pilgrimage

But walking causes absorption. Walking interminably, taking in through your pores the height of the mountains when you are confronting them at length, breathing in the shape of the hills for hours at a time during a slow descent. The body becomes steeped in the earth it treads. And thus, gradually, it stops being in the landscape: it becomes the landscape. That doesn__ have to mean dissolution, as if the walker were fading away to become a mere inflection, a footnote. It__ more a flashing moment: sudden flame, time catching fire. And here, the feeling of eternity is all at once that vibration between presences. Eternity, here, in a spark.

The Native Americans, whose wisdom Thoreau admired, regarded the Earth itself as a sacred source of energy. To stretch out on it brought repose, to sit on the ground ensured greater wisdom in councils, to walk in contact with its gravity gave strength and endurance. The Earth was an inexhaustible well of strength: because it was the original Mother, the feeder, but also because it enclosed in its bosom all the dead ancestors. It was the element in which transmission took place. Thus, instead of stretching their hands skyward to implore the mercy of celestial divinities, American Indians preferred to walk barefoot on the Earth: The Lakota was a true Naturist _ a lover of Nature. He loved the earth and all things of the earth, the attachment growing with age. The old people came literally to love the soil and they sat or reclined on the ground with a feeling of being close to a mothering power. It was good for the skin to touch the earth and the old people liked to remove their moccasins and walk with bare feet on the sacred earth. Their tipis were built upon the earth and their altars were made of earth. The birds that flew in the air came to rest on the earth and it was the final abiding place of all things that lived and grew. The soil was soothing, strengthening, cleansing and healing. That is why the old Indian still sits upon the earth instead of propping himself up and away from its life-giving forces. For him, to sit or lie upon the ground is to be able to think more deeply and to feel more keenly; he can see more clearly into the mysteries of life and come closer in kinship to other lives about him. Walking, by virtue of having the earth__ support, feeling its gravity, resting on it with every step, is very like a continuous breathing in of energy. But the earth__ force is not transmitted only in the manner of a radiation climbing through the legs. It is also through the coincidence of circulations: walking is movement, the heart beats more strongly, with a more ample beat, the blood circulates faster and more powerfully than when the body is at rest. And the earth__ rhythms draw that along, they echo and respond to each other. A last source of energy, after the heart and the Earth, is landscapes. They summon the walker and make him at home: the hills, the colours, the trees all confirm it. The charm of a twisting path among hills, the beauty of vine fields in autumn, like purple and gold scarves, the silvery glitter of olive leaves against a defining summer sky, the immensity of perfectly sliced glaciers _ all these things support, transport and nourish us.

Every great journey stimulates great faith and great joy.

Frequently we do not leave the past behind. We clasp on to it. We dissect it, and let fears for the future, tempered by the past, unconsciously prevent us from taking up the task eternal.

My prayer is my pilgrimage.

Is this what I am doing now?Watching the currents, passagesof life around me.I am not looking for books to explainmore with their words, butlistening to poets with their imagery, symbols, listening to my own feelings as Icontinue my pilgrimage in this life,pausing, watching, catching glimpsesof deeper down things.-Deeper Down Things

There is of course a deep spiritual need which the pilgrimage seems to satisfy, particularly for those hardy enough to tackle the journey on foot.

Faith is not the clinging to a shrine but an endless pilgrimage of the heart.

Queenie Hennessy - "I am here to die."Sister Mary Inconnue - "Pardon me but you are here to live until you die. There is a significant difference.

All this, I suspect, has been little more than the operation known as the pilgrimage from the cradle to the grave, but I have had a comfortable feeling that, however ordinary my enterprises may have been, they had at any rate the advantage of containing, for me, an element of sustained unfamiliarity. I am one of those persons who begin life by exclaiming they've "never seen anything like this before" and die in the hope that they may say the same of heaven.

For pilgrims walking...every footfall is doubled, landing at once on the actual road and also on the path of faith.

And he began, "What chance or destinyhas brought you here before your final day?And who is he who leads your pilgrimage?""Up there in life beneath the quiet starsI lost my way," I answered, "in a valley,before I'd reached the fullness of my age.I turned my shoulders on it yesterday:this soul appeared as I was falling back,and by the road through Hell he leads me home.""Follow your star and you will never fail to find your glorious port," he said to me

I am on pilgrim to self-realisation.

A big wind came up and I hoped a storm would break the heat. But it just blew alot of dust around, and at sunset we had to bar doors and windows against mosquitoes. Itdidn__ do much for our comfort level, but__ere__ where the Chemin takes you__e weregrateful. We were grateful because we had (albeit narrowly) escaped heatstroke; becausethe shelter, though unbelievably hot, was clean and quiet; and most of all, because it sleptsix but we had it to ourselves. No people to deal with at the end of your (and their)tether; no sodden bathrooms. No snoring. Pilgrim camaraderie was all very well, butsometimes it was too damn much.

It was a perfect spring day. The air was sweet and gentle and the sky stretched high, an intense blue. Harold was certain that the last time he had peered through the net drapes of Fossebridge Road (his home), the trees and hedges were dark bones and spindles against the skyline; yet now that he was out, and on his feet, it was as if everywhere he looked, the fields, gardens, trees, and hedgerows and exploded with growth. A canopy of sticky young leaves clung to the branches above him. There were startling yellow clouds of forsythia, trails of purple aubrietia; a young willow shook in a fountain of silver. The first of the potato shoots fingered through the soil, and already tiny buds hung from the gooseberry and currant shrubs like the earrings Maureen used to wear. The abundance of new life was enough to make him giddy.

I don__ know who I am. And I don__ think people ever will know who they are. We have to be humble enough to learn to live with this mysterious question. Who am I? So, I am a mystery to myself. I am someone who is in this pilgrimage from the moment that I was born to the day to come that I__ going to die. And this is something that I can__ avoid, whether I like it or not, or _ I__ going to die. So, what I have to do is to honor this pilgrimage through life. And so I am this pilgrim _ if I can somehow answer your question _ who__ constantly amazed by this journey. Who is learning a new thing every single day. But who__ not accumulating knowledge, because then it becomes a very heavy burden in your back. I am this person who is proud to be a pilgrim, and who__ trying to honor his journey.