A pilgrimage is a departure from how you typically live your life. Just as a pilgrimage must not take a physical form, simplicity does not always mean reducing material possessions.

Simplicity is a radical stripping-away of extraneous thoughts, activities, possessions, and attachments.

To more fully experience meaning in your pilgrimage, you cannot cling to your everyday habits and customs. Instead, a pilgrimage asks you to step away from your attachments and live with the greater focus that simplicity provides. Until you have simplified your life, the true meaning of your pilgrimage is hard to experience.

My pilgrimage on the Appalachian Trail forced a very physical simplicity upon me. Everything I owned, I carried on my back. However, the physical simplicity led to a mental, emotional, and spiritual simplicity.

After a week of hiking--and me expecting grand philosophical enlightenment--I found that there were only six aspects of my life that I could manage to wrap my brain around: (1) my emotional wellbeing; (2) my spiritual wellbeing; (3) the terrain; (4) the weather; (5) my body's aches and pains; and (6) the bugs.

My mother suggested to me over the phone that I was living a monastic lifestyle. Indeed, this is the essence of simplicity.

Previous | Next


Naming Your Journey | Blessing By Community | Simplicity | Being Renamed | Building Community | Moment of Grace | Search for Conclusion | Reintegration