As I sit in the airport departure lounge, feeling uneasily different in my dress and my intention from many of those around me, I’m drawn back to all the thinking that I’ve done in recent months about what a pilgrimage actually is. One definition I found is that it is ‘a visit to somewhere special; somewhere you go to show respect’. That seems rather inadequate to me. Google ‘helpfully’ suggested that it is a ‘pilgrim’s journey’!

But perhaps that very simple explanation bears some unpacking … the journey element seems important to me. And I think, for a true pilgrimage, there must be some sense in which that journey is personally taxing. Not that every pilgrim must walk as I will. But just hopping into a car and travelling door to door doesn’t quite fit the idea. Perhaps the key is that it’s not a short journey in terms of time -even if the distance is relatively short, maybe it’s that we start it long before we set foot out of the door. We start preparing our bodies, our minds and, crucially, our souls to be receptive to the pilgrim experience.

The word ‘pilgrim’ comes from the Latin ‘peregrinus’ - literally one who travels through the land, but it is also used to mean ‘foreigner’ or ‘temporary resident’. To be a pilgrim means to travel as what the Old Testament calls ‘a stranger and a sojourner’. It draws on ancient ideas of hospitality to strangers - the Greek concept of ‘philoxenia’, as well as God’s command to care for the resident alien alongside the widows and orphans.

And I’m left wondering if the role of the pilgrim is like that of the 3 angels beneath the oaks of Mamre - yes, to be open to hospitality, but more importantly to find a way to be a blessing to those we travel among.