what I carry with me

More than having one experience among a host of others, our professor — whose instructional responsibility, from what I can tell, is to concretely equip us for post-academic life as Ministers of Word and Sacrament — wants us to come away from this semester with a template or a framework that we could repeat… and […]

what I left behind

In the movie The Way, the gendarme character hands Martin Sheen’s character a pocket-sized rock as Sheen sets out to walk his dead son’s pilgrimage. In one of the late-late scenes in the movie, the erstwhile group of pilgrims arrives at an impressive pile of pocket-sized rocks… larger than any ebenezer I’ve yet encountered. Each […]

a pilgrim at john knox ranch

I began my pilgrim-week in this place. Yes, I know I take a lot of botanical pix. Some of these were to feed into a new app I have on my phone, Seek by iNaturalist, but truthfully… I probably would have taken them anyway. It was a lot more wandering and not much “going,” pilgrimage-wise. […]

pilgrimages have destinations

My destination for this pilgrimage? Know Where I’ll Be Next Fall For My Next Phase. When my pilgrimage class began, that destination looked like “find out more about PhD locations.” Two weeks before making the pilgrimage, S. approached me about how I felt about doing a two-year congregational pastoral residency. Over the course of the […]

pilgrimage vs. retreat

Pilgrimages go — move — from point a to point b. {Or they are without an articulated destination — peregrinatio, wandering.}Retreats stay in one place for the retreat-time, though one might travel to get there and get home. Stabilitas, constancy. There is a “site” for most pilgrimages: a destination to come close to and go […]

bad at contemplation

I think I’ve mentioned in the past that I have a morning devotional routine… routine in that it has regular components, and a usual timeslot. Not routine as in “I do it every day,” but then, I’m a known-non-routiner in that regard. My drill? I read 3 poems (or 3 pages of poetry, or to […]

teaching inward

As I was looking forward (think: ahead, think: pleasurably anticipate) to my pilgrimage-in-place time, I made a list of the inward spiritual practices I’ve done. Ignatian exercises, in the 5-day format, up at Montserrat Jesuit Retreat House walking labyrinth meditations crafting a 3-day local retreat for myself and two other parent-artists, when all our progeny […]

discernment and work

How to move forward? When I make my way by stepping on the stones God sets before me, which are the sturdy ones? Which are set by the Adversary, and will drop me without a trace (like the puzzles in The Last Campfire)? One of the ways is to step through whatever door opens in […]

journeying away, journeying toward

What you are observing about yourself in this actual season of your life + COVID impacted-season?At this “moment,” what sense of fatigue/disillusionment/entanglement/anger/fear/etc would you like to journey away from, and what renewing blessing would you like to move toward? Dr. Bobbi Kaye Jones, Pastor As Pilgrim syllabus Observing about myself? I would say I haven’t […]