Many primary pilgrimages have been cancelled or reduced in an effort to involve the spread of Covid-19.
These included the Hajj, a milestone for Muslims around the world; Hindu pilgrimage, known as Amarnath Yatra, in the Kashmir Mountains; and pilgrimages to Lourdes, France.
Pilgrims have faced delays and cancellations for centuries for reasons ranging from economic hardship and everyday farm jobs to what is now all too familiar to trendy pilgrims: the plague or ill health.
At that time, as now, a strategy to run the pilgrimage house or the devoted community.
Pilgrimage can be an inner or outer adventure and, possibly, individual motivations would vary, it can be an act of devotion devoted or a way of seeking closeness to the divine.
Over the centuries and in all cultures, those who aspired to a sacred adventure would find tactics of choice to do so.
Reading stories, drawing a map with your finger or eye, or bringing back a memory of a sacred place helped facilitate a genuine sense for the pilgrim sent home.
Thanks to these visual aids or aids, others felt that they too were experiencing a joy of pilgrimage and even connecting with others.
An example of this is the story of Dominican brother Felix Fabri, who is known for recording his own pilgrimages in other formats, some for the laity and others for his brothers.
Fabri approached in the 1490s through an organization of cloistered nuns, which meant they had promised to lead a contemplative life in the tranquility of their community.
They sought to exercise in devotion so that they could obtain the non-secular benefits of hajj without having to break their promise of a life far from the outside world.
He made “Die Sionpilger”, a virtual pilgrimage in the form of a consultant to Santiago de Compostela, Jerusalem and Rome.
In those cities, the pilgrims encountered sites and scenes related to many aspects of their religion: shrines to honor Jesus and the saints, relics, cathedrals, and sacred landscapes related to miraculous occasions and stories.
Fabri’s consultant sent the pilgrim on an imaginative adventure of a thousand kilometers, having to take a bachelor’s step.
My current assignment of e-books shows that from Lourdes to South Africa, from Jerusalem to England, from Ecuador to California, DIY pilgrimages are just a medieval phenomenon.
Phil Volker’s way is an example.
Volker is a 72-year-old father, now a grandfather and a veteran who drew a map of the Camino de Santiago in his garden on Vashon Island in the Pacific Northwest.
Volker prays the rosary as he walks: for those affected by the pandemic, his family, his neighbors, the world.
After being diagnosed with cancer in 2013, some elements were combined to motivate Volker to build a Way in the Garden, adding the film The Way, a paperback meditation book, Annie O’Neil’s Daily Way with Annie and the story of Eratosthenes, the Greek Scholar of the 2nd century BC. who discovered a way to measure the circumference of the Earth: the Sun, a stick and a well.
“To me, this boy is the wonderful godfather of the do-ityourselfers. How can anyone succeed in this kind of capers with things on hand in their own backyard?It made me think, what can come out of his backyard?He told me.
Volker began making a circuit around his 10-acre assets on Vashon Island in the Pacific Northwest. It was a possibility to exercise, which his doctors had encouraged, but he also created an area to reflect and pray.
Each tower around the assets is just over a mile away. Realizing that he was traveling a safe distance, he discovered a map of the pilgrimage direction of the Camino de Santiago to track his progress, calculating that 909 towers would take him from St. Louis. John Pied. -de-Port to St. James Cathedral.
To date, Volker has finished 3,500 miles of roads coming out of his yard.
Through a documentary film, Volker’s blog and an article in Northwest Catholic magazine, Camino’s garden attracted many visitors, some simply curious but many in search of healing and comfort.
The Story of the Volker’s Backyard Camino encouraged Sara Postlethwaite, sister of the Verbum Dei Missionary Fellowship, to map St Kevin’s Trail, a 19-mile pilgrimage address in County Wicklow, Ireland, on a series of tours 1. 5 miles to Daly City. , California.
The road crosses the roads and countryside from Hollywood to the ruins of the monastery that St. Kevin, a century-old abbot, had founded in Glendalough.
Postlethwaite intended to return to his local Ireland in the spring of 2020 for the itinerary himself, but due to pandemic restrictions, he brought the pilgrimage house to Daly City.
From time to time, Postlethwaite searched Google Maps to see where it was along the Irish road, turning the camera to see the surrounding trees or, at one point, ending in the middle of an old stone circle.
Many have joined the Postlethwaite Solidarity March, in the United States and abroad.
After a day of hiking, he stopped at the shed of his net house, where he had drawn a full-scale edition of Market Cross in Glendalough.
While Postlethwaite chalkly wrote down the ks, circles, and image of the cross of the crucified Christ, he reflected only on the suffering caused by the pandemic, but also on the problems of racism, justice, and privilege.
In particular, he recalled Ahmaud Arbery, a black runner shot dead through two white men in a fatal confrontation in February 2020, and put his call on the chalk cross.
For Berkeley artist Maggie Preston, a DIY chalk maze on the open-air street of her home has a way of bonding with her neighbors and three-year-old son.
Here is a link with the medieval to bring longer pilgrimages to the Church or community.
Researchers warned that the mazes would possibly have been founded on maps of Jerusalem, offering a reduced edition of a much longer pilgrimage route.
They began by chalkly marking places where they may no longer pass (the aquarium, the zoo, an exercise adventure) and then created an undeniable labyrinth in the form of an non-stop path in seven semicircles.
“A maze has given us a bigger destination, not just a position to believe in, but a subsidized path to travel literally with our feet,” he told me.
When neighbors discovered the maze, it began to create a true sense of network similar to that many seek to locate when embarking on a much longer pilgrimage.
Volker’s cancer has progressed to level IV and celebrated its 100th chemotherapy remedy in 2017, however, she still walks and prays regularly.
He gives the following advice: “For other people who create their own Camino garden, I think creating myths is the ultimate consideration. Study maps, be informed to pronounce the names of cities, walk on dust and mud, be there in the rain, drink your wine and eat your food, be informed how to pretend.
Kathryn Barush / The Conversation
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