 We humans have been journeying to holy places for over two millennia, and we will likely keep doing so as long as we walk this planet.
Why do we go?
The impulse to pilgrimage spans continents, cultures, and faiths. More than a million Hindus annually descend on Benares to bathe in the sacred Ganges. Some two million Muslims visit Mecca. Eight million pilgrims journey to Lourdes and another five million to Fatima. And millions more will head to shrines great and small, too numerous to count, on every inhabited continent.
At first glance, little seems to link these journeys. Our mind-bogglingly diverse religious traditions spur equally varied motivations for pilgrimage. Buddhists, for example, often visit Bodh Gaya, site of the Buddha's enlightenment, in search of their own illumination. Many Hindus hope that visits to their faith's Char Dham (four holy places) might liberate them from the cycle of rebirth. And Catholic visitors to Lourdes often seek healing for themselves or loved ones. What possibly connects the Buddhist serenely meditating under the Bodhi tree, the Catholic petitioning a cancer cure at Bernadette's grotto, and the Hindu seeking deliverance from the wheel of reincarnation?
Well, quite a lot. Underneath the surface concerns that propel pilgrims to holy places is the shared bedrock of human experience. Whatever we believe, wherever we live, and whenever in history we were born, perhaps we humans keep journeying as pilgrims because pilgrimage mirrors the reality of the human condition. Pilgrimage, like life, is a journey. And in pilgrimage, as often in life, we note some need and hope it can be addressed. Put differently, common human themes tie us pilgrims together:
- Desire: Something is missing; we know our world is not perfect; there is a problem to be solved, a need to be addressed.
- Hope: We hope for something better.
- Journey: Pilgrimage is ultimately a metaphor for life itself, a journey that is filled with desires and hopes.
Desire: Something is missing...
A few (too few) of us pilgrims set out simply to give thanks for all that we have. More likely, we set out for the opposite reason: we want or need something. We infirm need physical healing; we mentally anguished seek peace; we, the unreconciled want to patch up broken relationships with God, family, or friends. We are restless and feel like there must be more to life than the path we're following; we look for answers to some vexing life dilemma; we yearn for spiritual enlightenment or a deeper connection with our Creator; we are exhausted by modern's life's pace and simply crave a little peace; or we are simply bored and pursue the stimulation of something different. Our hearts are a little empty; our behavior is a little wanting; or our bodies are suffering.
Something is missing, however we express that. And so we set out. After all, why would we go anywhere if we lived in perfect bliss? Why would we search for something if we already had everything?
That is not to say—lest the foregoing seem too romantic—that what we search for, on pilgrimage or in life, is necessarily divinely inspired, lofty, noble, or saintly. Pilgrims journey for all sorts of reasons and look for all sorts of things. I once noticed a handsome, twenty-ish male squiring an equally attractive young female along a pilgrim route; a couple of days later I saw them again, she now hobbled by a sore knee; a week later I saw him yet again, miles further along the pilgrimage trail, this time accompanying a different young woman. I imagined the rogue shepherding his first pilgrim-date on a bus back home so that he could once again turn toward his pilgrim goal: finding another woman to accompany. So much for chivalry!
Still, whether our appetites are channeled in lofty or base ways, philosophers of religion find something profoundly spiritual in our insatiable wanting, our unquenchable sense of "something missing." That is, we humans are perennially unsettled because there is ultimately more to us than what we own, eat, earn, or possess; there is more to life than our jobs, homes, entertainments, or bank accounts. No matter what we have, how famous we become, what we earn, who we sleep with, or what we drive, we will always feel at least somewhat incomplete, vaguely dissatisfied, or wanting more.
Our wanting, the forever-restlessness of the human condition, signifies that we are innately geared for more than this earthly lifetime can ever offer, whether or not we ever recognize the fact or forever exhaust ourselves reeling unquenched from one pursuit to another. The fifth century bishop St. Augustine put it this way, "Our hearts are restless, O God, and they will not rest until they rest in Thee." Because we are restless, we are never quite at home here. The New Testament letter to the Hebrews proclaims that, "We are all strangers and exiles on the earth." [Hebrews 11:13] The sentiment is harshly worded. I don't feel an "exile" on this beautiful earth. But I don't feel utterly fulfilled either, and I don't suspect I ever will be. So we restless humans hit the road in search of the healing, enlightenment, answers, or experiences that might complete us, which brings us to the second great human impulse expressed through pilgrimage.
Hope: We indomitably hope for something better...
Every pilgrimage embodies hope. We hope to reach a destination and return home safely. But we also hope that our lives will be bettered through the pilgrim experience. We hope for peace, reconciliation, forgiveness, healing, enlightenment, or a dozen other aspirations. A woman at Lourdes hopes her sick child will be healed, and a Buddhist hopes he too will be enlightened after resting where the Buddha found insight.
 Detail of Holy Door, Plaza de la Quintana.
Photo: Turismo de Santiago, Rúa do Vilar, 63, 15705 Santiago de Compostela www.santiagoturismo.com
I prayed one evening at a small town church during a week-long pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. The town was virtually depopulated, a relic of a bygone small-town past struggling to survive a present dominated by large commercial urban centers. Hundred-degree heat had transformed this under populated, dusty place into a ghost town. A handful of us dirty, bedraggled pilgrims straggled into the deserted town; had we been gunslingers on horseback skirting a tumbleweed or two, the scene could have passed for an old western movie.
As dusk fell, church bells tolled to announce the evening mass. Three or four old ladies emerged from shuttered houses and made their way to the same cool church where we pilgrims were resting. After mass, the priest prayed for the pilgrims' continued safety, then closed his prayer book and improvised, "I know you pilgrims are hot and tired, but keep going. If you are looking for answers, you will find answers. If you are looking for peace, you will find peace. If you are looking for God, God will find you." Yes, that's it, isn't it? That's what we humans do. We journey in hope. We hope for peace, answers, and second chances. And we don't give up hoping. We hope indomitably. No diagnosis of terminal illness prevents us from hoping that some miracle or medical breakthrough may yet save our beloved spouse or child. We seize on remarkable stories from our respective traditions, reminding ourselves, for example, of the Jesus who visits a death-struck young girl and says, "talitha cumi," "little girl, arise." And she does.
The Biblical patriarch Abraham is considered one of humanity's first great pilgrims, journeying at God's bidding toward a promised land. The letter to the Hebrews reflects on Abraham's long-wandering caravan and observes, "If they had been thinking of that land from which they gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But, as it is, they desire a better country." [Hebrews 11: 15-16] Yes, we keep going, on our pilgrimage to Lourdes, Mecca, Benares, or Montserrat, or our pilgrimage through life. We hope for something better, and hope pulls us forward on our journey.
Journey: Our life is a journey, and pilgrimage is a metaphor...
Sometimes our hopes are fulfilled and sometimes they are not. Yet we keep going, and frequently we learn from the journey. In this respect, one's pilgrimage to Lourdes or Montserrat is a metaphor for life itself. Most pilgrims learn the truth of the old cliché: it's about the journey, not the destination. That isn't entirely true, of course: no journey will seem worthwhile if it ultimately leads to a meaningless, valueless destination (just ask anyone who late in life suffers regrets after orienting life around some goal that, once finally grasped, turned out to be empty and unfulfilling).
But in pilgrimage as in life, a lot of it is about the journey: who we meet along the way, what we see and savor, how we behave, what we learn, and dozens of other things that, in the end, constitute a life well lived or a pilgrimage well walked. No magic will happen simply by reaching a destination like Montserrat, any more than magic happens simply by reaching the company presidency or the comfortable retirement. More often, the magic happens along the way, and pilgrims through life will be wise to keep eyes, hearts, and minds open to what discoveries may await us along the way.
Trekking six or seven hours each day during one pilgrimage, I passed by other trekkers daily (or they bypassed me). Most of us exchanged only a "buen camino" and kept going, each happy in our own solitude. Sometimes we faced the awkward dilemma that we were walking at the same pace; would we remain silent companions for the next three or four hours, each mulling his thoughts accompanied by the soundtrack of the other's footfalls? Faced with the prospect, one might conveniently slow down or speed up a bit, or take an unneeded rest, in order to open up the literal and figurative space we each wanted.
But sometimes pilgrims wanted not space but companionship. After exchanging idle chatter about the weather and our respective home countries, travelers might quickly begin confiding intimate concerns. Some had mulled a quandary for a quiet hour or two and needed to share their insight or anguish with another person. Others were simply taking advantage of the "airline phenomenon" and unburdening themselves anonymously to a walking companion they would never meet again in "normal" life. Walking companions sometimes learn things that bosses, best friends, or lovers didn't know. A savvy young computer engineer walked and wondered if his life and career ought to concern something more than computer engineering. One woman mulled a marriage proposal. Another woman, already married, was resisting her husband's entreaties to start a family. Did her reluctance to have children now say something about her, she wondered? About their relationship? She hoped light would dawn in the five-hundred miles that gaped between her and the famous cathedral in Santiago.
 Cathedral and Obradoiro square, night view.
Photo: Turismo de Santiago, Rúa do Vilar, 63, 15705 Santiago de Compostela www.santiagoturismo.com
As for me? Nothing like that. I love to walk; I love travel; I'm a religious person; I studied medieval history in college and relished the chance to see Spain's Romanesque and Gothic churches; I enjoy solitude and occasional refuge from the crazed drumbeat of meetings, phone calls, and emails that dominates modern life. Wasn't that reason enough to go on pilgrimage? I had neither a burning conundrum to resolve nor enlightenment to seek. For the first few days of my trek, I good naturedly shrugged aside the oft-repeated mantra that one hears regularly, "Everyone has something to learn on the camino."
But we all do have something to learn, and we more often learn it through the journey than at the destination. One German trekker emailed me after returning home from his trek, undertaken as a long-distance vacation hike, nothing more. He was in terrific shape. We had run into each other various times during the early days of our respective treks. I would arrive in town, sweaty and exhausted at the end of the walking day, to find him relaxing with a beer at some outdoor café; he had arrived two hours ahead of me, showered, washed his clothes and hung them to dry in the late afternoon sun.
After a few days, I didn't see him any more; I was still gutting out thirteen to fifteen miles each day (and grateful to do that much), but he had started pushing himself, ratcheting up his distances from thirteen to fifteen miles, then seventeen and still further. His email reported his safe arrival at Santiago and then back home in Germany, "I felt very good on the camino, my physical condition couldn't be better," he wrote, "Most times I had no problems to walk even long distances. I really enjoyed to see how far I could get, to go to my limits." But to his surprise, his vacation had yielded a challenging insight. Yes, he was exhilarated to push his physical limits and discover his fortitude. But as he walked, the anguishing realization dawned about his life back at home, "I rarely tap my full potential. Or, to say it in the camino way: I walk only 20 km although I could walk 35 km. Now I think it is very helpful to go to your limits from time to time. To feel my energy. For me there is a lot to discover." Everyone has something to learn.
I had my own unexpected thoughts along the way. First came profound solidarity with the millions of my fellow-Christian predecessors who had journeyed the same route over centuries. I particularly imagined the unremembered thousands who died during pilgrim journeys and lied buried in unmarked, makeshift graves along the route. That fact may shock modern minds, but consider that many medieval pilgrims would have been broken-down peasants, released from their feudal obligations for the trip of a lifetime only because they were no longer considered fit for productive labor. If a peasant died three-hundred miles from home in 1000AD, there were neither resources nor inclination to transport the body back home. I began to see myself as metaphorically completing the journey that they couldn't and bearing their hopes to Compostela.
Until that is, I needed someone to bear mine. 250 miles into a five-hundred mile journey, twenty pounds lighter than the day I started, feverish, suffering from chest congestion that required an antibiotic course, a blood-filled blister on one heel and a merely painful one on the other, I was whipped. I gave up. "No mas." I changed plane reservations from a pay phone in a small Spanish town, then took a bus to the nearest city. The bus briefly skirted the pilgrim trail, and I saw two or three trekkers pressing toward the goal I wouldn't reach. I had always understood that I might not complete the pilgrimage; all kinds of things can go wrong during a 500-mile walk; even minor problems like ingrown toenails can turn catastrophic. Yet, in my gut, I was certain I would finish. How could I not? I'm in good shape, had trained, packed the right gear, and prepared for most contingencies. That's who I am, the in-control guy who thinks ahead and gets the job done.
Except that, ultimately, I'm not in control. Everyone has something they have to learn on the camino, so the mantra goes. And, having blithely brushed the slogan aside during the early days of my pilgrimage, I was finally humbled and weakened enough to learn what I was supposed to: it's not my world; it's God's world. I re-learn that truth every couple of years, then slowly push it from consciousness and briefly begin living again as if I can control good health and ill, the vagaries of economies, and how others will choose to behave. But periodic jolts once again remind me that I'm not in control of as much of this world as I would like to believe.
I learned something else during my pilgrimage, at least before those blisters altered my perspective: the sheer joy of being alive. I trekked during early September, counting on an early turn to fall but punished by a late burst of summer. Temperatures climbed to the low hundreds by noon, day after day; so we pilgrims rose earlier and earlier, determined to conquer a chunk of the day's mileage in the pre-dawn cool. I left a pilgrim hostel at 4:30AM one morning, switched on my headlamp, and saw four or five headlamps already strung out ahead of me, bobbing slightly to each walker's particular rhythmic gait.
The file soon strung out as faster walkers out-paced slower ones, and I became a solitary dot of light under an ocean of stars. As we walked west, a dullish gray sky began pursuing us from the east and before long overtook the starry blackness. Then orange rays began warming my back and tinting countless stalks in a harvested grain field. The vague silhouette of a large hill loomed in the distance; over the hours, the hill grew closer (and larger), patches of green appeared, then a road, then trees and bushes. Hours later I stood atop that hill with the fierce sun directly overhead bleaching the colors of all around; I saw my destination for the evening down in the valley. I started down the other side of the hill. Time moves differently when you move slowly.
One Spanish pilgrim put it this way. He had worked in a city along the pilgrim route, and his daily auto commute bypassed one stretch of the camino. He sometimes saw a pilgrim or two as he cruised to work or lurched along in congested traffic. He recounted, "I used to wonder what those people were doing and why they were doing it." Once retired, he decided to walk the camino himself. Some days into his trek, he found himself walking the very same stretch of camino that he had bypassed thousands of times in his commuting lifetime. He stopped walking and beheld Spaniards whizzing by in their cars, a few of them undoubtedly commuting from the same suburb he once had to the same office district where he had once worked, "I looked at them all and I had to laugh to myself, because I found myself wondering what those people were doing and why they were doing it!"
Hit the road. Bring your hopes and questions. You will see some remarkable things as you go. And you will learn something. After all, everyone has something they have to learn on the camino.
Chris Lowney, formerly a Jesuit seminarian for seven years, was named a Managing Director of J.P. Morgan & Co. while still in his thirties. He held senior positions in New York, Tokyo, Singapore and London until leaving the firm in 2001. He served successively on Morgan's Asia-Pacific, Europe, and Investment Banking Management Committees. Mr. Lowney undertook (but did not complete due to illness) a walking pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela to raise money for charity. He is author of 3 books: Heroic Leadership (#1 best-seller of CBPA, finalist for 2003 Book of the Year Award from ForeWord magazine, translated into 10 languages), A Vanished World (nominated for La Coronica award), and Heroic Living.
©2010 Chris Lowney. All rights reserved.
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