Barnabas File

This book by Wesley Granberg-Michaelson is difficult to categorize.     This is not simply a travelogue of the author’s pilgrimages to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, Lourdes in France, Chimayo in New Mexico, and Ogere Remo in Nigeria and other sites.    Although not a book of theology, it is deeply theological, helping us to understand who God is, who we are, and the opportunity to nurture a deeper understanding of both through the act of pilgrimage. Perhaps it is primarily a memoir that calls us to a new way of seeing our Christian walk.   The title of the book comes from practice of early Celtic pilgrims.  Quoting Christine Valters Paintener:     “The wandering saints set forth without destination—often getting into small boats with no oars or rudder, called coracles—and trusted themselves to ‘the currents of divine love.’  They surrendered themselves completely to elements of wind and ocean . . . In this profound practice,...

In the recent publication of my article entitled “Day Camper or Pilgrim?”, my friend who was doing the layout chose to illustrate the piece with a Pilgrim hat.   You know, one of those conical hats with the wide brims that our kids wear in Thanksgiving pageants as an ode to the Plymouth colonists. Well, there are Pilgrims and then there are pilgrims. The earliest use of the term refers to one who is on a religious journey to a holy place. The practice is common in many world religions, especially in Islam where every devout Muslim desires to make the pilgrimage to Mecca at least once.  The word has also been used to refer to our time here on earth.  The idea is that we are just sojourners here on the way to something better. Of course, the historical Pilgrims or Pilgrim Fathers, the ones with the hats, were religious dissenters who founded the Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts in 1620. They are often called Puritans because of their desire fo...