Travel
A Pilgrimage to
SACRED GROUND
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At a time when travel is usually a pain, a perk or a pleasure, Phil Cousineau is promoting its sacred possibilities.
At a time when the spiritual and the practical usually seem miles apart, Cousineau pulls them together in his new book, "The Art of Pilgrimage: The Seeker's Guide to Making Travel Sacred" (Conari Press).
"The phenomenon of pilgrimage is peaking here at the turn of the millennium," Cousineau said in a telephone interview, citing examples from around the world.
THE TOMB of St. JAMES in Santiago de Compostela in Spain draws a million visitors a year, more than it did at the peak of pilgrimages in the Middle Ages.
ROME, which sees as many as 4 million tourists most years, expects 50 million in 2000, which the Vatican has declared "the Year of the Pilgrim."
PILGRIMAGES to MECCA, a holy city of Islam, have increased fourfold in the 1990s.
There is a trend, too, toward pilgrimages that, if not quite secular, stretch traditional definitions of "sacred:" pilgrimages to Greenwich Village to celebrate the Beat poets, to Africa to marvel over elephants, to Cooperstown, N.Y. where Cousineau made an early and meaningful pilgrimage to the Baseball Hall of Fame.
"That visit to my pantheon of heroes was as powerful as later journeys to Delphi, Ephesus or Jerusalem," he writes. "It was a waking dream to walk on the hallowed ground, where, according to legend, my favorite game was first played. I was awestruck at the chance to see the great relics of baseball: Babe Ruth's bat, Ty Cobb's spikes and Shoeless Joe Jackson's glove."
To discover for yourself what is sacred is the first step toward taking a pilgrimage, Cousineau says. The next is to realize that a pilgrimage is not a cakewalk.
"A pilgrimage is a transformative journey to a sacred place," he says. "The traveler is intentionally going someplace to be transformed or changed. The point of the pilgrimage is to prove yourself by enduring and overcoming difficulties."
This is where Cousineau hopes his practical suggestions can help. He draws on his own extensive travels in more than 50 countries and his knowledge of literature, history, mythology and religion to offer concrete suggestions for how to prepare, how to pack, how to stay in the moment, be more mindful, see with a pilgrim's eyes and even record a pilgrimage so that it will still be meaningful years later.
He suggests, for example, beginning each day of your pilgrimage reading, however briefly, from a collection of sacred writing.
"If I read a little Scripture, or Rumi, or spend five minutes with Emily Dickinson and then I begin my walk to the Louvre in Paris, it puts things in an entirely different light. I've begun my day in a sacred mood."
Similarly, he suggests taking along a cassette recorder so that you can listen to sacred music as you travel. Or recording conversations with people you meet on your journey or the sounds of a place, so that years later, you can play the tape and return in your imagination.
Reading the work of writers who lived in the place you are visiting can deepen your experience of your surroundings, he says. But don't lug around a lot of books. Consider packing poetry instead.
"One poem can tell you as much about a country as reading a hundred years' worth of newspaper articles," he says. Or before you leave, put together your own "bible" of meaningful readings to enjoy on your journey.
And make the effort to walk as often as possible on your pilgrimage, he says. "Contemplative walks transform the ground beneath us into holy ground, whether we're on the Appian Way outside Rome or the parking lot outside our office building."
Cousineau has organized his book around the seven stages of a sacred journey: the longing, the call, departure, the pilgrim's way, the labyrinth, arrival and bringing back the boon. Each chapter includes photographs, quotations, anecdotes and imagination exercises meant to reawaken readers to the possibility of soulful, as opposed to soulless, travel.
"If we truly want to know the secret of soulful travel, we need to believe that there is something sacred waiting to be discovered in virtually every journey," Cousineau writes. His goal is to help his readers learn how to find "the secret room."
"Everywhere has a secret room," he writes. "You must find your own, in a small chapel, a tiny cafe, a quiet park, the home of a new friend, the pew where the morning light strikes the rose window just so.
"As a pilgrim you must find it or you will never understand the hidden reasons why you really left home."
The Oregonian January 23, 1999 |
