If I was to say the word pilgrim – what would come into your mind? A hooded, cloaked figure with a staff pacing towards a distant landmark perhaps. A barefooted worshipper walking slowly along a dry, dusty road as the sun sets? The cliches come flooding in for us all. Yes, to go on a pilgrimage is to make a journey with a purpose, usually to a shrine or other sacred place – but no, the images often don’t quite fit. Pilgrims are in the news at the moment (not for all the best reasons) as two of the largest migrations of human kind take place. The Chinese making their way home for new year and back again – some nine billion journeys between different provinces and international trips, and India’s Kumbh Mela where 400 million pilgrims travel to bathe in the River Ganges.
Pilgrimages are, of course, associated with all of the world’s great religions, and there are holy places across the world which are visited by thousands of pilgrims each year. We live next door to one of those places. Not all of the foreign visitors come to Salisbury to just gawp at the height of the spire and photograph the West Front. I am often struck by the number of travellers who resist the temptation to wander constantly through St Mary’s craning their necks to look at the leaning pillars, choosing instead to abandon their groups and sit in silence amid the splendour. Pilgrims can still find peace and solitude, even in the largest crowd.
Pilgrims are not a new thing. Probably the most famous group of pilgrims in history date from the 14th Century, when they were written about by Geoffrey Chaucer. The Canterbury Tales, a great landmark of English Literature, consists of the stories that are told by a group of travellers who are walking from London to Canterbury. The pilgrims, in this case, are a motley bunch – and deliberately so, as Chaucer chose everyday characters from the everyday society of the time. So there are tales told by a Knight, a Miller, a Monk and a Merchant among others. The subjects of the stories are everyday too – some of them are pretty coarse, a bit like Little Britain of the 14th Century! But the themes that underlie the tales are enduring – honour, valour, honesty, fidelity, divine judgement, truth, trust, sin, death and sainthood. All of human life was here in the band of travellers as they made their way along the crest of the North Downs, pursued by eternal truths.
Pilgrimages don’t have to be literal journeys. John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress is an allegory of a journey through life. On the journey the pilgrim, Christian, meets all sorts of challenges and opportunities as he follows his own spiritual quest towards the Kingdom of heaven. That’s much closer to an experience of pilgrimage in the modern age, and that experience often seems to be a part of us as humans – searching for meaning, looking for truth and purpose.
So I guess that that very old fashioned, rather endearing coloured wood cut is representative of us – pilgrims all, in search of truth, redemption, happiness, faith and fulfilment here in the twenty first century…
SDS
