On Celtic pilgrimage, see Aist, “Pilgrim Traditions.”

      4. Wynn, Faith and Place, 138.

      5. Pilgrimage critiques include the practice of indulgences, superstitious piety, the tendency of emotion to subvert rational judgment, the moral behavior of pilgrims, and the omnipresence of God. For a summary of common objections to pilgrimage, see Brown, God and Enchantment, 154–63 and Inge, A Christian Theology, 98–101. Also see Wynn, Faith and Place, 139.

      6. On the historical development of the Christian Holy Land, see Wilken, The Land Called Holy.

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      Defining Pilgrimage

      Jerusalem Bound enhances Holy Land travel through a broad approach to the pilgrim life. Equipped with an understanding of pilgrimage, Holy Land travelers can engage the experience in richer, life-changing ways. The book goes a step further. By viewing Holy Land pilgrimage as an exercise in spiritual formation, the book grounds the Christian traveler in a pilgrim-themed spirituality that speaks to the everyday journey back home. To set this in motion, we begin with a working definition of pilgrimage.

      Defining Pilgrimage

      Pilgrimage conjures up word pictures inspired by art, hymns, and literature, influenced by biblical, medieval, and contemporary practice, and informed by personal experience. Pilgrimage involves journeys, destinations, departures, and arrivals; it evokes images of temples, relics, and sacred tombs, Jerusalem, Rome, and the Celtic fringe. Pilgrims are long-distance travelers and restless wanderers, strangers and sojourners, migrants and second-place people. Pilgrims attend feasts and festivals and flee religious persecution. They are pious, patient, and penitent, gullible and godly, saints and sinners.

      Pilgrimage is a crowded tent, and while we may instinctively know what it is, when we move from image to definition, it becomes more difficult to put our finger on it. What does Abraham’s call to leave his homeland have in common with the magi’s journey to Bethlehem? Do Dante and Pilgrim’s Progress describe the same phenomenon? What are the parallels between the Camino de Santiago and the earthly journey? Is a pilgrim a religious traveler or simply a stranger? Pilgrimage is both physical and metaphorical; it is an individual journey and a corporate experience. It includes round trips, one-way journeys, and never leaving home. Time and memory are as important as place and journey. How can pilgrimage be captured in a simple definition?

      My personal experience testifies to the multifaceted nature of pilgrimage; there are many kinds of pilgrims. On my around-the-world journey, Sister Giovanna, a pilgrim nun who walked the streets of Italy helping those in need, told me: “by being a pilgrim, my heart learns to hear the cries of those who have no choice but to be pilgrims.” Pilgrimage embraces compassion ministry and social justice; it speaks to multicultural interactions, international partnerships, and relationships between dominant and non-dominant cultures.

      Linguists point out the problem of deriving definitions from etymologies. Terms develop over time, and we are interested in what pilgrimage means today. Etymologies are still useful, though, offering insights that inform present-day applications. The English word, pilgrim, is ultimately derived from the Latin, peregrinus, meaning foreigner or traveler. The ideas are related insomuch as a foreigner has left home and has traveled elsewhere. Abraham is regarded as the first biblical pilgrim primarily due to his foreign status (Gen 12:1; Gen 23; Heb 11:8–19), and few themes have more application to a contemporary understanding of pilgrimage than engaging the Other.

One way to secure a definition is to look for a common denominator. Pilgrimage, however, conspicuously lacks one, a point that is not commonly recognized. Being a stranger in a strange land is different from a journey to a holy site; physical travel is not the same as spiritual metaphor. Journey is not always a defining feature: there are time-based expressions of the pilgrim life. To conceptualize pilgrimage, we turn to the family resemblance theory made popular by Ludwig Wittgenstein, which argues that “things which could be thought to be connected by one essential common feature may in fact be connected by a series of overlapping similarities, where no single feature is common to all of the things.”7 Pilgrimage is not a single entity but a category of religious expressions. No one concept or feature defines it. Certain themes, such as journey, stranger, and place, are generally present, but they may be absent or inconspicuous in a given expression.

      In sum, we are looking for a definition that captures the breath of pilgrimage while retaining a sense of familiarity, one that considers biblical and historical expressions yet reflects contemporary practice. The definition will suggest a series of overlapping themes rather than a single subject. To facilitate Christian formation, the definition must be robust enough to examine the religious life, providing a framework for spiritual reflection and personal application:

      Pilgrimage is the experience of God, self, and the Other through the dimensions of time, place, journey, and people and the thoughts, images, and reflections thereof.

      The definition is based upon biblical and historical sources, contemporary practice, personal experience, and reasoned interpretation. It is familiar enough to meet expectations, broad enough to be inclusive, distinct enough to give clarity, conventional enough to engage tradition, and permissive enough to encourage innovation. The definition provides a framework for lived experience, spiritual reflection, and Christian formation.

      Our working definition is but one element of a methodological approach to Christian pilgrimage, or a pilgrim-themed spirituality. The chapter will qualify the statement; it will also develop it, defining the character of pilgrimage as incarnational, metaphorical, autobiographical, and corporate. We will also break pilgrimage down into its component parts, which include themes, templates, elements, images, virtues and values, lived experience, and adages and aphorisms.

      The above definition is not the only one in play. Our approach incorporates alternative definitions, such as those that differentiate between pilgrims and tourists and pilgrimage as time set aside for a particular purpose. It is important to understand how the definitions differ. Dictionary definitions generally describe pilgrimage as a journey to a sacred place or any long journey with a quest or purpose. They are seldom comprehensive statements; rather, they describe specific expressions, or templates, which is part of our critique. As opposed to textbook terms, pilgrim praxis utilizes a host of aphoristic definitions, often couched as “pilgrimage is” statements, which, though ultimately incomplete, are particularly useful. Pilgrimage is an intentional journey. Pilgrimage is life intensified. Pilgrimage confronts life’s most important questions. Aphoristic definitions, or the adages and axioms of the pilgrim life (see below), encapsulate the spirit of the religious journey. As subjective definitions that people claim as their own, they help determine when one is “on pilgrimage” and function as invaluable tools for guiding, probing, and exploring lived experience.

Richard R. Niebuhr describes pilgrims СКАЧАТЬ