Presenting a chapter
from my new book about pilgrimage – HOLY RAMBLINGS: Travelogues, Commentaries,
and Meditations on Pilgrimages Far and Near. Available in ebook and print
formats: www.holyramblings.com
Well, a week or so
ago, just when this period of enforced solitude was beginning, I was talking
with the office manager of my parish, the Minor Basilica of the Immaculate
Conception, Natchitoches, Louisiana, and I asked her, “Does my timing suck, or
what?” After months of work, much longer than I anticipated when I started this
project back in the summer, I finally had received a box full of paperbacks, was
ready to seek permission from the rector of the basilica to place a few in the
gift shop, and announce their availability there as well as from the online
merchants that can be accessed through the link above. Then this happened, the new
world of social distancing went into effect, public Masses were suspended
indefinitely in the Diocese of Alexandria, and the gift shop closed. I ultimately
decided on the smaller-scale online roll-out that I started Wednesday evening
via Facebook, of which this is a continuation – with a bonus.
Besides meditation
on what exactly pilgrimage is and why it seems to be an almost exclusively
Catholic thing among modern Christians, followed by detailed day-by-day
narratives of my three “big” pilgrimages over the past few years – to Rome and
Italy, to the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City, and to the Holy
Land – I also spend a couple of chapters surveying the wider world of
pilgrimage, discussing the most popular destinations around the world as well
as these United States. With the world currently on shutdown, however, the
pilgrimage industry as well as basically any other nonessential travel at
virtually any level has screeched to a halt. Quarantine, “stay-at-home,” call
it what you will, suddenly we are all largely confined to our abodes with a
great deal of time on our hands even if we are part of this grand new experiment
in work-from-home, “telecommuting,” again call it what you will. What better
way to spend some of that time than going on a pilgrimage?
After those surveys
of “pilgrimages far” (around the world) and “near” (around the United States),
I tackle the subject of “pilgrimages here,” at home – literally – by various
means including the new possibilities afforded by modern technology. Here
follows that chapter, with commentary after….
