Pilgrimage as Metaphor

                                     Watercolor Sketch ©A. Rutherford

Human beings are poetical by nature.  We use figures of speech to help us explain things that are harder to understand, ideas that are more abstract than concrete.  With metaphor we try to create a picture in the mind of our listener of whatever we're trying to communicate.  We try to explain one thing in terms of another.

And so the poet in us says, "Life is a journey."  Journey implies, of course, that we are traveling toward a destination.  Without a destination in mind we would be simply wandering, would we not?  We naturally assume that our destination is the goal of our journey.  But actually the goal of our life journey is richer, more complex, than simply reaching one fixed point at one appointed time.  Our deeper goal is the person we become as we journey along through our lives.

We learn lessons as we travel, we grow, we become . . .

When they were younger, one of my grandchildren's favorite pieces of "literature" was Michael Rosen's Going on a Bear Hunt, where a father and his four children do just that while chanting, "We're going to catch a big one. What a beautiful day!"  But they come across obstacles in their journey.  At each obstacle they chant, "We can't go over it, we can't go under it.  Oh no!  We've got to go through it!"  My grandones thought the journey of the bear hunt was scary but exciting.  And most journeys into the unknown are just that . . . scary to varying degrees but exciting all the same.

It is what we experience along the way, what we gather up during the journey that makes the pilgrimage a worthwhile one . . . or not.  Reaching our final destination successfully is determined by how well we make the trip.

My cyber-journal through 2017 hopefully will chronicle what I experience in my journey through this new year, as well as share some of what I have gathered up along my pilgrimage to this point.

One thing I have learned, to be sure, is that happiness cannot be one of our life's goals.  It is merely a byproduct of traveling well.

Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude.
                                                                                                             - Dennis Waitley

                         

Cliffs of Mohr, County Clare ©A. Rutherford 

What is there waiting on the horizon of this next year of my journey?

I'm eager to see, and yet anxious too . . .

Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things. Those things, which you have both learned, and received, and heard and seen in me, do and the God of peace shall be with you.   -Philippians 4: 8-9

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