iubilaeum peregrinationis

“He who would valiant be
'gainst all disaster,
let him in constancy
follow the Master.
There's no discouragement
shall make him once relent
his first avowed intent
to be a pilgrim.”

~ John Bunyan, from The Pilgrim’s Progress.

When I read reviews in late-2024 about two books written by the late Pope Francis (Light in the Night, and Faith is a Journey), both on the topic of life as pilgrimage, I immediately recognized my long-familar personal theme. Right away, I purchased both books, reading them carefully during my daily work commutes and coffee breaks. Consoling, inspiring, and relatable words are especially rare these days. Commemorating a quarter-century, a presiding Pope dedicates a year of jubilee to a motif, and for 2025 it was for individuals and communities to live their many-faceted lives as pilgrims of hope. The metaphor of pilgrimage centers around the intertwined voyage of spiritual and physical living, a one-way travel toward eternity. The grand journey happens with tangible and often small measures. Being so profoundly interior, each person determines how they signify progress in their journey. A way to do that is to write in a journal, and I view mine as a combination of itinerary, narrative, and means to look ahead. We each have our vital landmarks- geographic and spiritual. Our prayers and hopes generate our motions.

Pilgrimage as a practice is not new to me, as many readers of my years of essays know, but each experience is entirely new. Discovering ways to creatively apply the pilgrimage theme to a year of intense commitments and constant work is itself something new to me. Multiple “manifestations” blending into the broader theme, made for a year’s book of chapters. Journeying to destinations of significance, I honored every request for prayers from each person that asked. As well, I wholeheartedly brought my own- for the wellbeing of loved ones, for myself, and for better employment. When asked about wanderlust, my response is the journeying spirit is as much about change-of-scenery as it is for soul-wellness. There is a general overwhelming psychological sickness which has permeated this world. Considering current events, every workaday sunrise witnesses a threshold drop, prompting major sectors of the world’s population to submerge into various escapisms. By contrast, I’ve found periodic, reflective retreats to be healthful and replete with aesthetic inspiration. And learning. Places of pilgrimage draw people from many regions and of many ages; quite spontaneously, listening to one another, there are conversations about reading, artistic expression, and spiritual growth. The stuff of conscientious life. Alas, the job market is abysmal, most career professions unstable, and the world of employers is bewilderingly fickle. Millennia ago, an exasperated crowd asked John the Baptist, “What are we to do?” His reply, having also known places of desperation, was essentially to broaden one’s view of life: Give away your extra provisions; look after each other. It’s not a stretch to add: Help each other find peaceful housing and appropriate work. Hold the door for the person behind you, yield to the right-of-way, don’t forget to say please and thanks. Pilgrimage reminds us that on the one-way voyage to consummation, we see that we live this life but once. To sanctify the everyday is to recognize pilgrimage in the commonplace.

from Taizé, France


Weston Priory

My year of pilgrimage appropriately began at my beloved Weston Priory, in Vermont’s Green Mountains. My first-ever retreat was there among these brilliant and down-to-earth Benedictine monks, in 1994. I lived there for nearly two months in 1999, and I owe to them the highlights of my spiritual formation. As nurturing friendships lead to more kindred spirits, in 2001 the Weston monks introduced me to their brethren of the Taizé monastery in France. On this recent string of days, shortly before Advent, the Vermont landscape was snowcapped and russet. My room, named for Saint Joseph, had a view of Mount Okemo. “The Brothers’ services are hearteningly beautiful,” I wrote in my journal, referring to their homegrown sung liturgies. Comprehension demands patience. Brother Michael said, “Our future is open, and we create our future together though humility.” He added, “Scripture is living, and not a ‘dead letter.” Brother Elias added, “When we are giving, we find there is more; blessing is for us to pass along.” My drive back from the mountains was accompanied by gratitude for all I saw and heard.

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Mount Saint Mary’s Abbey

As Advent submerged into winter darkness, I strung together a week of paid-time-off, and drove to Mount Saint Mary’s, which is in southeastern Massachusetts. This was my second sojourn with the Cistercian community in Wrentham. Very thankfully, the weather’s snowy calmness matched the peacefulness of the countryside. Much as with Weston Priory, the community composes its own music, and lives ancient practices in vernacular and inclusive modernity, with barely any symbolism. Nature, silence, and chant are in themselves representative of contemplative life. I had brought the book, In Conversation With God along for the retreat, within which Carvajal wrote: “Our own personal history is full of signs, so that we do not mistake the way.” It took until the midpoint of the week for me to begin to slow down and rest. Getting outdoors with camera in hand allowed me to appreciate and perceive my surroundings. Plenty of walking always helps with the winding-down. I noticed how my attention was drawn by the paths I saw. With the community and various fellow pilgrims, I enjoyed reinforcing conversations about the jubilee year of being peaceful presences to those in our midsts.

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Boston

Saint Clement Eucharistic Shrine

This time, I extended my customary writing and study residency at Beacon Hill Friends House and at the Boston Athenaeum, by also making this sojourn a pilgrimage to sacred locations in the city. The month of April exemplifies renewal, and even in neighborhoods away from the Boston Public Garden the city is replete with budding branches, magnolia trees, and windowboxed daffodils. Visits on Beacon Hill regularly include sanctified destinations such as the National Shrine of Saint Anthony, the Church of the Advent, and the Quaker sanctuary at the Friends House, I threaded in two pilgrimage landmarks in the Back Bay: the Franciscan Chapel, and the Saint Clement Eucharistic Shrine. The latter was the city’s official Jubilee Year pilgrimage site, and this was my first visit to the large and ornate church. Upon exiting outdoors amidst a number of attendees, a man holding a phone picturing a map asked me if this was Saint Clement’s. After assuring him that he found the place, we had a great conversation on the steps; he was visiting from the west coast and wanted to see pilgrimage sites around Boston. Knowing the city as I do- and the topic- I gave him recommendations that included the precise subway and trolley stops for each sanctuary. We wished one another well, as he entered the lofty silence of the church, and I stepped down to the midday congested bustle of Boylston Street, my own pilgrimage winding alongside exuberant street musicians outside the Berklee College of Music. Quite a wondrous sum-total for my written reflections later that day, which still had plenty of time for more adventures.

Franciscan Chapel
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National Shrine of the Divine Mercy

Through the months back at work following the Boston sojourn, I was able to respond to the opportunity for a week’s pilgrimage in mid-July at the Divine Mercy Shrine, which is in the heart of the Berkshires. The unusually hot summer displayed some extremes in the mountainous region, with sweltering days, late sunsets, and dramatic rainstorms. Aware that I’d be navigating roads through summer tourism season, I gave myself plenty of time to reach Stockbridge. Indeed there were plenty of traffic stoppages along way, but I had music for the road trip, and a small Divine Mercy icon in my car’s console. As things worked out, I set forth fifteen minutes earlier than planned, and shut off the engine- over four hours later- at my destination, fifteen minutes before Mass. This was the monthly special service for Jubilee Year pilgrims, and I was doubly grateful to have made it- and to have arrived. I know the place very well, though for this pilgrimage I could see how the entire community responded to the Vatican’s designation of the shrine as a world destination for the extraordinary year. Contrasting all the activity in the town center in Stockbridge, the shrine itself was quiet enough to hear the wind in the trees. Staying within the community, I enjoyed encouraging conversations with various members of the Marian order. One of the Brothers noticed my typewriting, and that led to a visit of kindred spirits. I had timed my retreat to parallel the observance of the commemoration of Saint Bonaventure; it was great to be able to speak with members of the community about him. I had brought my studies with me, reading the Breviloquium. The Marian community added my prayers to theirs, and I appreciate their sincerity and seriousness. As I was packing my car to return to Maine, an elderly priest walked over to me and gave me his blessing. The perfect sendoff for the road.

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Maine

Kennebunkport, Maine

True to belief and practice, one’s pilgrimage of trust on earth is paced throughout life. It’s the daily trudge to and from bus stops; it’s also carefully advancing- in those same work shoes- toward receiving sacraments. Lent and Passover are pilgrimages through geography, time, and spirit. All forward motion, and chronologically at the very least. Waystations along the physical pilgrimage includes sanctuaries and memorials, and my steps connect them. The words of the Divine Hours that accompany my thirty-minute lunch breaks have been with me overseas and back, on the road, and when I can manage some unstructured time on weekends. Punctuating the year of intentional pilgrimages include sanctuaries that are close to where I live and work. Good Shepherd Parish, in Saco, provides an Adoration chapel which is a peaceful oasis for contemplative prayer. Less than twenty miles from Portland, I can easily get there when I have an afternoon off. And I make this a pilgrimage, bringing breviary and chaplet (in French and English)- always sensing the strong pull of the Spirit. The parish church itself displayed imagery and texts about the Jubilee Year of Pilgrimage, encouraging all who visit. Another place of nearby pilgrimage is the Saint Anthony Franciscan Monastery, in Kennebunkport. In milder weather, walking the wooded and coastal paths is as contemplative as absorbing the outdoor grotto. The Franciscans’ tradition of honoring nature is clearly evident throughout. Having such close destinations shifts attention away from physical distance, and more toward sanctified time.

Saco, Maine

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Mount Saint Mary’s

Although I hadn’t planned how the year would comprise these locations and their sequencing, my year of pilgrimage rather organically fell into place. I really noticed this, when I glanced back at the first half of the year and received a heartwarming invitation to return to Wrentham for a week during Advent. The Cistercian community welcomed me early in the year, and this recent sojourn took place at the close of the Jubilee year. My third time of travelling to their corner of Massachusetts, and being immersed in their antiphonal sung liturgies suddenly had the ring of familiarity. We now recognize each other, and good conversations follow- including the topic of being bearers of persevering hope. As well, now I know the highways and winding roads from memory, and can better comprehend the flow of the services. The year of pilgrimage took me hither-and-yon, all in New England- yet at once familiar and otherworldly, rotating the temporal of logistics with the ex temporé of response to the moment. I recall hearing an elder Quaker say that, “the Christian life is rough on the feet, but good on the soul.”

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Above: National Shrine of the Divine Mercy- Stockbridge, Massachusetts

Below: Kennebunkport, Maine

standpoint

“In the words of the psalm,
‘For with You is the fountain of life;
it is only in Your light that we see light.’

Human beings have no other secure standpoint
for being certain about anything at all.”

~ Douglas Dales, referencing Psalm 36 and Saint Bonaventure,
in Truth and Reality : The Wisdom of Saint Bonaventure.

My ongoing philosophical studies have continued to serve as healthful oases amidst chaos and setbacks. Such pursuits into contemplation also produce learning and constructive thoughts for me, as well as teaching material which I gladly share. With material needs as vital as housing and work in protracted fluidity, survival requires waystations in welcoming forms. As the Word is a lamp to my steps, so it is that in Divine light that I can discern light. Aspirations live in ethereal mists, and thus hopes are not always solid enough for my mortal self. A comfortable place to live and a really good job would do wonders to the morale, with all searches continuing as fibers in the general cord of the pursuit for improvement. This is not to say there aren’t present-moments to savour, because there are- both modest and grand. I’ve surely learned to constructively make do, under pared-down circumstances, throughout my working life. Yet I’ve never stopped hoping large and working ambitiously. It’s equal parts survival, fulfillment, and acknowledgment of the great teachers and mentors I’ve had.

Because my studies are self-directed, I’ll stay with a topic until I’ve covered enough ground to my satisfaction. This practice dates back to my beginnings with philosophy-teaching, in 2015, and intensified during the austerity of pandemic-era quarantining. Lifelines of learning and writing still stand as reliable constants and sources of mental strength. I chose to revisit Saint Bonaventure’s Itinerarium, which I had first studied as the severities of early 2020 set in. Now, following deep dives into the works and lives of Wyclif, Erasmus, Colet, and the Devotio Moderna, the 13th century Bonaventure appears to me as a proto-Renaissance thinker. He was also a university professor and a Franciscan, blending charism and pedagogy with “No one comes to wisdom except through grace... One does not come to contemplation except through perspicacious meditation, holy comportment, and devout prayer.” Bonaventure has some aspects of the scholasticism in his midst, balanced by his mysticism, with metaphysical statements such as, “We are led to re-enter ourselves, that is our mind... one cannot enter within, unless by means of Christ, who says I am the door... but we do not approach this door unless we believe...” Navigating thus far- from Bonaventure’s Itinerary, to some of his commentaries, to the Collations on the Hexaëmeron I continue finding more to nourish me, and will simply keep on reading. It’s as though I’m standing near The Seraphic Doctor himself, with reverent devotion.

Beginning in the middle of last year, I’ve had to function without a comforting home base- or as Dales observed (and quoted above), “a secure standpoint.” Between both work and housing instabilities, the vantage point is at once being between two dead-ends while also admitting that everything is up in the air. Thoughts of this reality at night are threatening. Thoughts of this at noon the next day almost seem exciting. But all thinking and activity take place amidst the din of instability and uncertainty; as much above it, as under it. Missing a physical, welcoming “home base,” that proverbial secure standpoint takes shape as a state of being during which I sense assurance. While frustratingly searching for a comfortable perch, I’ve thus far noticed ephemeral slivers of rest during times of study and writing: reading at bus stops, or sometimes late at night in the crunched hovel after the loud neighbors shut down, and writing during my thirty-minute lunch breaks, or outdoors any chance I get. Not terrible, making room for gratitude, but always too brief and just under the tension radar.

The Archives, 2023

For many years, I’ve called momentary intermissions tagging up which is a baseball expression describing a baserunner’s safely advancing amidst a play. During my 14 years of fulltime work in the pressured commercial photography field, I’d start days and find breathers “tagging up” at the counter of my studio darkroom. It was my base of operations, with two slick, imported Durst enlargers bolted to the surface, and filled with the tools of the custom photographic trade. To help me feel at ease during sickeningly stressful times, I decorated the place and had a small stereo system. Just about everyone I knew in the profession listened to music to keep up the pace of production; for me, it was new wave and opera. And I always had a thermos of coffee with me, as I do now. My memories of closing the darkroom door and gathering my wits for the next project come back to me when I do something similar- albeit in much shorter snippets, resetting during breaks in the archives. The building that housed my studio was torn down in 2016. Indeed, I photographed the demolition.

The Studio Darkroom, 1998

With the business and all the people who passed through the place as workers (many of whom I photographed), customers, friends, and vendors gone, I saw the large piles of debris frontloaded away in dump trucks. Six years later, I lost my home of nearly four decades, the building being converted into elite condos. These are now simply locations, their respective histories and lives syphoned out. They are past and gone, but here I am now and straining to look forward. Places such as cities or neighborhoods or buildings, I’ve learned, are stages. It’s about souls, more than about streets. Solid places to regroup thoughts and broaden perspectives are essentially replaced by points of reflection. My writing and reading are always with me, providing ready clefts of stability- lulls in the battle. Journaling affords the ability to write through trials and get them out of my system. Movements of conscience take time. In my journals, the term point de repère- which actually means a reference-point or a landmark- parallels how I’ve come to see moments as respite. And such metaphorical landmarks can be anywhere.

A better side of remembrance is to recollect what we’ve learned. An individual as vast and inspired as the Apostle Paul wrote of his occasional rearward glances coinciding with reminders to himself of graces along his arduous path. I call this stocktaking. What’s good? Even between two dead ends, a burgeoning life reaches heavenward. Managing to schedule my first weekday off in three months, I made it a reflective day. “What’s good” included appreciating the outdoors at midday, chatting with friends, putting something away in my savings account, getting a very long-overdue haircut. Simple and understated, yet somehow luxurious. Profoundly missing those twice-yearly retreats I’d make- before 2020- something I can do is to find bits of time on weekends to recollect and accentuate graces learned. Among numerous turns-of-phrases I’ve learned from the monks of Taizé (and I’ve written down many, as well as words from the monks of Weston Priory), is the expression almost nothing. In context, this is to say there is always something one can do, “even with very limited means, with almost nothing,” to progress on the voyage to sanctification, and to help others. “See what you can accomplish with almost nothing,” Brother Emile once said to me. I use this at work, always aware of the spiritual/material ambiguity. "With almost nothing, with very little,” Brother Roger taught, “we can live something beyond all our hopes, something that will never come to an end." A beautifully hopeful thought.

Another savoured expression I learned in Taizé is to “live in the dynamic of the provisional.” Consistent with the positive practicality of seeing what one can do with a lively spirit and almost nothing. Consider the fluidity of the present as the provisional challenges individuals to exercise the dynamism inherent amidst our temporal situations- which can be improved as we find ways to improve our perspectives and abilities. Perhaps our most enduring landmarks are within, away from heavy demolition vehicles and exploitive developers. When our points of reference tend from the physical to the spiritual, their properties do have a dynamic in our provisional reality. Hardly the seclusion of a studio, or the coziness of a Victorian livingroom, I await the daily workbound bus in the East End while looking to the skies. It rains a lot here, and I deal with the uncanopied bus stops by wrapping my books in plastic and using a lined water-resistant satchel. Looking up, I’ve taken to musing about how landmarks live in our spirits. If they’re real and important enough, I’ll write about them. The cutting-edge is whether to be constructive or to eat my heart out; that’s quite a choice. “I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound,” Paul observed as he addressed the Philippians. This comes to mind as I’ve watched many colleagues over the years burn out, while I try sensing the boundaries and do all I can to avoid becoming damaged goods. Keeping in good energies is essential in the reach for better days. “Pray without ceasing, and in all things give thanks,” wrote Paul to the Thessalonians. What supports our hopes? Causes can find me unwittingly, even at weatherbeaten bus stops, wielding my umbrella and a book with this grounding paragraph by Francisco Fernandez-Carvajal:

“We mustn’t forget that our greatest happiness and our most authentic good are not always those which we dream of and long for. It is difficult for us to see things in their true perspective: we can only take in a very small part of complete reality. We only see a tiny piece of reality that is here, in front of us. We are inclined to feel that earthly existence is the only real one and often consider our time on earth to be the period in which all our longings for perfect happiness ought to be fulfilled.”

Commenting about the determination of the humbled Zacchaeus (Luke 19), Bonaventure wrote, “it is the nature of genuine eagerness, which draws the soul to Christ, that even if obstacles are thrown in the way, its desire is not broken, but is the more enkindled.” Referring to my current studies as the Bonaventure Adventure, complete with a monthly day at the Boston Athenaeum library for replenishment, I’ve also made various side studies of his fellow Franciscans Saint Anthony and Saint Francis of Assisi. Comparing notes with a correspondent, I now know of the Franciscan Fr. Dolindo Ruotolo, whose extraordinary life gave the world a very simple devotional practice of openness to completely trusting the Holy Spirit within, called the Surrender Novena. The latter word means nine, as in nine consecutive days of focused meditation upon surrendering one’s will to God’s will. For example, in day eight’s reading, Ruotolo wrote in reflection of the Divine voice, “Repose in me, believing in my goodness, and I promise you by my love that if you say, You take care of it, I will take care of it all; I will console you, liberate you, and guide you.” I’ve been journeying through the past month with this compelling discipline. An elder friend of mine says it best: “Surrendering is so inviting; It sounds so easy until you try. Almost immediately after surrendering, you take up the problem and start dragging it around with you.” I couldn’t have expressed it better.

Surrendering one’s personal will and mortal navigational abilities to the very force of Creation is a formidable discipline that requires its own vigilance. In the throes of intense searching and applying, there must be surrender of all the subsequent worries. And there are many. What will happen? Why can’t this or that be so? What wrongs must I correct? To add to my counterbalance exemplified in Ruotolo’s prayer are those of Brother Roger in his essay, From Doubt to Humble Trusting:“Let your anxiety be transformed into the trust of faith.” And there are thick, embedded layers of anxiety. Consciously implementing this spiritual practice is the adjustment of a way of thinking and being, trying to surrender my attempts to control what is out of my influence, and not to fret. That is a major challenge. I can just hold up my end of things, searching and presenting as well as my experiences inform, always looking to improve my pitch. A devotional practice emphasizing humility and surrender causes- even forces- me to entrust my efforts to God. All at once, struggles expose limits, and defeats ignite more rallying to transcend. To cease is to fall backwards. Yet here again, surrender exhorts that I release all the worries that tend to follow my best attempts. Submit those carefully-phrased credentials at uploaded attachments, and then detach. The same trusting confidence in attaching files must go with detaching from the appealing ads. The prayers of surrender are about confiding, entrusting, and releasing fears and worries. Plenty still for me to learn, as I attentively correct my missteps and continue seeking a secure standpoint.