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Jerusalem Bound enhances Holy Land travel through a broad approach to the pilgrim life. Equipped with an understanding of pilgrimage, Holy Land travelers can engage the experience in richer, life-changing ways. The book goes a step further. By viewing Holy Land pilgrimage as an exercise in spiritual formation, the book grounds the Christian traveler in a pilgrim-themed spirituality that speaks to the everyday journey back home. To set this in motion, we begin with a working definition of pilgrimage.

Defining Pilgrimage

Pilgrimage conjures up word pictures inspired by art, hymns, and literature, influenced by biblical, medieval, and contemporary practice, and informed by personal experience. Pilgrimage involves journeys, destinations, departures, and arrivals; it evokes images of temples, relics, and sacred tombs, Jerusalem, Rome, and the Celtic fringe. Pilgrims are long-distance travelers and restless wanderers, strangers and sojourners, migrants and second-place people. Pilgrims attend feasts and festivals and flee religious persecution. They are pious, patient, and penitent, gullible and godly, saints and sinners.

Pilgrimage is a crowded tent, and while we may instinctively know what it is, when we move from image to definition, it becomes more difficult to put our finger on it. What does Abraham’s call to leave his homeland have in common with the magi’s journey to Bethlehem? Do Dante and Pilgrim’s Progress describe the same phenomenon? What are the parallels between the Camino de Santiago and the earthly journey? Is a pilgrim a religious traveler or simply a stranger? Pilgrimage is both physical and metaphorical; it is an individual journey and a corporate experience. It includes round trips, one-way journeys, and never leaving home. Time and memory are as important as place and journey. How can pilgrimage be captured in a simple definition?

My personal experience testifies to the multifaceted nature of pilgrimage; there are many kinds of pilgrims. On my around-the-world journey, Sister Giovanna, a pilgrim nun who walked the streets of Italy helping those in need, told me: “by being a pilgrim, my heart learns to hear the cries of those who have no choice but to be pilgrims.” Pilgrimage embraces compassion ministry and social justice; it speaks to multicultural interactions, international partnerships, and relationships between dominant and non-dominant cultures.

Linguists point out the problem of deriving definitions from etymologies. Terms develop over time, and we are interested in what pilgrimage means today. Etymologies are still useful, though, offering insights that inform present-day applications. The English word, pilgrim, is ultimately derived from the Latin, peregrinus, meaning foreigner or traveler. The ideas are related insomuch as a foreigner has left home and has traveled elsewhere. Abraham is regarded as the first biblical pilgrim primarily due to his foreign status (Gen 12:1; Gen 23; Heb 11:8–19), and few themes have more application to a contemporary understanding of pilgrimage than engaging the Other.

One way to secure a definition is to look for a common denominator. Pilgrimage, however, conspicuously lacks one, a point that is not commonly recognized. Being a stranger in a strange land is different from a journey to a holy site; physical travel is not the same as spiritual metaphor. Journey is not always a defining feature: there are time-based expressions of the pilgrim life. To conceptualize pilgrimage, we turn to the family resemblance theory made popular by Ludwig Wittgenstein, which argues that “things which could be thought to be connected by one essential common feature may in fact be connected by a series of overlapping similarities, where no single feature is common to all of the things.”7 Pilgrimage is not a single entity but a category of religious expressions. No one concept or feature defines it. Certain themes, such as journey, stranger, and place, are generally present, but they may be absent or inconspicuous in a given expression.

In sum, we are looking for a definition that captures the breath of pilgrimage while retaining a sense of familiarity, one that considers biblical and historical expressions yet reflects contemporary practice. The definition will suggest a series of overlapping themes rather than a single subject. To facilitate Christian formation, the definition must be robust enough to examine the religious life, providing a framework for spiritual reflection and personal application:

Pilgrimage is the experience of God, self, and the Other through the dimensions of time, place, journey, and people and the thoughts, images, and reflections thereof.

The definition is based upon biblical and historical sources, contemporary practice, personal experience, and reasoned interpretation. It is familiar enough to meet expectations, broad enough to be inclusive, distinct enough to give clarity, conventional enough to engage tradition, and permissive enough to encourage innovation. The definition provides a framework for lived experience, spiritual reflection, and Christian formation.

Our working definition is but one element of a methodological approach to Christian pilgrimage, or a pilgrim-themed spirituality. The chapter will qualify the statement; it will also develop it, defining the character of pilgrimage as incarnational, metaphorical, autobiographical, and corporate. We will also break pilgrimage down into its component parts, which include themes, templates, elements, images, virtues and values, lived experience, and adages and aphorisms.

The above definition is not the only one in play. Our approach incorporates alternative definitions, such as those that differentiate between pilgrims and tourists and pilgrimage as time set aside for a particular purpose. It is important to understand how the definitions differ. Dictionary definitions generally describe pilgrimage as a journey to a sacred place or any long journey with a quest or purpose. They are seldom comprehensive statements; rather, they describe specific expressions, or templates, which is part of our critique. As opposed to textbook terms, pilgrim praxis utilizes a host of aphoristic definitions, often couched as “pilgrimage is” statements, which, though ultimately incomplete, are particularly useful. Pilgrimage is an intentional journey. Pilgrimage is life intensified. Pilgrimage confronts life’s most important questions. Aphoristic definitions, or the adages and axioms of the pilgrim life (see below), encapsulate the spirit of the religious journey. As subjective definitions that people claim as their own, they help determine when one is “on pilgrimage” and function as invaluable tools for guiding, probing, and exploring lived experience.

Richard R. Niebuhr describes pilgrims as “persons in motion passing through territories not their own, seeking something we might call completion, or perhaps the word clarity will do as well, a goal to which only the spirit’s compass points the way.”8 It is an evocative definition, incorporating images of journey, stranger, and arrival, but it is merely a snapshot of the pilgrim life. We need something more comprehensive, something that addresses pilgrimage as a whole, something that holds on to individual experience while developing social applications. We need to resource the pilgrim life with a richer breadth of images, to understand pilgrimage in a broader context, in more creative ways. A comprehensive methodology fuels the transformative potential of pilgrim experience.

In the meantime, all definitions remain in play. They are likewise open to critique, including my own, which some may consider to be too broad. Definitional tensions will always be a part of pilgrimage. To begin with, pilgrimage refers to specific life experiences as well as to life as a whole. How do we differentiate in meaningful ways between particular, circumscribed expressions and lived experience more generally, especially since any experience—at home or in the Holy Land—can be considered pilgrim material? Secondly, pilgrim definitions include both objective and subjective statements, and we need to maintain both types. A primary function of a comprehensive definition, such as the one presented here, is its ability to recognize the potentials and possibilities—the depth and breadth—of pilgrim expressions, which, in turn, fuel, inspire, and enhance the engagement of lived experience, or the discernment of when one is “on pilgrimage”. In other words, a broad approach resources subjective definitions, like pilgrimage as an intentional journey.

The Object of the Pilgrim Life

The pilgrim’s quest is the search for God in whom “we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28) yet whose thoughts and ways are not our own (Isa 55:8). God is our journey and destination, our guide and companion, our essence and agency. Pilgrimage, more generally, is about life itself. Life experience, particularly travel, teaches us about ourselves, and self-identity is shaped by moving beyond our familiarities. When we do so, we discover our passions and dependencies, our strengths and limitations, our dreams and anxieties. Pilgrimage is often perceived as an exercise in self-actualization, personal fulfillment, and the inward spiritual journey. However, God inhabits the Other, and social relations are at the heart of the pilgrim life. Pilgrimage is a comprehensive spirituality with social and ethical dimensions, and the union of God, self, and Other is the quintessential object of the pilgrim life.

Qualifying the Sacred

It is worth noting that the sacred is not a definitional qualifier: our experiences of God, self, and the Other are not limited to the holy. Pilgrimage traverses the profane as well as the sacred, marking the good, the bad, and the ugly. Reaching beyond the sacred does not weaken or de-spiritualize pilgrimage; rather, it expands the spiritual landscape, allowing us to explore lived experience with a more thorough regard for the human condition. The pilgrim life is more richly layered when sacred places are understood as only one way of encountering God spatially. God is found in all types of places, high and low, far and near. The same holds true for time: pilgrims perceive God through periods of perseverance, in the ordinary moments of everyday life, and in the singularity of sacred occasions. Pilgrim theology does not seek to make all things sacred but to discover God in the undulations of the earthly journey.

The Dimensions of Pilgrimage

Cursory reflections on the fourfold dimensions of time, place, journey, and people reveal the rich and varied contexts in which pilgrimage is pursued.

Time

Time is linear and circular, sacred and ordinary. Pilgrimage embraces the past, present, and future, often simultaneously. Pilgrims acknowledge God’s past actions, live faithfully in the present moment, and anticipate God’s future promises. Pilgrimage is an exercise in personal and collective memory, and virtues—like hope, patience, and perseverance—have temporal qualities. Circular time is recurring: pilgrims feast and fast; they celebrate the seasons. A sojourn is a stational pause within a journey, while pilgrimage is the bracketing of time for a particular purpose.

Place

Place speaks to physical, spiritual, and emotional location. One can be in place or out of place, lost or found, at home or displaced, here or elsewhere. A place may be a paradise or a wilderness, a sanctuary, refuge, or hiding place. A space may be special or commonplace; spaces change and stay the same.

Journey

Journeys are marked by departures and arrivals. To depart denotes the beginning of something and the end of something else. Arrivals likewise involve beginnings and endings. A process is finished; a goal is completed; an experience is over. Then something else begins. Graduation is a commencement, the start of something new. The journey itself consists of movements and transitions, opportunities and dead ends, progress and change. Pathways have straights and intersections; they diverge, turn, and merge. Journeys have detours and delays, breaks and pauses. We wander, get lost, and persevere. Things come and go. Journeys fail; we lose things along the way. There are one-way trips and return journeys. We travel forward into the unknown. We come full circle, returning to the point of departure.

People

Pilgrimage is a call to companionship. Disconnected from others, the individual pilgrim is a diminished figure. The pilgrim life is a shared experience, involving guides, hosts, and fellow travelers. Pilgrims are dependent upon strangers. They receive succor, encouragement, and inspiration from others. Hospitality and generosity, gratitude and thanksgiving, compassion and clemency are the currencies of exchange. Pilgrims hear the cries of those who have no choice but to be pilgrims: refugees, migrants, and asylum seekers, the homeless, the weak, and the weary. Pilgrimage is occasionally a pathway to a sacred place but is always the streets of everyday life where we attend to those in need.

The Character of Pilgrimage

Pilgrimage is incarnational, metaphorical, autobiographical, and corporate. It is a comprehensive expression of the Christian faith.

Pilgrimage is Incarnational

Christian pilgrimage is patterned upon the incarnation. God blessed creation and inhabited human flesh in time and place. God was embodied; Word became flesh; the immaterial took material form. Christ assumed human attributes and was subject to mortal suffering. Salvation played out upon a landscape of blood, sweat, and tears. Christ was made impotent upon a tree before rising from the dead.

Pilgrimage is an embodied spirituality, engaging the senses and embracing the physicality of religious experience. It is a sensuous theology full of sights, sounds, and smells. Christ taught spiritual truths using material examples as simple as seeds and salt and set aside common, ordinary objects, such as bread and wine, for spiritual consumption. The incarnation is a divine declaration that matter matters. We experience God through the everyday events of our earthly lives, and pilgrimage is the reckoning of the facts in which we find ourselves. God is present in the actualities of life, experienced through actual events, real people, and specific locations.

Tracing the footsteps of Jesus, the Holy Land experience is an incarnational journey. According to Ernest Renan (d. 1892), the land reveals Jesus as a living figure.9 It does so as a sensuous encounter. Cyril of Jerusalem told his fourth-century catechumens that “others merely hear, we see and touch,” while Paulinus of Nola (d. 431) noted that “no other sentiment draws people to Jerusalem than the desire to see and touch the places where Christ was physically present.”10 Contemporary travelers are captured by the sensuous nature of the Holy Land—its sights, sounds, tastes, and smells—while the incarnational emphasis on embodied spirituality prepares pilgrims to encounter God through the actualities of the journey: its surprises, insights, and revelations as well as its challenges, questions, and difficulties. As physical witnesses of the gospel story, Christian pilgrims commemorate the incarnation in time and place as they sojourn through the Holy Land.

Pilgrimage is Metaphorical

While pilgrimage thrives on a spirituality grounded in the physicality of everyday life, its incarnational emphasis is complemented by a metaphorical perspective. Metaphor, in many ways, has been poorly understood. Its core function is neither to explain difficult concepts in simpler terms nor to tell us what we already know. Rather, a metaphor is a tool of exploration that allows us to discover things that, otherwise, we would not be aware of.

A metaphor is “a figure of speech whereby we speak about one thing in terms which are seen to be suggestive of another.”11 It pretends that “this” is “that.” It takes something we know (a source) to explore a less familiar target. That, of course, is how we learn: using the familiar to explore the unknown, finding similarities between dissimilar entities. Yet, herein lies the essence of metaphorical understanding: the interaction between source and target creates a new perspective whose meaning cannot be conveyed in any other way. To change the source alters the insight; thus, a given metaphor is irreplaceable and irreducible. The metaphor of life (target) as journey (source) uses what we know about travel and movement to explore the mysteries of our earthly existence. We can use other images—e.g., life is a box of chocolates—but the concept of journey renders insights into the earthly life that we cannot otherwise obtain.

Whenever we describe abstract concepts, we instinctively resort to metaphor. Since transcendent realities, such as God, cannot be directly known, religious language requires indirection. God is a shepherd; Jesus is a vine. Using one thing to describe another, metaphor employs indirect and non-literal thinking. Jesus is not literally a vine; God is not literally a shepherd, but metaphorical imagery allow us to explore the nature of God in effective ways. The fallacy of literalist thinking is equating the source with the target.

When Protestants say that the inner journey is what really matters, they are instinctively appealing to the abstract targets of metaphor. We should be careful, though, not to put the physical and spiritual dimensions of the Christian life at odds. Our focus on incarnational theology places a premium on embodied experience and cautions against an overly spiritualized approach to pilgrimage. Metaphor is based on non-literal thinking, but it is not opposed to concrete, empirical realities. Abstract targets are funded by less abstract sources; metaphor uses one to explore the other. In order to probe the spiritual world, metaphor has a foot in both concrete and abstract thought, and it is overly simplistic to equate metaphorical theology with a spiritualized approach to the pilgrim life. If anything, our pursuit of metaphorically produced insights calls us to engage physical expressions of pilgrimage in greater depth and detail. The effectiveness of the life-as-journey metaphor is dependent upon our knowledge of actual, physical journeys. Despite appeals to the metaphorical journey, Christian pilgrimage—and Christian formation more generally—has yet to fully employ the utility of metaphorical exploration. Complementing an incarnational approach, metaphorical theology draws upon the interplay between physical realities (source) and spiritual insights (target).

Life-as-journey is just one of countless pilgrim-related metaphors. We use metaphorical language to speak about time and place. Our God-talk is a metaphorical discourse. We encounter the unknown, the stranger, and the Other with metaphorical thinking that seeks connections between the unknown and the familiar.

Metaphor is an unexamined aspect of the Holy Land experience. Pilgrims enjoy a firsthand, empirical encounter with the land as they investigate scripture, history, and archaeology. But metaphor is never far away. We engage foreign places by using what we know to examine what we don’t. As soon as we explore the meaning of Jerusalem or make connections between the holy places, pilgrim travel, and our earthly lives, we are delving into metaphor, thinking of something in terms of something else. Holy Land travelers should engage metaphorical thinking as a tool of spiritual exploration, employing metaphorical language in their reflections of God and the pilgrim journey, including their descriptions of places, events, and emotions.

Pilgrimage Is Autobiographical

Pilgrimage is first-person experience, viewed through a first-person perspective. Pilgrimage emphasizes the context and narratives of our individual lives: each unique, distinct, and sacred. Our earthly existence is conditioned by age, gender, health, personality, family, culture, and ethnicity. We have our own thoughts and emotions, passions and preferences, gifts, skills, and talents. Our life stories differ is striking ways, shaped by events and circumstances, incidents and accidents, choices and decisions, obligations and responsibilities. We are on individual journeys of goals, adventures, and plateaus, repentance and return, healing and wholeness. Pilgrimage is personal narrative, and every Holy Land venture is a unique, irreplicable experience.

Pilgrimage is Corporate

While pilgrimage assumes a first-person perspective, it is not a self-centered journey. The pilgrim life is a shared experience that takes us beyond ourselves into the company of others. Pilgrims are called to journey as a sacred people: living well together, committed to a corporate experience of God. Pilgrimage is an exercise in collective memory and public commemoration, marked by monuments, rituals, and festivals. Using the holy sites to commemorate the life of Christ, Holy Land pilgrimage is a public act of Christian memory enacted through the context of a short-term Christian community.

A Comprehensive Expression of the Christian Faith

Pilgrimage is life intensified, a microcosm of life itself. Pilgrimage must move beyond narrow perceptions of personal spirituality to a holistic approach that values the Other. The pilgrim life speaks to all areas of Christian practice from prayer and worship to acts of mercy and compassion—from the sanctuary to the street. The Holy Land journey is a crash course in the comprehensive claims of the gospel story.

The Component Parts of Pilgrimage

Themes

Themes are unifying ideas, prominent motifs, and reoccurring subjects. Along with the quest for God, self, and the Other, pilgrimage coalesces around two primary sets of themes—(a) time, place, and journey and (b) the stranger, the foreign, and the unknown. The themes are not unrelated—insomuch as a stranger may be one who travels—yet they stand on their own. Pilgrimage contains secondary motifs as well: quest, discovery, and personal challenge; identity, narrative, and autobiography; commemoration, collective memory, and sacred topography; monuments and shrines; feasts and festivals; rituals and embodied prayer. While the Holy Land experience focuses upon biblical landscapes and narratives, history and archaeology, ecumenical and interfaith issues, and peace and reconciliation, every journey has its own personal and incidental themes.

Templates

Templates are the common types, or patterns, of pilgrim expression, which are formed by various criteria and degrees of specificity. Pilgrim templates are neither fixed nor finite but are logically and flexibly construed. A given pilgrim expression may be associated with more than one template, while distinct templates may share common features. There are round-trip templates and one-way journeys. A journey to a holy place is a particular pattern, while liturgical processions and prayer walks are another. Some templates focus on people rather than places—some on personal issues, others on the Other. There are local pilgrimages, global travels, secular adventures, and physical challenges. Short-term mission trips and pilgrimage as “the street” embrace evangelism, compassion ministry, and social justice as forms of the pilgrim life. The modern popularity of pilgrimage has focused upon a few specific templates, such as long-distance walking and alternative tourism, while other expressions have received less attention.

By appreciating the spectrum of pilgrim expressions, we can apply various templates and their corresponding themes to the Holy Land experience. The Abraham story reminds us that pilgrimage is about following God in a foreign land. People-focused templates turn our attention to the Living Stones. Pilgrimage as reconciliation positions us as peacemakers in a land of conflict. Long-distance walking models the virtue of perseverance for tired pilgrims. The template of the earthly life envisions New Jerusalem as our spiritual destination, creating a reflective juxtaposition with the present-day city.

Elements

Elements are the parts of pilgrimage that, on their own, do not comprise a complete expression of the pilgrim life, such as departure and arrival, home and holy places, prayer and journaling, baggage and souvenirs. Elements include almost anything associated with an act of pilgrimage: God, self, and the Other; time, place, and journey; logistical details, local context, and pilgrim companions.

Images

Images, like elements, refer to virtually any aspect of pilgrimage with one imposed distinction: images may be independent of actual expressions. A case in point are scriptural images, such as Jesus as the alpha and the omega, that relate to time, place, and journey. Jesus is the way, the gate, and the good shepherd. He is the light of the world, the bread from heaven, and the water of life. Christological images offer pilgrims standalone content that can resource religious travel in significant ways.

Virtues and Values

Virtues are the principles that guide pilgrim behavior. They are the “what” that pilgrims always do. While pilgrims pursue the fruits of the Spirit (Gal 5:22–23; Col 3:12; 1 Tim 6:11), pilgrimage has particular associations with certain virtues, such as hope, patience, and perseverance; hospitality is its constant companion. Pilgrim theology claims the virtues of compassion, respect, self-awareness, and personal responsibility. Pilgrimage also espouses a number of secondary or relative values that are not operative in every situation. Pilgrims navigate between intentionality and spontaneity, austerity and extravagance, confidence and humility, boldness and caution, which underscores the importance of context, discernment, and decision-making in pilgrim spirituality.

Lived Experience

Lived experience is the currency of pilgrimage. It is the actual content of the journey, the events, emotions, and episodes that we interpret and reflect upon. Pilgrimage is embodied, first-person experience, or the actuality of lived experience in time and place.

Adages and Aphorisms

Pilgrims are constantly translating lived experience into short interpretative phrases that express the wisdom of religious travel. They are the quotable quotes and shareable sayings concerning life and faith that emerge throughout a pilgrimage, which we will collectively refer to as adages and aphorisms.12 God is in the facts; life is a journey of losing things along the way; the journey is never over. Forged from experience or borrowed from others, they are concentrated verbal tools for perceiving, exploring, and interpreting the pilgrim life. They are the lessons of the road, rules to live by, which help us size up situations and readjust our thoughts and behavior. They remind us of who we are, where we are, what to do, and where to go, charting the course we need to take and projecting the ideals we seek to obtain. They incite and inspire.

While conveying insight and wisdom, adages are not necessarily—or always—true. They are assertive statements that are perspectival in function, emphasizing points of view that may not pertain to every situation. “The journey is more important than the destination” offers a valuable perspective; it is, at best, a half-truth. But that’s the point: adages are not truth claims per se but verbal tools for probing reality and focusing our attention. The Holy Land pilgrim is alert to the quotable sayings, group mantras, and personal mottos that emerge throughout the experience, noting how accumulated wisdom and short interpretive sayings frame the ongoing journey.

Moving Forward

The aim of the book is to enhance Holy Land travel through a comprehensive approach to the pilgrim life that offers pilgrims a spectrum of ideas and perspectives for exploring the Jerusalem experience. Holy Land pilgrimage is more than walking in the footsteps of Jesus, visiting the holy places, and following the traditions of ancient travelers. It is being a stranger in a strange land, following God in a foreign country, and receiving hospitality from others. It is an exercise in engaging the Other, listening to voices that are not our own, valuing ecumenical and interreligious relations, sharing in the hopes and struggles of the Living Stones, and promoting peace and reconciliation. Holy Land travel is an incarnational journey in time and place. It is about personal narrative, collective memory, and shared experience. The Jerusalem pilgrim embraces the mystery of life: walking into the unknown, receiving revelation as the journey unfolds, and celebrating the sanctity of the present moment.

Focusing on God, self, and the Other through time, place, journey, and people gives purpose, direction, and structure to the Holy Land experience. The Jerusalem-bound traveler uses the experience as an exercise in Christian formation, which forms the basis for a pilgrim-themed spirituality back home. With an eye towards the future, Holy Land pilgrims seek long-term transformation. They return from the Holy Land shaped by the lessons of the journey and with new understandings of scripture, the life of Christ, and the kingdom of God. Seeds take root upon return, resourcing a lifelong journey of faith. Whether at home or in the Holy Land, the object of the pilgrim life remains the same: the union of God, self, and the Other.

7. The quote is a standard description of Wittgenstein’s theory. See, for instance, Sussman, Substance and Behavioral Addictions, 29, 317. Wittgenstein himself indicates, “we see a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing.” Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, paragraph 66. Also see paragraphs 65–67. The idea of applying the family resemblance theory to pilgrimage comes from Michael McGhee, personal communication.

8. Niebuhr, “Pilgrims and Pioneers,” 7.

9. On Renan’s idea that the land of the Gospels reveals the person of Jesus, see chapter 5, “The Fifth Gospel.”

10. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechesis, 13.22; Paulinus of Nola, Letter, 49.14.

11. Soskice, Metaphor and Religious Language, 15.

12. The pilgrim life is full of short, quotable sayings that go by a number of names, including axioms, adages, aphorisms, bromides, dictums, epigrams, maxims, mottoes, parables, platitudes, precepts, proverbs, quips, quotations, slogans, truisms, and witticisms (the list is courtesy of Geary, The World in a Phrase, 8). While the terms may differ slightly—and a statement about God may function differently from one about life in general—we will refer to the concise sayings of pilgrim wisdom as adages and aphorisms.