Supplements

Commentary

By Liz Quirin

Every Journey an Adventure

Managing a group of people on a pilgrimage is like herding cats. You just can’t do it with any degree of success. Being the worst “cat” in the group, I rarely follow any of the sound and good advice I have given folks on tours we have sponsored. Our first and largest pilgrimage was in 1999 to the Holy Land. With 55 people in tow, we traveled to many of the sites familiar to us through the Scriptures. The journey was inspiring; it was spiritually nourishing. It was also incredibly exhausting and a tremendous amount of just plain fun. When we returned, we were changed by what we saw and experienced and what we learned about each other and ourselves.

I was reminded of that first pilgrimage recently as our latest group traveled to southern Spain. It was repetitive in several respects: inspiring, exhausting and fun, and the learning curve, while stretching out somewhat as we have aged, continues to be about the external sites and the internal learning. We know each other better — which may or may not be a good thing — and we care about one another in a special way because of the experiences we have shared.

Often, people say: “What happens on the — in this case trip — stays on the trip. With me, that is impossible. So, here it is: The reason this pilgrimage reminded me of the first one is because, once again, I failed to follow my own good and reasonable rule: Never go off by yourself; always go with someone.

In 1999, I left the hotel in Jerusalem to go find something at a store for one of our travelers. It was 7 or 8 p.m., and I didn’t return to the hotel until after 10 p.m. Why? I got lost. Evidently, in Jerusalem, asking the police or the soldiers for help doesn’t produce any positive result. Eventually, I wandered around long enough until, as they say, I ended where I began. My son, who also went on this pilgrimage, was mildly concerned. He was 14. Why worry?

On this latest adventure, I assure you, I was not lost, but I was unable to locate the bus. I knew exactly where I was the whole time. However, the rest of the group, the tour manager and my daughter had not only located the bus, they were sitting on it, waiting. I had gone to the wrong meeting place, and then unable to stay put and wait until they found me, I was jogging through the neighborhood, determined to locate the folks and the bus. This time, my daughter, a young adult who was traveling with me, was less than amused. She was somewhat frantic, but other travelers were taking better care of me than I was of them. Obviously, the problem was resolved — eventually.

We prayed daily for each other, our families and ourselves. Especially meaningful to me were the reflections we took along, including “We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started, and know the place for the first time.” (T.S. Eliot)