Caminho Portuguese Interior, August - Sept 2017

Via Podiensis (Le Puy En Velay-Cahors)  planned for June 1-17 2022
Camino Portuguese Interior, August 29-Sept 12 2017
Camino Frances, May 24-June 27 2015
Annapurna Sanctuary Trek, Nepal, May-June 2013
Camino Ingles, June 2012

What is a pilgrimage and how is it different from a long distance hike? What resources help us? How do we prepare? There is so much obsessive planning:  what goes in the backpack, where to stay, how many kms to walk a day.   And why we go at all.  I'm planning to teach a 1-unit course on Sacred Walks at San Francisco Theological Seminary,  Spring 2018. This blog is part of that process.

 Since I have been writing on the Dhammayietra, a Cambodian Buddhist peace walk, and as one who worked with refugees, I want to think more critically about 21st century 'pilgrimages' and the intersection of spirituality and theories of pilgrimage, long distance walking, the politics of volitional movement.  One might juxtapose  Camino walkers with Europe's refugee/migrant "surge" in 2015 & 2016 and the Ukrainian surge in 2022.
 
 Various versions of forced Migration
​
PHILOSOPHY of WALKS and TRAILS
On Trails. An Exploration, Robert Moore, 2016
An outstanding work that should be read by anyone who has spent time following a footpath through the woods. Robert Moor’s debut book, On Trails, trips through natural history, anthropology, gonzo reporter’s adventures, and memoir in a ramble that unpacks the many meanings of the routes we humans and other animals sketch on the land. … The prologue alone is worth the price of admission: a nearly-30-page set piece about hiking the A.T. that puts Bill Bryson and Cheryl Strayed to shame. (Moor actually, you know, completed the full thru-hike.)” Sierra Club

A Philosophy of Walking,  Frédéric  Gros, 2015
In A Philosophy of Walking, a bestseller in France, leading philosopher Frédéric Gros charts the many different ways we get from A to B – the pilgrimage, the promenade, the protest march, the nature ramble – and reveals what they say about us. Gros  writes on other thinkers for whom walking was central to their practice:  Thoreau in Walden Woods;   Rimbaud's walking fury.  Rousseau and Nietzsche walk to think while Kant took his 4pm walk to escape thinking.  It's a fabulous book.

Walking, Henry David Thoreau
Originally part of a lecture in 1851, "Walking" was later published posthumously as an essay in the Atlantic Monthly in 1862. A  text in the environmental movement, Thoreau's "Walking" does not separate human from "wilderness" but sets us within it to explore its beauty and danger. See also: Walking Towards Walden : A Pilgrimage in Search of Place,  John Hanson Mitchell, University Press of New England, 2015


PILGRIMAGE as SPIRITUALITY MEMOIRS
God is a Black Woman, Christena Cleveland,  2022
https://www.christenacleveland.com/god-is-a-black-woman
'For years, theologian, social psychologist, and activist Christena Cleveland spoke about “racial reconciliation” to congregations, justice organizations, and colleges. Yet over time, she felt she could no longer trust in the God she’d been taught to worship—a God who, she realized, did not affirm a Black woman like Christena. Her crisis of faith sent her on an intellectual and spiritual journey through history and across France, on a 400-mile walking pilgrimage to the ancient shrines of Black Madonnas where she discovered the healing power of the Sacred Black Feminine. '

Road to Emmaus, Pilgrimage as a way of Life, Jim Forrester, 2007
As an anti-war activist and discipline of Dorothy Day, Forrester  leads us to "thin places,"that include the ways political witness, austerity and are part of a pilgrim consciousness. He also offers more conventional journeys including Iona, Jerusalem,  the experience of illness, the practice of hospitality.

The Sacred Journey: The Ancient Practices, Charles Foster, Thomas Nelson, 2010
"…. as near a masterpiece of pilgrimage writing as we have ever seen. It certainly is, hands-down and far and away, the best book on pilgrimage I have ever seen. Let there be no mistake, though. Foster pulls no punches. Every one of you who reads this book will find at least one thing you totally disagree with and a whole handful of those you want to question. Please do so. Otherwise, none of it is pilgrimage." – Phyllis Tickle: from the Foreword

Note: This collection does not include a corpus of work on various pilgrimage narratives to the "Holy Land".


 PEREGRINOS in ACTION
Caminos in Spain (Frances, Ingles, Finisterre, Primitivo, Via de la Plata, Norte, etc)
 
Blogs and books: As with an planner, I devoured countless blogs but couldn't get through most books.  On the Ingles, I picked up a discarded hefty paperback of Michener's Iberia, his Franco-era Camino Frances. Nothing could top it.  Someone suggested: Pilgrimage to the End of the World: The Road to Santiago de Compostela. Conrad Rudolph, U of Chicago press.  On the Frances, I read Theresa of Avila's The Interior Castle thoughtfully, thought I couldn't get past the 4th wall.  Please know historical politics of this walk to understand the significance of various camino statues, particularly the common figure of St James as "matamoro" (Muslim killer) in churches along the way.  There is not enough critical reflection on rising Islamophobia in Europe and the walk as an element of the Catholic Reconquesta over the Moors.

Films and documentaries: There are many here, too.  Still one of the best is  "Walking the Camino: Six ways to Santiago" a the real version of Sheen's  "The Way."   Watch the French:  St Jacques...La Mecque (mecca). A  less self-serious perspective is Luis Buñuel's surreal 1969  "La via lactea" (The Milky Way).

Academic analysis The Camino de santiago in Twentieth Century Spain,  Elizabeth Kissling, 2003; Heritage, Pilgrimage, and the Camino to Finisterre,  Cristina Sánchez-Carretero, Springer, 2015

Pilgrimage, Edward Sellner, chapter 4 and several appendices
On Pilgrimage,  Douglas Vest, chapter 7 and the appendix “Checklists for planning your pilgrimage” - though Camino Forum has many 

OTHER PILGRIM PATHS (Misc)
Walking a Sacred Path: Rediscovering the Labyrinth as a Spiritual Practice, Lauren Artress, Riverhead Books; Revised edition (March 7, 2006)
Veriditas
Pagan Pilgrimage: New Religious Movements Research on Sacred Travel within Pagan and New Age Communities, Laurel Zwissler, Religious Compass, Volume 5, Issue 7 July 2011,  326–342
Walk Palestine with Siraj Center   https://www.walkpalestine.com/en/aboutus
Abraham Path https://www.abrahampath.org/
Nepal Sanctuary treks (with support of 3Sisters): http://www.3sistersadventuretrek.com/
Wiccan visit to Glastonbury, and a  Guide to Pagan Pilgrimages in Europe.

Memoirs (just the ones I like)
Kailash Journal: Pilgrimage in the Sacred Himalayas of Tibet, Swami Satchidananda, 1984
Holy Mount Kailash in Tibet is an 800 mile journey, on foot, to an altitude of 19,000 feet.

Gideon Lewis-Kraus, A Sense of Direction, 2012
I've often wondered how non-religious folks and particularly Muslims or Jews experience the Camino. This is a Jewish perspective by a well-published author.

Thin Places and the Pilgrimage Home, Ann Ambrecht, 2009
Thin Places is an eloquent meditation on what it means to move between cultures and how one might finally come home, a particular paradox in a culture that lacks deep ties to the natural world. During the 1990s, Ann Armbrecht, an American anthropologist, made several trips to northeastern Nepal to research how the Yamphu Rai acquired, farmed, and held onto their land; how they perceived their area's recent designation as a national park and conservation area; and whether—as she believed—they held a wisdom about living on the earth that the industrialized West had forgotten.   ... Beautifully written memoir. I use Chpt 10 to start off my class and invariably , a reference to "thin places" returns throughout the semester. 

One Thousand Roads to Mecca: Ten Centuries of Travelers Writing About the Muslim Pilgrimage, Michael Wolfe, ed. (updated & expanded edition) 2015
Collects significant works by observant travel writers from the East and West over the last ten centuries—including two new contemporary narratives—creating a comprehensive, multifaceted literary portrait of the enduring tradition. Since its inception in the seventh century, the pilgrimage to Mecca has been the central theme in a large body of Islamic travel literature as well as Western visitors. Includes Ibn Battuta, J.L. Burckhardt, Sir Richard Burton, the Begum of Bhopal, John Keene, Winifred Stegar, Muhammad Asad, Lady Evelyn Cobbald, Jalal Al-e Ahmad, and Malcolm X.

A Serpentine Path: Mysteries of the Goddess,  Carol Christ, 2016
Memoir by Christ:, Serpentine Path marked a turning point in my life and in my career as a writer. During the time described in my memoir I had fallen into a deep despair, sparked by the end of a marriage, the end of a love affair, and disappointment in my career. Hoping to make a fresh start, I chucked it all in, and moved to Greece." A Serpentine Path is the original title of the memoir of  Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete published in 1995. Read the rest of her narrative here for the book's  unfolding.


AMERICAN WALKS
From The Holy Land To Graceland: Sacred People, Places and Things in Our Lives, Gary Vikan, 2012
An internationally known Byzantinist and scholar of medieval art, Dr. Vikan has published and lectured on Christian pilgrimage, medicine and magic, icons, the Shroud of Turin -- and Elvis Presley.  Graceland, the second-most visited historic house in the U.S., is a locus sanctus ―a holy place―and Elvis is its resident saint, while the hordes of fans that crowd Elvis Presley Boulevard in Memphis are modern-day pilgrims, connected in spirit and practice to their early Christian counterparts, sharing a fascination for icons and iconography,  souvenirs,  and even a belief in miracles. Vikan reveals the emergence of contemporary holy places―Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan, the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, the Grassy Knoll in Dallas, Place de l'Alma in Paris―and shows us that the saints of our day are our “martyred” secular charismatics, from Elvis to John F. Kennedy, Princess Diana, etc.

American Pilgrimage: Sacred Journeys and Spiritual Destinations, Mark Ogilbee and Jana Reiss, 2006
This slim, entertaining volume makes clear that some pilgrimages are private, others a communal experience. Some involve distant travel, but as many can transpire in the backyard. Ogilbee and Riess describe pilgrimage as journeying devoted to "reflecting, and spending time in greater spiritual awareness" on the part of "boundary-crossers." The pilgrimages they describe are uniquely American in that, according to them, American religious experience essentially is porous and flexible. Thus, non-Catholics pray at Catholic sites like the National Shrine of St. Jude in Chicago (their example), Christians follow the teachings of Buddhists such as Thich Nhat Hanh, or to a sanctuary in Chimayo, New Mexico, on Good Friday in search of restoration of body and spirit. Other sites include the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky; Mission San Juan Capistrano in California; the red rock country of Sedona, Arizona; and even Elvis Presley's Graceland in Tennessee. June Sawyers

Grandma Gatewood's Walk: The Inspiring Story of a Woman who Saved the Appalachian Trail, Ben Montgomery, 2014
See WaPo review: Grandma Gatewood, as she became known, was the first woman to hike the entire 2,050 miles of the Appalachian Trail by herself in 1955. She was 67 years old at the time, a mother of 11 and grandmother of 23. She’d survived more than 30 years of marriage to a brutal husband who beat her repeatedly. Gatewood hiked the trail carrying a homemade knapsack and wearing ordinary sneakers — she wore out six pairs of them in 146 days from May to September. She  brought a blanket and a plastic shower curtain to protect her from the elements, but she didn’t bother with a sleeping bag, a tent, a compass or even a map, instead relying on the hospitality of strangers along the way and her own independent resourcefulness.

My POLITICS of WALKING
Movable Peace: Engaging the Transnational in Cambodia’s Dhammayietra, Kathryn  Poethig, 2002 . Here
The Dhammayietra is an annual peace walk in Cambodia that originated at the historic repatriation of refugees in the Thai border camps at the U.N.-monitored transition to democracy in 1992. It situates itself within the discourse and practice of “socially engaged Buddhism” that has gained visibility in Asia and American Buddhism during the last two decades. As Cambodia’s particular form of socially engaged Buddhism is marked by refugee return, I will argue that the Dhammayietra’s revival of Buddhism in postsocialist Cambodia is only possible because of its transnational formation. Represented as a quintessential Khmer Buddhist response to Cambodia’s entrenched conflicts, the networks forged beyond the border of Cambodia have been instrumental in fashioning the face of the Dhammayietra. Though it forges its discursive identity vis a vis the “local” space of the nation, this local space is mobile. Maha Ghosananda’s instruction to move “step by step” toward peace reappropriates dangerous mobility—the massive relocations during the Khmer Rouge era, refugee flight, the danger of treading on land fed with mines—and turns walking into a religious act. It is this discursive “move” that loosens the Dhammayietra’s ties to the nation and allows it to slip across political and religious borders and ally itself with a diverse network of interfaith peace groups that are its transnational public forum.

“A March is not a Walk; the Limits of Buddhist Peacemaking,” Poethig, Public Forum sponsored by Pannasatra University, Cambodia, November 28, 2006