Pilgrimage -- where can we touch god?

What places are close to god?

What’s is the mystery around us?  What provides meaning to our lives?  Where do we go to celebrate a figure that is holy to us? 

We can use the words, ‘profane’ to describe ordinary things and  ‘sacred’ to describe holy, and by this means divide human experience in half.  The profane is the place humans live in day to day. 

When we seek communion with something greater, we visit places consecrated to the forces that seem powerful, the forces that help us bear our burdens and celebrate good things.   Sacred places.

        Sculpture: Hand of Maitreya Buddha

                   in a Chinese Cave

Humans have believed that the earth, sky, nature, and later, gods, goddesses and saints have provided points of special sacred connection.  To benefit from perceived power there, their worshippers make pilgrimage.  Much as Muslims attempt to make pilgrimage to Mecca once in their lifetime, ancient Greeks often traveled to Delphi in the mountains of Greece to consult the oracle of Apollo.

  Artemis (goddess of the hunt)

Patroness of the Oracle at Delphi

Many believe that in the earliest of all time, humans perceived that they lived in a world which was wholly sacred.  That invisible beings lived in ants, rocks, the sunset and in the storm.  That many beings were aware of our activities and made happy or angry because of them.  That good conduct could bring a good hunt while bad could result in a sparse one.

To avoid the consequences of a bad action, on the one hand, or to beg for a good outcome, on the other – humans looked to the spirits for help, communion and an explanation for the world.   For tribal matters, the chief (or a shaman) often made the holy connection for the group. 

Dwelling in the uncertainties was a structure of thought.  The balance between good and evil matched the spectrum of usefulness. In fact, the opposite of uselessness was evil, and of usefulness was good: useful things were made of sacred matter.  If an act was useful, it was also moral.  

What's more, too much concentration around a useless thing (we can say 'profane' thing) or person upset the sacredness of the place.  This idea of sacredness and usefulness is buried in the pilgrim's quest: the place he goes gives him a morally useful dose of the divine.

As the sacred layer separated from the profane, magic was the law of the human mind.  If a tribesman got sick, he might look for the explanation in a curse another conjured up; so, in this scheme, he could appeal to the spirits to help himself.  Demons and beneficial creatures played into daily affairs in complex ways.   

Cathedral de Santiago de Campolstela

                 -- Spain 

By 4000 BC in the Near East and China, formal religion had been born.  Gods had set up shop, to be worshipped and placated.  Successful responses called for sacrifice, payment to priests, prayer and and witness.

 

Besides formal gods and goddesses, we recognized sacred areas at home where we worshipped to connect to the divine.  The Romans among others set aside little shrines to their household gods, to bring blessings to family life.

To give an answer to the question, ‘Where’s god?’ we see that spirit inhabits places dedicated to it.  Gods live in places where we can get in touch with them.

The places can be nearby: we don’t have to go anywhere to reach them.  For a long time, though, people have travelled to special places to get in touch – this travel is called pilgrimage.

Attractions for pilgrims come in many forms: rivers, urban mosques and cathedrals, mountain springs and the dwellings of saints.  On the pathway, our feet can walk in grasses blessed by the god of creation or into the cave of a saint touched himself by a visit from above.  The holy blessings flow up into us, filtering through the calluses that have grown during our trip.

       Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem

                (holy to Muslims)