“So I do not apologize for admitting to being on a pilgrimage in theology, as if it were in itself some kind of weakness of intelligence or character. Feeling our way toward the truth is the nature of theological work even with the help of Scripture, tradition and community …. A pilgrimage, therefore, far from being unusual or slightly dishonorable, is what we would expect theologians who are properly aware of their limitations to experience.”
- Clark Pinnock
A pilgrimage of the soul,
a restless contentment, acutely aware of the greater.
The greater and the beyond,
my limitations in comprehension, my senses
struggling to taste and see, smell, hear and feel.
But, eager.
O! So eager to know and be known.
Knowing that to be known is to, indeed, know.
To know that I, in fact, do not know,
is, in essence, the definition of this pilgrimage of the soul.
Lands traversed, leading me to this plot of earth,
seeing ahead mountains to be scaled.
The summit is sought, my insufficiency realized,
a treacherous road ahead perceived.
Yet, hopeful.
O! So hopeful, believing and trusting,
a credulous heart, curiously determined
to discover how breeze tastes when standing at the summit.
What is it like to sing above the birds, to notice livestock and mortals below,
counting them like sprinkles on frosted plain?
What mysteries will be revealed
as my ear tunes attentively to the whisper of passing clouds
and setting sun?
What sense will be made of concern, consideration, and brevity,
as I stand above storms and beyond time?
Alas, unknown.
O! To taste and see, smell, hear and feel from the summit.
Alas, I have not yet arrived.
To breathe and rest on heights,
I must first proceed,
along the path ahead of me.
Questions loom concerning unsure twists,
uneven stretches, inauspicious turns,
often facing formidable terrain.
Still, I am reminded, this is a pilgrimage of the soul.
A passage of discovery and maturity,
deliberate movements toward something.
Engaging, I am, along the way in experiences
which form my thinking and shape my being,
refining my understanding of that to which I travel.
And travel I must.
Everything within me raises my gaze upward,
toward the summit afar.
My heart grows toward it,
like the tops of great pines,
like the horizon wrapping around it’s firm foundation.
And this pilgrimage of the soul leads me thus.
-cb2011
Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead. – Saint Paul to the Philippians cir. 61AD
