Pilgrimage – An Old Idea Finding a New Meaning

Dr Frazer of Greyfriars Kirk, Edinburgh, whose book on travelling the Camino, Travels with a Stick, has been influential in establishing the current discussion in the Church on this subject, reviews both biblical references about how wild places can awaken the spirit and some earlier experiences in the history of the Church of pilgrimage, and how one may find local sites that once were the focus of pilgrims. He discusses how 'the eternal seeps through the physical', both physical activity and the physicality of the landscape through which we travel, which as we become one with it begins to 'read us, interrogate us'. People may go on pilgrimage because they have lost faith in the institutions of religion. These potential springs of refreshment have become blocked. The Scottish Pilgrim Routes Forum and the revival of Scottish pilgrim routes. Some disparage this movement, but there is always a place for revisiting old practices and re-framing them in a new context.