The first in a series of journal entries I wrote for a class I just finished about pilgrimage. The Grotto is a Catholic pilgrimage site in Portland, Or, and its absolutely beautiful. This actually sort of leads into another entry I wrote on sacrality and how a place becomes sacred.

Having never been to the Grotto before I was rather looking forward to going after hearing about it from my aunt. Leaving on the trip, I never intended to have a pilgrimage type experience. Sure, we were going to a pilgrimage site, but I was expecting to be there more as a visitor, I was thinking I’d feel more like a fly on the wall than a participant in the conversation.
Going into the viewing room then the church when we arrived began to feel like I was really on pilgrimage, a symbolic one at least. The preparation for experience had begun, and once we got out onto the upper area, I felt almost magnetically drawn to the Path of Sorrows, to the seventh image, the pairing of Joshua’s disappearance in Jerusalem, and reappearance at the temple when he was twelve.
Something about this particular step struck me deeply, and I ended up standing in front of the plague for some significant amount of time just looking at it, tears running down my face. Theologically, the few stories presented in the Gospels of Josh’s childhood have been of vital importance to me theologically. The fact that they were human beings who were once children just like us somehow makes the Great Masters of all traditions more significant to me than if they’d simply appeared full grown and begun spouting wisdom.
One wonders if this is what intentional pilgrims feel. Cousineau talks about a difference in looking, a special form of curiosity. I can’t help thinking though, that something more than wonder had to be behind untold thousands or millions of people throughout religious history traveling to sacred spaces, which, up until today, could have meant they’d die thousands of miles from home. What could possibly draw someone to Jerusalem, or Assisi, or Mecca, knowing they may never return?
I would argue that it’s not simply curiosity, but this magnetic draw. This feeling of someone or something, whether the Holy Spirit, God, KRSNA, or the Mother Goddess pulling you, leading you somewhere you need to be, for a reason you may not know now, nor ever know.