Pilgrimage

The idea of a pilgrimage never really came to me until college. After I made the Folk Choir and our introduction to the year-end tour info began, Steve and company described it as a pilgrimage, or at least a pilgrimage tour.

The idea is that we were taking a trip with an intentionality to it. We weren't just traveling from stop to stop, taking pictures and seeing the lookout points. We were visiting abbeys and singing for monks, staying with parishes' host families and singing concerts and masses, and raising money for local Catholic communities' needs. Our trip had a purpose beyond leisure, relaxation, and sightseeing.

All of our tours took on that connotation to some extent, and interacting with so many priests, host parents, children, and choirs added a depth to our travels that legitimized the idea of its being a pilgrimage - even when our comp-ed trip to Disneyland or visit to Fenway Park might have rerouted the path to different areas of religion.

I enjoyed adding the element to my travel sensibilities. My family vacations were always great combinations of fun, but we rarely incorporated pilgrimesque elements into our plans beyond Sunday masses. It's now an integral part to all my travel planning. My trips now always involve some kind of search for a church or holy site. Our wanderings in Vienna and Krakow in March 2010 were entirely guided by church-searching, or as we called it, a church crawl.

Things have gotten so advanced now that the first trip I have set out for myself to a destination beyond Ireland is Spain for the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage walk. Along with Colin - studying in Toledo - and Kurt and Molly, the four of us will walk 114km from Sarria into Santiago, arriving at the great cathedral built on St. James' tomb. We'll hug the 1000-year-old statue of the saint, attend pilgrims' mass (with butafumeiro for All Saints Day we hope), receive our compostelas (pilgrim certificates), and pray with an international community of pilgrims all along the way.

Only because of a centuries-old stream of tradition and prayer can a four-day-walk through a strip of northern Spain become a destination. In the footsteps of so many others seeking to dedicate some time and effort toward a spiritually-infused journey, our flights and train and lodging all become a part of a different kind of trip, more than an itinerary.

We will journey to a sacred place, using the mysticality of the Body of Christ as the way we unite with not only each other but our fellow pilgrims along the way, the ones who walked before us, and all of those who we carry along our way in our hearts. It's gonna be awesome.