I heard so many nice sayings this morning that would have be great springboards for a blog post but I forgot almost all of that. Oh well, I only need one to write one post anyway. I saw a son of a friend of mine and I asked how his parents were doing and he replied, “Oh, chugging along.” There, that is a springboard.
On one hand chugging along is good but it stuck me at the moment as sort of unexciting. Like we’re here but just going through the motions. Yes, yes chugging along is far better than being sick and infirmed but it is not saying much.
And not that I still don’t love my friends but it is that I want things better for people and for us.
I’m looking up pedestrian in the big fat paper dictionary. And what does it say Felipé? Pedestrian as a noun is “a person walking along a road or in a developed area.” And as an adjective it is “lacking inspiration or excitement; dull…” But wait, what does it say is the definition of a pilgrim? “pilgrim – a person who journeys to a sacred place for religious reasons.”
Well, this is all semi interesting Felipé but where are you going with this? Good question and maybe nowhere but look I am out of time for the moment. Maybe we could just ponder that and work on it later.
Lunchtime loves, Felipé.
Hola Felipe,
What a great topic derived from one word someone said… aren’t those revelations the best?
So, If pilgrim is defined as: “a person who journeys to a sacred place for religious reasons”, I think it is worth of analysis… I don’t have an English definitions dictionary in paper (I must admit I don’t have anymore one in Spanish, but I have the “Real Academia Española” online and the “Collins” too.)
On these tools, I looked up:
“Journey”: a traveling from one place to another, usually taking a rather long time.
“Sacred”: dedicated to divine things; important for some person or object.
“Religious”: of, relating to, concerned with religion; conscientious
Taking into consideration the possible meaning of these words, and the fact that Spanish is my first language and I can totally be missing the point!!!!! but, I like to think that one can understand the Camino de Santiago (as an example, you can replace it with other pilgrimage) as:
1) A long (with “long” being subjective) distance covered by foot (or bike, or donkey, you name it) to the Tomb of Santiago, done with a spirit concerned with religion.
2) A long (with “long” being subjective) distance covered by foot (or bike, or donkey, you name it) to the City of Santiago de Compostela, with an ending point established in the Cathedral, done conscientiously.
3) As Andrew Bennet said, to cover the 18 inches that separates our head to our heart done conscientiously. Those 18 inches for some of us are the longest journey we could ever possible made, it is certainly a journey to a sacred place, and there is no way to done it other than conscientiously. My pilgrim friend Fr. Ben said very wisely that those 18 inches are like journeying through the forest of our soul, and John O’Donohue wrote that “your soul alone knows the geography of your destiny, your soul alone has the map of your future…”
So, as I understand this matter, you can be a pilgrim without leaving your backyard or your bed or your home; and you can go to any point of the Camino de Santiago route, follow the arrows, and do just a “hike”… but you know, Spanish is my first language!!! and I can totally be missing the point here!!! 😀
Dictionary-approved Pilgrims Love,
Cris
Sweetheart Cris ~ no you didn’t miss the point! I’m am pretty sure that there is no real point but was sort of a half baked start on something that only my brain knows. Anyway, thank you for doing all that research. I guess I was fixated on the term pedestrian, the adverb or adjective. It is sort of a put down like the word sophomoric.
Anyway that 18 inch pilgrimage is totally intriguing. I had never heard that before, totally cool, terribly important and no walking at all. Thank you for introducing that to me/us. That sounds like a good topic for sometime real soon here at the blog.
The best to you, Felipé.x