Pilgrims

Young pilgrims in their late teens from several countries have been sojourning in our Quaker meetinghouse this weekend.

My brief time with them has led me to contemplate pilgrims and pilgrimages.

These young Friends are not alone on their pilgrimage.

We are all pilgrims in this life and beyond it.

We were pilgrims before we came to this earthly stretch of our journey. Before what we call "birth." We no doubt will be pilgrims on the uncharted road beyond what we call "death."

Journeys are measured in distance and time, but spiritual pilgrimages are beyond measure. They have no distance; they have no time. They have no beginning; they have no end.

In worship, alone or together, we often feel our pilgrimage — we become one with it — in sacred, ineffable silence.

The pilgrim within us is the eternal, immortal spirit.