From homeless to pilgrim

Last March I posted Spiritually Homeless, an honest reflection of my spiritual journey in and then out of organized religion. I didn't feel I had a place to lay my head, no "home church" or anything similar. But I embraced this reality and in the post from March, I reflected on how being spiritually homeless can truly be a positive and life-giving experience.

For one thing, Jesus was homeless.

I put the post up on my Facebook Notes. (You can try this link to get to it.) The result was more than a hundred comments: various questions, comments, and mostly support and appreciation for a sincere approach to the issue of church. It's no secret that many people are having a more and more difficult time connecting with organized religion in a meaningful and life-giving way.

In the process of all the feedback and discussion, I had an insightful observation made to me by Tamie: You are not spiritually homeless, you are a spiritual pilgrim.

Ah!

So simple.

And yet so true.

For a time period, after I exited the institutional church, I felt lost and homeless: scrambling on the streets to find a meal, take shelter for the night, and scrape up a little money for booze every once in a while.

It was survival mode.

And it was necessary.

And it was good.

"Homeless" is a derogatory term for many. But again, Jesus was homeless. And this sense of being homeless is still important for me. To feel too much like we are at home in the system of the world means that we will never challenge the system, never bring reform, and never be personally transformed into something more noble and beautiful.

Nonetheless, I feel like "pilgrim" is a better description of my current journey. It still carries with it a sense of restlessness and discontent with the status quo: this world is not my home, this system is not my identity. And yet there is a sense of purpose and calling to travel, to make a difference, to challenge the system.

Drumroll, please.......

In some of the upcoming posts, I will try to unravel what a pilgrim looks like in these days and in this system. Together we will dialog about the pilgrim metaphor. In conjunction with this dialog, I will be engaging John Doyle's unpublished novel The Stations. (John is a frequent commentator here at Theos Project, his blog and tag name are Ktismatics.) I have been interested in posting on this novel for quite sometime, but I've been holding off, with the sense that there was more in store for posting on The Stations than just straight exegesis.

The Stations tells the story of a movement of "Salons" that sweep across the nation and the world. These Salons are new approaches to being human that investigate new perceptions that human beings might have of themselves that "portal" them into alternative realities and spiritualities. It is an ambiguous and imaginative novel that stirs up some of the thoughts and questions of pilgrimage.

I would like to combine personal experiences, reflections, and an exegesis of The Salon, mix them together and see what we get.

I think we can generate some energy around the topic of what it might look like to explore this curious sense of displacement that seems inherent for those seeking to live a deeper life of faith, spirituality, or just humanness....to embrace the ambiguity and danger of homelessness while proceeding forward with a pilgrim's sense of calling.