“Pilgrims and tourists”

Introduction

Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in kingdom of roots and in kingdom of motion. Although high level of comfort enjoins us to keep two feet on ground near home, friends and familiar surroundings, truth is that we are also occasionally grasped by an intense desire to forsake security of home-base and to travel across uncharted and sometimes hazardous terrain. (Lattimore 147)

The kingdom of shift beckons us every so often to pack an overnight bag, to call joined or Amtrak, or to ready our own vehicles in alignment to make an outward excursion which answers to our interior quest in the direction of center we misplace in clutter of everyday living. It seems necessary to go away from ordinary and to break ties, even if temporarily, for recovery to happen. Only then can we be "jerked clean out of habitual," as Thomas Merton composed throughout his Asian journey, so that we might glimpse what we need to glimpse and find what desires to be discovered. (Fox 19)

When outward molds inward, we become pilgrims, women and men in via, persons en route to some destination, toward some end. Although theme of pilgrimage is still current as metaphor for Christian spiritual journey, another unarticulated image -- that of tourist -- distorts its purity. Some implications arising from these differences will be offered in concluding part of this article. (D.C.H. xi)

Separated from tourism, pilgrimage continues to represent need of human person to reach within for an interior wholeness and completeness by activating feet (and heart) and by renewing passports in kingdom of motion. More specifically, pilgrim/ pilgrimage theme reinforces three major implications for field of Christian spiritual theology. (Pound and Spann 34)

It further appears to be true that solidarity forged on pilgrimage extends relationship to earth and environment. The ...