A New Year Pilgrimage

Every year students from the Bonner Leader Program begin the spring semester by going on a “pilgrimage” before classes start. As our group gathered in the Center for Spiritual Life before boarding college vans, I asked them what it meant to be a pilgrim. Several recalled the historic voyage of the pilgrims coming to the “New World” in 1620 on the Mayflower, and others recounted pilgrimages still made in Europe today by religious followers. Merriam-Webster simply defines pilgrimage as a journey to a holy place or a journey to a special or unusual place.

For the Bonner Leaders this year’s pilgrimage took us to Asheville, North Carolina for three days and three nights of explorations that qualified as holy, special, and unusual. One of the most obviously holy places we visited was Urban Dharma, a kind of store front Buddhist center where a teacher patiently took time to explain the various shrines and symbols and also talked us through a meditation experience, as we struggled a bit to quiet our minds and our bodies while sitting on floor cushions or nearby pews. Urban Dharma gave us a glimpse into the holy.

One of the special places we visited was the Blue Ridge Parkway Visitor Center and Folk Art Center. In addition to learning about the beauty of the land that surrounded us, we were given the opportunity to hike a bit through a mountain pathway and share a picnic lunch as the weather had cooperated well with our visit. According to a video we watched, the Blue Ridge Mountains are among the oldest in the world, making this place on the planet truly special.

Asheville also qualifies as an unusual place by being a rather liberal oasis in an otherwise fairly conservative state. Local stores, restaurants, and breweries dominate the downtown area and merchants pride themselves as “unchained” Asheville. Big box stores were nowhere to be found, and one could easily sense a very particular culture and vibe to the area as students discovered museums, artist studios, pubs, and coffee shops. Mementos and souvenirs were purchased to help remember that Asheville truly is an unusual community.

We returned to campus with memories, reflections, and stories of our pilgrimage to a site that offered the holy, the special, and the unusual. Now the task of the New Year is to understand that we can always be pilgrims. We don’t have to take to the open road or travel distant lands. With open hearts we can feel that the holy and sacred is all around us and within us. With open eyes and ears we can recognize that there is a special quality to the community in which we live and the campus of which we are a part. And with an open spirit we can celebrate the unusual and the diverse whenever we encounter someone who looks, acts, or believes differently than we do.

May 2016 be a year of pilgrimage for all of us who choose to embrace the holy, the special, and the unusual that surrounds us each and every day of the coming semester and beyond.

Peace, Anne