This past Sunday in worship we handed out Soulful Travel Kits to everyone who came.   If you haven’t gotten yours yet, we have plenty more – they are in the Sanctuary.  Here’s the idea:  if you travel somewhere this summer or not (travel is a metaphor), you get a small container to bring back some water, suggestions for traveling with spirit in mind, and some suggestions for recording your journey through a variety of mediums.  At the end of the summer, we will share those experiences with each other, and bring together the waters of the world in worship.  (Ed. Some congregations use the “waters of the world” for their baptism celebrations.)

Each week this summer, SPINN will feature a reflection on pilgrimage and traveling soulfully.

Here’s the first reflection, from “The Art of Pilgrimage” by Phil Cousineau:

Pilgrimage is the kind of journeying that marks…[the]move from mindless to mindful, soulless to soulful travel.  The difference may be subtle or dramatic; by definition it is lifechanging.  It means being alert to the times when all that’s needed is a trip to a remote place to simply lose yourself, and to the times when what’s needed is a journey to a sacred place, in all its glorisome and fearsome masks, to find yourself.  Since the earliest human perception, the nettlesome question has been:  How do we travel more fruitfully, more wisely, more soulfully?  How can we mobilize the imagination and enliven the heart so that we might, on our special journeys, “see everywhere in the world the inevitable expression of the concept of infinity” in the words of Louis Pasteur; or notice, along with Thoreau, “the divine energy everywhere”? Or recall with Evan Connell the advice to medieval travelers:  Pass by that which you do not love.  (pp. xxiii-xxiv)