Day 136g: Through rising heat & Pain … (September 12, 2019)
It proved to be a difficult day of walking even after I cleared the summit of Draper Mountain, with the aches in my legs and hips rising in perfect cadence to the elevating temperatures around me. And yet there was nowhere to go but onward, and so onward I steadfastly went …
“Interestingly enough, what brings the greatest value to any pilgrimage is pain (fear – discomfort – frustration – fatigue). It is the fact that, at a certain inevitable moment, when we are far from our own home or country, we are seized by a vague yet overwhelming fear, and even an instinctive desire to go back to the protection of old habits & familiar haunts. And this is why the pilgrim should never intimate that he travels for pleasure. For there is no standard form of pleasure in long-distance walking, and the pilgrim looks upon the same more as an occasion for spiritual testing &/or a magnification of purpose … Pleasure takes us away from ourselves in the same way as distraction, in Pascal’s use of the word, takes us away from God. Pilgrimage, which is like a greater and a graver form of spiritual science, brings us back to our truer Selves by immersing us fully into the sometimes suffocating weight of surroundings unknown and encounters angst-riddled … And so it is that the depth of any pilgrimage is not measured by how far one travels, but rather how gently one sees the landscape and how boldly one acts towards others … This what it meas when the Wise One says that we pilgrims are to Walk far, and yet walk as if you were very close.” ~ inspired by Albert Camus, Trish Nicholson & Alan Maiccon
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