Dear Folks,
The oldest use of the word “peregrini” describes a person without a country, an alien or an exile, specifically non-citizens of Rome. In the empire’s orderly frame, they were “a little too free,” more likely to navigate by their own conscience than by Caesar’s decree. The singular form in Spanish and Portuguese, “peregrino” becomes our word for pilgrim, one who travels toward the holy, and freedom defines their path, as well. There is a restlessness in their wandering that unsettles the status quo, and maybe that’s the point: the spiritual traveler makes her path as she goes, adapting her steps as the road rises to meet her.
Some of the Celtic pilgrims built little round boats and set off on their watery paths to find “a place of resurrection,” and it turns out that wherever they landed would do. Their coracles were almost impossible to steer, bobbing hither and yon, subject to wind and playful currents, so they developed a sense of home that was portable. “Wherever I am is holy,” even if it is a lonely rock in the middle of the sea.
They also developed a sense of humor, probably to help them find meaning in a world that was often cold and dark and violent. One joke began circulating over 1000 years ago:
“Three penitents resolved to quit the world for the ascetic life, and so sought the wilderness. After exactly a year’s silence, the first one said: ‘’tis a good life we lead.’ At the next year’s end, the second answered: ‘it is so.’ Another year being run out, the third exclaimed: ‘if I cannot have peace and quiet here, I’ll go back to the world.’”
Of course, pilgrimages began long before the Irish built their boats. “Journeys of varying purpose have been made for thousands of years on that northerly bearing, along the sea road leading up from the Butt of Lewis to Sula Sgeir and North Rona. On first sighting the islands from the south, it feels as if you have sailed into a parable. There they are, forty or more miles out in the Atlantic and eleven miles apart. It’s implausible enough that land should exist there, in the empty water between Scotland and Iceland, and then surprising that the contrast between them should be so strong: green fertile Rona, (dark) hostile Sula Sgeir. At a distance they seem more allegorical than real, the Pasture and the Rock, a choice offered to the seafarer.” (The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot, Robert McFarlane)
The way I see it, each of us is a pilgrim, people without a country, because the meaning we seek is not grounded in empire or possessions or “power over.” The good news is that the place of resurrection that we long for is not defined by physical borders or what king sits on the throne. You see, the Holy One defines true authority as “power with,” a radical unsettling of the status quo, a vision of healing that sees every person’s essential worth. No wonder Jesus says, “My kingdom is not of this world.”
When I see the holy in the face of each of one us, then God’s kingdom has come.
Love,
David