Preparing to Pilgrim

The count­down ticker over on the right is relent­lessly march­ing for­ward. At the Insti­tute we are gear­ing up for our annual Sum­mer Seminar—this year is Sem­i­nar #44—on the very cool theme of “Mis­sion and Ecu­menism in the Global Vil­lage: One Hun­dred Years after the Edin­burgh Con­fer­ence.” Since ecu­menism takes its birth­day from a mis­sion con­fer­ence, and this is the big cen­ten­nial year, it seemed like a good idea to find out whether mis­sion and ecu­menism still belong together… we’re hop­ing the answer is yes!

We also have been find­ing new spon­sors for our project—see the grow­ing list on the right, with more soon to fol­low, and feel the glow of our gratitude!—and set­ting up some speak­ing engage­ments in the U.S. So if you are in the Twin Cities on Novem­ber 9–10, stop by Augs­burg Col­lege where we’ll be giv­ing the Founders’ Day lec­tures. And if you’re in the neigh­bor­hood of Roanoke Col­lege in Salem, Vir­ginia, we’ll be speak­ing at the Cen­ter for Reli­gion and Soci­ety on Novem­ber 18. And we might just have another engage­ment between those two… details soon to follow.

Besides these prac­ti­cal mat­ters, there is after all the daunt­ing fact that we have com­mit­ted our­selves to walk­ing for 70 days and 1700+ km… that takes a bit of train­ing if we’re not going to flunk within the first week. So we are going for prac­tice walks, test­ing out com­fort­able shoes and synthetic-fabric clothes, soon adding prac­tice back­packs, and now (finally!) fac­ing some seri­ous heat as we go. When­ever I start to feel ner­vous about pulling it off, I remind myself that Luther did this with­out ortho­pe­di­cally cor­rect footwear, in def­i­nitely not highly engi­neered syn­thetic fab­rics, dur­ing the Advent fast and win­ter weather (includ­ing the Alps-crossing part), and with a con­sid­er­ably higher risk of ban­dits and wolves. This is per­haps not the most spir­i­tual of com­forts, but it helps…

It’s funny, though, in the course of all this prepara­tory work it did sud­denly occur to me one day that we are really going on a pil­grim­age, that this is the first pil­grim­age that either of us has gone on, and pil­grim­ages have a ten­dency to change peo­ple. Every­one we’ve talked to who’s done one or knows some­one who’s done was says the same. All the walk­ing, the quiet, the cer­tainty of the road against the uncer­tainty of where you’ll lay your head: the daily clut­ter finally has no choice but to drain any­way. It sounds won­der­ful and unset­tling at the same time. There are many senses in which we don’t know what lies on the road ahead.

Keaton Christiansen says:
July 11, 2010 at 8:27 am
Prepa­ra­tions are fun, and you’re quite for­tu­nate to have such com­fort­able gear for the trek. Don’t for­get cam­eras and cam­era para­pher­na­lia. Take pic­tures and post them!
But after address­ing all the nec­es­sary prac­ti­cal con­cerns, I have a ques­tion about the more intel­lec­tual com­po­nent of this endeavor. Is a pil­grim­age right if you’re focus­ing on jour­ney­ing, rather than the destination?
A pil­grim­age is a jour­ney to a des­ti­na­tion, and the weighty spir­i­tual import of that pil­grim­age lies at the des­ti­na­tion. The End, the pur­pose, the point, the thing-to-be-gained by the pil­grims resides at the des­ti­na­tion, after a journey’s com­ple­tion. While you’ll undoubt­edly learn things along the way, if your minds stray from that end, you’ll make the jour­ney­ing your end rather than the des­ti­na­tion, and… mean­der. It seems a more East­ern idea to focus on the jour­ney as the End, rather than the des­ti­na­tion. But per­haps I mis­un­der­stand your intended end, and in turn ecu­menism. Where does this end?
Prac­ti­cally, you’re walk­ing through Europe, so please have lots of fun and take even more pic­tures. Eat beau­ti­ful food. Drink… like Luther­ans. Be merry as only a redeemed sin­ner under the Mercy of Christ could be.
–k <
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Sarah says:
August 6, 2010 at 3:26 pm
Thanks for your intel­lec­tual chal­lenge, Keaton! It’s a good one… and worth a whole post, so look for it soon!
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