Breaking News! The Pilgrims were undocumented aliens!

Just a heads up.

The Pilgrims were undocumented aliens.

So were all the colonists. The very idea of a colony was alien. So too, property ownership.

We might add to the list of “illegals,” all the Europeans who “settled” in the Americas bringing with them disease and violence.

Most of us are the descendants of those undocumented intruders. What does that make us?

When I recently shared this slice of history with a friend, he noted that all human beings who came to these American continents were undocumented aliens, including the “native people” who originated in Asia and, prior to that, in Africa.

So when the “native people” arrived here, did anyone check in with the buffalo?

And so it goes.

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.