SEARCH Journal

PILGRIMAGE has traditionally been conceived as a journey to places in which divine-human encounters have taken place.1 These are journeys, accompanied by prayer,2 that traditionally involve a person leaving home, traveling to a specific site that is acknowledged as holy and set apart from the busyness of the quotidian – a ‘thin’ place3 – and then returning home again, changed. The pilgrimage’s destination may be familiar or unfamiliar to the given pilgrim, but, either way, ‘one returns home, but changed, with a new perspective.’4 Thus conceived as following a pilgrim path, reaching one’s destination, and then returning home, pilgrimage is, by its nature, cyclical. But, on this journey, the self changes. The self that returns differs from the one who departed, having come to be enriched by difference, and having grown in discernment and openness to God’s presence. On pilgrimage, the self changes by engaging with the Other, on encountering the Other – the holy, the sacred – who is God.