Places Matter 🎒
every common bush is afire
I love where I live for so many reasons: our scrappy 90-year-old fixer-upper that will never be finished, our walkable neighborhood and its third places, the people around me who I’m honored to call neighbors, the fact that our family has lived here longer than anywhere else in our adult lives (we were quite nomadic the first half of our marriage, including overseas). There’s something good and right in finding real contentment with the soil you’ve been given to bury your roots.
As I unpack in my Rule of Life workshop, Benedictines take, among the other traditional religious vows, a vow of stability—a commitment to stay put where they’ve committed to serve, even when it’s difficult, or more common in our modern era now, even when life gets boring and ordinary. For those of us who haven’t taken formal vows, there’s still a lesson here: that there’s a quiet, settled wisdom in choosing to stay put somewhere for the long haul, no matter the drudgery of daily life.
For much of my early adulthood, I searched for novelty. I didn’t know this, really; I just thought I was made for adventure, cut from different cloth than my peers who prioritized jobs with benefits and buying a house before age thirty. This assumption served me well because it’s how I met Kyle on the mission field, where we both, out of our own volition, lived in war-torn Kosovo and opted for fields potentially riddled with mines over a neighborhood with lawns and cared-for playgrounds. We spent our first 12-ish years of marriage either living and serving overseas, preparing to do so, or recovering from doing so (along with a year-long stint living out of backpacks with our kids while we circumnavigated the world together).
But there was something in the pair of our bones that finally settled, when we admitted how much knowing and being known mattered, and that there really is adventure also to be found in growing backyard tomatoes, taking kids to tae kwon do and gymnastics practice, and joining local book clubs. As of this fall we’ve now lived in our run-down cottage for a decade, and we can’t imagine living anywhere else. There’s almost nowhere I’d rather be than in my thrifted green velvet chair with a view through the window of the sycamore in my front yard, watching the leaves come and go throughout the seasons as I sip my morning coffee. Turns out there’s a Baggins side in me after all.
But those Tookish bones in me are still strong, too, and it doesn’t take much for them to need a stretch in their joints to continue exploring the world’s nooks and crannies. Once we hung up our backpacks after our family’s year of travel, Kyle and I made a commitment to dust them off whenever we could. Even deeper, we committed to sharing that love for the world, helping others stretch their Tookish bones no matter how dormant they’ve been, and to show friends new and old the places that matter.
This is why I started leading pilgrimages, taking folks to places they’d otherwise not encounter. Because we live in a world with trees and languages and different recipes for bread, and because we’re made with ears and feet and skin and hair, we witness with our eyes that we are not just souls, and definitely not brains-on-sticks. We are body-soul composites, meant to nourish those souls with real-life touching and seeing and hearing. This God-given world, imperfect as it is, matters.
“Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God, but only he who sees takes off his shoes; the rest sit round and pluck blackberries.”
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Travel allows us to encounter the world’s wide variety of people and places. Pilgrimages, a particular form of travel, allows us to encounter those people and places while hearing from God about why He wants us to encounter them. What’s the sacred stuff beneath what I’m seeing, tasting, and touching? What’s the sacred stuff in me? What does He want to tell me through this particular journey of mine? How am I called to return home a little different?
Because yes, God can talk to us anywhere, be it in the Costco checkout line or underneath the Sistine Chapel. Yet not all places are created equally, and there really is something sacred about standing where St. Patrick brought the Gospel to Celtic kings, where St. Peter’s bones are laid to rest, where St. Paul shared good news on Mars Hill, where medieval villagers built the world’s greatest cathedrals, or even where the Italians first gave us the gift of gelato and pasta. And to stand in those places with friends new and old, who can revel in good conversation over a drink in the pub later that night and wonder aloud about it all? That’s the gift of a pilgrimage. That’s how it’s been for me the past eight-ish years since I’ve started leading them. What a gift.
And what a gift to do it again this summer, this time on the sacred soil in the hallowed highlands of Scotland, home of William Wallace, log-throwing, tartan tribes, and the Fife Way. Where we’ll wander the thin-placed corners of the Isle of Skye and castles that hid priests brave enough to celebrate the Eucharist when death was on the line? To talk theology, sacramental worldviews, jobs and gardens and kids, and to laugh about our human frailty reflected in long bus rides and long walks around the Loch Ness in pub corners over glasses of Scotch? To be accompanied by my friend Fr. Gabe, who’ll bring us the Eucharist, Confession, blessings, and quite possibly an evening of karaoke with his impressive singing voice—and most definitely friendship, of which he has an abundance to share? That’s the gift of pilgrimage, too.
We walked always in beauty, it seemed to me. We walked and looked about, or stood and looked. ...The place spoke for us and was a kind of speech. We spoke to each other in the things we saw.
-Wendell Berry
Young and old, singles and whole families, devoted Catholics or I-don’t-know-what-I-am-anymores, veteran pilgrims and first-time travelers… All are welcome. In fact, all together make the experience that much richer as we listen and learn from each other. What. a. gift.
If you sense that this pilgrimage has a spot with your name on it, I’d love, love, love you to join us this summer. It’ll be me, my husband, and my two boys on board, and on the travel list so far I recognize some beloved pilgrimage regulars (Hi Rick! Hi Claire!) as well as some new-to-me names. And I can’t wait to see you all.
Starting today and through Friday, February 20, my partnership company, Select, is offering you $100 off for a single when you use the code LOVETHIS or $250 for a duo with the code LOVETHIS2 to register for this summer’s pilgrimage of mine, Historic Highlands.
If you’ve been on the fence about signing up, this is obviously the best time to hop off that fence and truly commit! I’d love for you to take advantage of their generosity.
I genuinely believe that if God wants you to go on this pilgrimage, He will provide you with the means to do so. Perhaps this short-but-sweet deal is a possible sign for you? …I hope so.
There’s something delightful about the pairing of an informal vow of stability—to stay put in life’s ordinariness, with a posture of pilgrimage—to allow God to lead us out of our comfort zones and into the wilds of following Him to new places, even for just a week. After many years of wandering, this rhythm has found its place in my Tookish bones, and my Bilbo soul is eternally grateful for it.
My fervent desire is that we all learn to live more aware, daily, of the beauty, goodness, and truth that surrounds us everywhere—if only we have the eyes to see it. Those eyes can indeed be sharpened anywhere, be it in the carpool line or in the wilds of a hidden forest. Yet every now and then, we’re given an invitation to see God’s grandeur with fresh eyes in new-to-us places. I invite you to ask yourself: am I being asked to go on pilgrimage this summer?
If you are, I hope you’ll say yes. I’ll join you.
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
- Gerard Mankley Hopkins
A little more:
My recent thoughts on third places (via waxing poetic about my beloved neighborhood coffee shop)
My thoughts after returning home from last summer’s pilgrimage down the Rhine River
My thoughts a few years ago after returning home from our pilgrimage to Ireland
My chat from a few years ago with Fr. Gabe (I’ve got another one with him coming soon!)
p.s. - To keep it easy for you, here it is again: Register for Historic Highlands, then get $100 for one with the code LOVETHIS; $250 for two with the code LOVETHIS2.
p.p.s. - Questions about the administrative stuff, like using the code for your registration? Kindly reach out to my friend Rebecca Stoker at rebecca@select-intl.com. Thanks!