I haven't said very much about it here yet because we're saving all of our heavy ammo for an article that is in the works, but I made a new friend in the summer who has turned me on to the idea of pilgrimage. When we first met online and via telephone, I had a very particular idea about what a pilgrimage might be and mostly it involved images of the Catholic church, bleeding feet, and lots and lots of crucifixes along the way. Having now gone on a mini-pilgrimage with my friends Nicole and Keith, my mind has been broadened quite considerably, but I can't talk about all of that today. Not ready for showing, as they say.
Today, just a little thing. Here's one of those funny stories about people relying on their GPS and becoming lost. In this case, pilgrims looking for Lourdes are ending up a few miles off course in the tiny hamlet of Lourde where, according to this little article, there's not much to see or do. We're all getting a little tired of these stories, no? But in this case, there was a pilgrimage connection, and so I sent the tale off to Nicole. Her comment was characteristic. Part of what seems to happen on a pilgrimage is that nothing goes according to plan. All roads lead somewhere. If you are aiming for Lourdes and you end up in Lourde then that means something, and it's up to you to figure out what that something might be. Or not figure it out, as the case may be.
When these kinds of stories are posted, whether they are about pilgrims or hapless tourists getting lost, I always wonder what they found. Who spoke to the pilgrims in Lourde and asked them what happened there? When we travel with an intention, whatever that intention might have been, and we find ourselves blown off course by technology, we find something we didn't expect to find, and it becomes a part of our story. How we shape that new story to our intentions is in part up to us and in part in the hands of the universe. I want to know about the pilgrimage to Lourde. Who speaks for the lost?
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