Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture - Secret of the Pilgrims

“Again, the mystery of choice resides in the individual, not in the group. What is secret in the Christian pilgrimage, then, is the inward movement of the heart” (Turner and Turner 8).

Traveling to and fro, those seeking an experience to the holy will venture on pilgrimages to encounter what they would not encounter if they stayed were they were at. Some go so they can fulfill a vow to the Lord through works. Some go because they see it as the only other alternative to the answers they are seeking in faith and truth. For around two years, I was in an intense season of working out my salvation with fear and trembling, issues dealing with the heart, and thus behaviors. As a senior in high school, I did not know much about the Appalachian Trail and how similar it is to a pilgrimage, but I got it in my mind to camp on the Appalachian Trail for three days and nights in the winter, while fasting, by myself. My motivation to going on the mountain was to seek God for holiness and purity in my heart concerning my ways. For me, I felt as if my communication with the holy had been limited and strained, so I decided I needed an experience to die to self with the worst possible conditions. Needless to say, it was a difficult couple of days and I ventured off the mountain a little earlier than planned. On one of the days in particular while hiking, I encountered a large snake in front me. As I unknowingly stumbled on it, the snake jutted back and I ran back to my campsite. To me, as the pilgrim and camper seeking the Lord, this was a symbol of the fears that were being combated. To the Christian pilgrim who’s heart is on the Lord, the importance falls on how much less distance there is now between the hiker and the holy; and that distance to the Christian is that the more your heart is pure before the Lord, the deeper the relationship will be. Thus the malleability or movement of the heart before the ways of God becomes the chief interest to the pilgrim. The decision of the pilgrim to go on the journey is an individual one made by his sacred choice. On the other hand, many religions dictate by tradition or duty that followers must go on the journey, otherwise they would be damned or less in God’s favor like the hajj to adherents of Islam. It is not a path for freedom of the soul like the Christian pilgrim, but a duty to honor Allah based not on love or commitment to know God, but on the fear that one will be hindered from paradise. The goal in the end for the Christian pilgrim, like in the case of me, was to find God as I was gaining an inward prize. One that could be cherished and guarded in this life and carried to the next.