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

from here

“A great thing is the soul:
in the soul, the whole world can be delineated.
The human soul is a microcosm of reality,
a microcosm of the macrocosm, an image of the world.”

~ Saint Bonaventure, Hexaemeron 22,24

The proverbial barrier raises yet another notch, as we all step onto the new year’s playing field. In these times, consolation and refuge become more difficult for too many to find. We’re hard put to conjure up our basic needs. Somehow able to hold ground and persevere, I’ve witnessed losses of stability at all hands. And yet- as I hear myself say- I’m here. The daily choice persists, to live compassionately, and to pursue this with every transaction and endeavor. Occasionally, exhaustion can punctuate all the constant hard work, and I stave it off with slices of downtime and a periodical retreat. Scruples and strength must operate in even strength. Last year, having the good fortune of finding and studying two of the final published works by Pope Francis, I was naturally inspired by the idea of a year of intentional pilgrimages. I’ve made these, anyway, over the years, but this time my emphases came from his suggestion to shape my life as an ongoing pilgrim of hope. Being a fulltime worker, I found ways to fit these travels into weekends- some extended with my earned-time-off. All the while, as usual, my studies stitch the days together: during bus commutes, with my thirty-minute lunches (still referred to as “scribbles and nibbles”), and at night. Through the past half-dozen years, I’ve reviewed all the published works of Josemaría Escrivá- indexing and annotating them. These “digests” make for great on-the-go reading, especially while commuting, and for redirecting my thoughts away from detriments that threaten and persist.

At the start of the Advent season last year, I travelled to Mount Saint Mary’s Abbey, in southeast Massachusetts, for a week of healthful respite and reflection. I returned there last month- now a friend of the community- concluding the year which encompassed another half-dozen locations of sacred pilgrimage. In another essay, I’ll enumerate them. For the moment, it suffices to mention the balance that became vital for me to strike between general cultural and employment tensions- countered with prayer in peaceful settings. We all need to survive and progress, persevering intact. In the pursuit of spiritual health and intellectual increase, all for the cause of fulfilling service, in the midst of turmoil I noticed a whiplash effect making it daunting to relax and refocus. Indeed, this isn’t a self-inflicted hardship at all. Much as with my conscious practice of re-directing pre-occupations, I’m better able to identify ideas and ruminations that are best left in roadside trash bins. I’ll even veer away from thinking about what it took to get away from the grind. With the simple gratitude of here I am, subsequent thoughts are returned to the immediate: Look at the view! or- It smells so nice here! Arrivals are made of curiosities and the childlike hopes of open ends. My many years of retreats have all been unstructured, without rigidity or agenda. I always bring reading, writing, and photo materials- along with a small radio. The purpose is unstructured respite. That biblical still, small voice is too often diverted by the shrill and incessant. If there’s one thing (and there are many things) pop culture cannot handle, it’s silence. Even gas station pumps blare audio and sound systems. And thus, there’s some unlearning to do, when arriving at a place of retreat. And that should be the extent of the do-ing.

Naturally, some form of routine can assist long-overdue decompression. Most of us are so ingrained with time that gets scheduled away from ourselves, that finding a way amidst minimal restriction poses its own peculiar conundrum. As it can happen, after plenty of first-day journal entries, by day 3 of my recent sojourn, I noticed myself looking for things to do. But I reminded myself that retreats are essentially in a different “time zone,” including liturgical days in monastic communities- surely dissimilar from the typical day-to-day. Something that deeply impressed me during my early and lengthy stretches at the Weston Priory is how days are as much wrapped around prayer as prayer is wrapped around the days. The adjustment from feeling there is “nothing to do,” becomes the “plenty” of easing into walks, writing, photographing, reading- all at slower paces- enjoying the company of those present, and devotions. Prayers manifest patiently focused and in silence. As well, there is the music of the community’s collective chant.

Before I took to the road, an older and wiser soul told me that “we are not what we think we are,“ but rather, “we are what we think.” This was said in the context of self-awareness and humility. I responded with, “we’re not even our own best judges!” Many of my thoughts en route to my week in Wrentham and since returning included making healthful realignments of obsolete notions- as I find them- in favor of calming and constructive thinking. Thoughts actually do matter. Journal-writing is as much personal documentation as it provides a forum for something of a “dialogue” between thinker and thought. For us writers, journaling is a lot of other things, especially when handwritten. When students ask about the “best way to write,” I always encourage them with, “just write true,” honesty always being the best policy. In doing so, and reading back what I write, there are surely learning processes.

In the spirit of neuroplasticity, I’ve become increasingly attuned to identifying and reckoning with negative and fatalistic thoughts. Adjusting to my circumstances does not mean imitating the toxicities that pervade nearly every sphere within reach. When I write about this in my journal, the idea is to try making sense of what I’m intuiting, witnessing, and absorbing- negotiating with the world and the workplace- all the while persevering in my pursuits of progress. At the heart of the adjusting is my insistence upon aspiration and improvement. Knowing and calibrating to self, situation, and vocation is to keep a balance of both limitations and ambitions in mind. Not compromising high standards, and in words from my profession- best practices, but instead resisting the mediocrity syndrome that too often prevails. Having studied, among other things, the notoriously astonishing Peter Principle in postgrad management theory sensitized me to recognize it in action all too frequently. Why perpetuate avoidable brands of passableness that we ourselves dislike from the barrel-end? How does that serve to inspire stewardship and the souls in our midst? Seeing the brevity of life and its very precariousness, it pains me to squander energy and time. Life is short. On that redirected thought, my navigational choice is to cultivate the mind, along with strengthening and guarding the soul. In his book called Furrow, Escrivá, provides some affirming words in his inimitable style:

We must not remain at the level of the mediocre, refusing to come to terms with mediocrity. We must enter all kinds of environments with a sure step. We’re called to be fully human in our actions, and at the same time reflecting the renewal of eternal things. That is why the apostle has to be a soul who has undergone a long, patient, and heroic process of formation.

A few days after the New Year’s holiday, washing dishes and listening to the radio, I heard the talk show host shift the discussion topic away from the interchangeable subjects known as societal miseries and politics. The affable Dan Rea, of Boston’s WBZ, asked listeners to ponder the prospect of the new year. He invited his audience to divert from editorializing, and to call in with their personal hopes for the coming year. It was easy to imagine Dan leaning into the microphone with his query, “Do you have any plans?” The large listening audience- made exponentially larger by virtue of being a nighttime AM broadcast- got to hear about travels, family reunions, going to ball games, graduating, and about the Tall Ships event in July. Now that’s some forward-looking. Hearing such a diversity of voices chiming in with their positive and lively aspirations was essentially what everyone needed. For all of you, my wish from here is for our hopes to exceed the movements of time.

autumn spring

“Let no one think that it is enough for them to read if they lack devotion,
or to engage in speculation without spiritual joy,
or to be active if they have no piety,
or to have knowledge without charity,
or intelligence without humility, or study without the grace of God,
or to expect to know whether they are lacking the infused wisdom of the Divine.”

~ Saint Bonaventure, Itinerarium

Journaling, more often than not, is narrative in real time. The stream of writing occurs as things develop, much more than in retrospect, and thus progress is difficult to notice during the documentation. Without the successions of work projects I’m accomplishing, what is evident is regress. At the same time, I’ll admit to being too close to the struggle to be able to assess from a broader view. Years ago, I worked with a more experienced colleague who would say, “it’s all in how you frame it,” referring to initiating a convincing point to a committee. As critical as it is to perceive into distances, present times seem best handled in proximate increments. Perhaps the transcendence that never happens soon enough will be visible, later.

Compensating for treadmill sameness, the natural elements manifest in an always-changing canvas. Spans of daylight, air, and colors make for a calendrical unfolding. As I note these words, New England is steeped in what we call “foliage season.” Pines and firs are upstaged by vivid combinations of reds, yellows, and russets. Within this visual event is the measure of time. In swirls of storms and cold winds, the bright confetti is flying off baring branches. The passage of time is tangibly on display. During daily commutes, and when aperch on my front stoop, I’m observing vignettes of local colors. As the environment compels, and as time permits, I’ll venture out for the purpose of admiration

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Recently taking an afternoon off, with camera and journal, I drove to the Franciscan community in Kennebunkport. From Portland, the route requires a southeasterly direction. Trimming curved and cresting roads, I saw bouquets of orange and red emanating from stout trees. Temperatures in the low-forties are too good for closed car windows. My left elbow on the sill especially enhanced the aromatic airflow for my driving. “K-port,” as many of us call it, is now in quieter, post-tourist season, thus ambling through to the Saint Anthony Franciscan Monastery was very easy. The church, refectory, and dormitories are closer to the road, with their vast and wooded space extending to the ocean’s edge. The monastery’s grounds comprise trails, a grotto, and a Lithuanian memorial. The Stations of the Cross are discreetly attached to trees along a path that leads to the water. On this recent visit, with a headful of stress and anxious thoughts, I walked some of the paths, sure to the admire the landscape and fresh air, saving a stretch of time at the grotto for last. The entire place is a sanctuary, a place of prayer and contemplation- always the intention of my visits. Settling in front of the grotto, the peacefulness I experienced cleared away what the road breezes had begun cleansing. Indeed, such rarified environments are not mandatory, knowing that prayer and contemplation are always and everywhere available.

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Contrasts are often catalysts for understanding. Colors are crisply comprehended, juxtaposed with their complements. Warmth is cherished in the cold. Light is best appreciated in darkness. Along similar lines, walking over fallen, dried leaves causes me to think about spring. As foliage season is in progress, intermittent and remaining greens continue persisting, reminding me to embody spring amidst autumn and winter. In these times that are steeped in grimness, recession, and despair, my thoughts reach for hopefulness- for spring. I’m seeing and hearing too much of what runs contrary to constructiveness- from world-scale events and social behaviors, right down to business meetings. These things contrast the desire to encourage and to grow well; to be spring, and to refuse bitterness. While watching gardeners store vegetables and bulbs in root cellars, the reminder came to me, to be a bearer of spring through the winter. Resisting bitterness takes shape as eagerness for positive growth, for advancement, and in my choice of framing perspectives. From there, intent is followed by action. As Bonaventure pointed out how such contrasts as intelligence and humility are best appreciated together, so I’ll add that juxtaposed brightness and bleakness stand out as reminders.

back-to-school season

“Finish every day and be done with it.
For manners and for wise living it is a vice to remember.
You have done what you could;
some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in;
forget them as soon as you can.
Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it well and serenely,
and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense.
This day for all that is good and fair.
It is too dear, with its hopes and invitations,
to waste a moment on the rotten yesterdays.”

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Volume 2, 1836 - 1841

Long before the weathervanes of corporate retail brought out their marketed wares, the liminality of back-to-school season became very clear to me. Summer heat and humidity yielded to tree-bending blustery air, and on a random morning I suddenly remembered walking to grammar school in new shoes. Changed slants of light and earlier evenings indicate the setting of August. Though my graduate school thesis term was many years ago, memories- especially of my earliest education- vividly remain. The first day of a new school year was a burst to the senses: the look of new spaces, unfamiliar sounds, and the strong smells of industrial cleaning ingredients. At Public School No.13, in New York City, classroom numbers had their corresponding numbers painted on the gridded asphalt surface of the schoolyard; this became the place to line up every morning, prior to processing into school for the day. That was embedded within my first five years of schooling. Many other formalities followed, but as my father observed, “when you’re six years old, one year occupies fifteen percent of your life.” Back-to-school has always meant a fresh start, and at every age a learning of room numbers, names, and navigational strategies. A common post-secondary puzzle required knowing various campus buildings and the time needed to connect between them. To this day, late-August and early-September rekindle memories of new beginnings. Notwithstanding all the teaching I’ve been doing since college, I continue to purchase a new calendar book every summer. Labor Day Weekend is essentially the recognition of a new year.

A few of my classmates at the High School of Art & Design, New York.

Some of us are physically affected by the season. Back-to-school acquired my added connotation of allergy season. Parallel to my beginning high school, my one allergic condition emerged, which is ragweed pollen. As some of you know, some years are tougher than others. At the start of sophomore year, as a woeful fourteen-year-old, I had several protracted sneezing spells that frightened the teacher such that I was re-situated to the back of the classroom. That’s a great first impression to make for a teen, and surely not how I wanted to be noticed. Over the years, I learned to be equipped with neutralizing medication. On a better note, back-to-school meant reuniting with familiar faces and meeting new people. At the start of my senior year at the High School of Art & Design, at age seventeen, a number of old friends noticed how tall I’d suddenly gotten. New school years- both in high school and undergrad college, both four year institutions- began with re-acquaintances and recounting our summers. Fresh starts, in themselves, open to new horizons. And every venture, at any age and level, needs its equipage. Notebooks, writing materials- including aromatic wooden pencils, sometimes a new bookbag.

I still have this- from a Maine College of Art graphic design prof
who said to me, "Here is an E for your excellent work!"

Because of my high school’s focus on the visual arts, there were always supply lists to be filled. My mother, an experienced artist, and I made errands to the famous Pearl Paint- in SoHo- for our provisioning. Art college in Maine also meant filling supply lists, but with less variety. Unlike all the public schools I’d attended, college and university life required purchasing my own books, adding to the “new year” rituals. To send myself off in style to graduate school in Boston, I drove to nearby L.L. Bean and treated myself to a rugged backpack for the new journey. Each and every academic year began with reminders in the forms of brisk air, longer shadows, sneezing, and motivation to reach beyond my self.

Above: From my matriculating days in the MA program
at UMass-Boston. Notice my notebook-holder.

Below: Simmons University, Boston.

“Major in the Rest of Your Life” read the banner in the large vestibule of Boston’s Simmons University, highlighting my first day en route to my masters degree. It took two years of extremely hardworked matriculation to reach that beginning, but my gratitude produced its own energy. I hope Simmons has reused that brilliant motto. It may surprise those who’ve known me since my postgrad years, that I did not like school. I dreaded it. During childhood, I called the daily trudge “going to jail” and those tiresome stretches of time (in any duration) seemed agonizingly endless. Everything changed with the intense challenges of graduate schooling, which I loved. Perhaps it was the added years of work experience, but indeed I chose new vocations and goals, and I also chose each one of my courses. Back-to-school was a series of forward motions, even further hastened by summer sessions. The subject matter, as I advanced from one program to the next, became increasingly fascinating to me: from history, with the addition of philosophy, and then finally to archival sciences. With each new semester, the projects and assignments intensified- including publishing about book conservation. I took to beginning each academic year by watching that great film, The Paper Chase. For those timed, cheat-proof, fill-the-blue-booklet exams, I had a magic fountain pen which I’d bought in Paris. Every evening before one of those draining experiences, I’d make myself a brain-enriching fish dinner, and would perch that Waterman on my stereo to the tune of Meyerbeer’s benediction of the daggers from his opera Les Huguenots. All of this prep amounted to straight A’s. The pen wrote a perfect score.

The Waterman fountain pen with the 4.0 average.

My love for learning hit its permanent stride, when I joined the Boston Athenaeum immediately after graduating with my Masters degree. I’ve since lectured and taught there. Back-to-school is something I’ve been experiencing and supporting as an educator, and can attest that pursuing my own continued learning is an unending feast. In his Collations on the Hexaemeron, Saint Bonaventure wrote, “The door to wisdom is the vehement desire for it.” The season associated with the re-entry to school for so many among us retains its significance for me. Just as scholarship is stewardship, studies need application- all of which require conscientiousness. In his brilliant work and ready companion to me, The Intellectual Life, by A.G. Sertillanges, the chapter called Preparation for Work is especially appropriate for the season. His use of the word génie doesn’t quite translate as “genius,” but is something more like “inspired intellect.” He referred to this kind of wisdom as something that “stimulates us and gives us confidence. The stir it arouses is a spur to ardent personal endeavor, revealing a vocation, correcting overanxious timidity. A sense of sublimity breaks on our soul like a sunrise.” He described how we can use inspiring source material to fuel our ambitions and projects. Sertillanges’ references about cherished personal readings amount to an individual’s assembly of strategic reserves. Their cultivation increases with each measure of progress, such that “back-to-school” encounters less and less inertia. Studies lend well to spiritual formation, in an ongoing stream. Navigating currents and tides, we bring along our prized primary sources and faithful instruments.

I was well aware that my room at Simmons was on Pilgrim Road.

quiet paces

“If we deal fairly with one another and practice the virtue of justice,
we establish the bond of peace.
This means that where silence is observed, the fruits of peace
are gathered as easily as fruit is gathered from a heavily-laden tree.”

~ Saint Bonaventure, Holiness of Life.

In a serendipitous rarity, I was recently able to briefly liberate myself from my indentures with a week off. Coinciding with the Jubilee Year of Hope, designed to strike a strong contrast against all we see in our midst, the late Pope Francis published books and essays to go with his declaration, encouraging that we become pilgrims of hope. This entails conscientiously improving our communities as well as internalizing the theme, making physical pilgrimages to sacred places that are both conducive for prayer and accessible. Supporting articles, lectures, and broadcasts are directed as much to groups as they are to individuals. The concept of pilgrimage is surely ancient; for me, it’s been a way of life, growth, and stability since the mid-1990s. During this past year, I made my way to such familiar wellsprings as the Weston Priory (Vermont), Mount Saint Mary’s (Wrentham MA), Beacon Hill Friends House (Boston), and most recently the National Shrine of the Divine Mercy (Stockbridge MA). Earning time-off and finding salubrious ways to redeem those morsels takes shape as getting away from unsympathetic hardships- to welcoming healthful situations.

As studies can have their own pilgrimage aspects, I’ve nicknamed my years of ongoing and compelling Bonaventurian research and readings my Bonaventure Adventure- even developing a personal devotion to the saint, annually observing his feast day. Shortly before the sudden approval of the time off, albeit with little time to plan, I’d been reading Leonard Bowman’s book, A Retreat with St. Bonaventure. As the sojourn’s plans solidified, I saw on the calendar that I would be on pilgrimage for most of the novena leading up to Bonaventure’s memorial, as well as the days straddling July 15th. I took the book with me, of course. Amidst my studies, I read the Seraphic Doctor’s biography of St. Francis of Assisi. Bonaventure adored Francis, and when he subsequently found himself elected leader of the Franciscans, in 1257, the order asked him to write Francis’ life story- intending to prevent propagation of false rumors and folklore. As their generations slightly overlapped, Bonaventure interviewed eyewitnesses and colleagues of Francis, en route to the written oeuvre. In preparation for his new role as minister-general of the order, Bonaventure made an intentional pilgrimage to the top of Mount La Verna, the site of greatest importance to Francis. During his solitary time at the mountaintop while reflecting upon the legacy of Francis, Bonaventure experienced his own spiritual encounter, and began to compose what became his most celebrated work: The Journey of the Mind into God (also known as The Itinerary). Bowman’s book includes a commentary about Bonaventure’s writing in the silence at La Verna. In the solitude, “our efforts and achievements, indispensable as we saw them, look absurd.” “Pierce through the words, images, and thoughts,” added Bowman. “Now is the only simple recognition and wordless response.”

The idea of wordless response has stayed with me. While on the road, I tried imagining this manifesting as such pedestrian things like daily routine life, even breathing. Driving without the sound system gave me a small taste of wordless response. Bonaventure’s expression of contemplation was the stilled voice. I considered this, as well as the entirety of making a pilgrimage, to be a healthful distraction from the miseries I’d paused. Sanctified time. I took to the road earlier than I’d originally planned, having compressed a weekend’s errands into an overnight. Figuring on arriving in Stockbridge in the usual 3½ hours, intense highway traffic added more than an hour to my nonstop driving time, yet I arrived at the Shrine ten minutes prior to Mass. Being the 2nd Saturday of the month, the service was especially directed to Jubilee Year pilgrims; I was elated to have arrived in time, with the week still to follow in the peace of the Berkshires as guest of the Marians’ community.

Being so accustomed and conditioned to expecting large accomplishments and covering big distances, the wordless response of my musings began to take shape as quiet paces, meditatively absorbing the pilgrimage. Walking from place to place on Eden Hill and in Stockbridge permitted for an eased and reflective tempo. My paces through the woods and lanes were extensions of my steps along polished naves and transcepts. Among few things I brought with me for the week were ingredients for writing, reading, photographing, and my cherished rosary from the Sacré-Coeur basilica in Paris. Indeed, I arrived on pilgrimage, in the place that daily observes the Divine Mercy Chaplet in the presence of the relics of Saint Faustina. Looking at the inviting iconography throughout the shrine’s grounds and buildings, I remembered St. Augustine’s words: “Prayer is the raising and turning of the mind to God.” More than places loved and missed in our absence, spiritual destinations call to us. The pull of inspiration is met with an individual’s push forward, albeit in the quietest paces hidden within. Consequently, there follows an outward journey.

Kindredship winds up being among the unexpected, yet consistent, aspects of pilgrimage. Destinations may be givens, but the sojourning experiences comprise the subtle and the serendipitous. Speaking with, and listening to fellow pilgrims gave me stories of those who travelled much greater distances than my 230 miles. I heard about burdens and gratitudes, afflictions and recoveries; all the anecdotes and sights provide perspective. And significant shared silence. In his work Holiness of Life, Bonaventure wrote that “silence begets compunction of heart,” and thus we are humbled. As well, contemplative silence shows we belong to another world. On the eve of the day which memorializes Bonaventure, I enjoyed a great conversation with one of the Marian brothers who also admires the saint. We meandered between talking about the Itinerary, and about our lives of interaction with the public. He said he had once been a short-order cook. Sanctifying our work was among our topics. He heard a little about my employment stresses, to which I added another gem of Bonaventure’s in Holiness of Life: “Perseverance is the crown and consummation of all virtues.”

During the week of quiet paces, I participated in all the liturgies- increasingly listening in silence. Because the large sanctuary was regularly filled with actively vocal attendees, I could as easily blend into the current, as to be carried along in focused silence. The impression of the entirety was that of swelling and falling back upon the solidity of the acclamations. Wordless response essentially transcends structure. Having brought many intentions with me, from friends and correspondents- adding my own, I became aware that my purpose for being at this extraordinary place of worship outweighed me. Paradoxically, the more substantial, the more invisible. This strong imprint has accompanied my return to work and to all the connected frustrations I’d paused. Immersed as I’ve been with St. Bonaventure’s writing, I can imagine him encouraging me with “Reach beyond self, and toward God.” While I’ve had to resume my “normal” vigilant paces, I’m remembering having been able to slow down. “From memory as fountain-source,” wrote Leonard Bowman in his book about Bonaventure, “there emerges a wordless sense. Intellectual recognition traces it and names it into Word. Then emotion and will connect it and claim it in Love.”