A Sacred Journey

practicing pilgrimage at home and abroad

5 Steps to Engage the Interior Journey

When we think of pilgrimage, journeys to far-off lands often come to mind, right?

Perhaps you get an image of a medieval pilgrim walking the long road to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, a bundle of belongings thrown over his back and a staff in hand. Or maybe you think of the large groups of people who journey to places like Lourdes in France each year in search of healing. Perhaps it’s the multi-step journey to Iona in Scotland that comes to mind, which begins with a ferry from the west coast of Scotland, a drive across the Isle of Mull, and another ferry before you reach the Holy Isle (not to mention whatever is required just to get you to the west coast of Scotland).

All of these journeys are adventures, no doubt, and opportunities to encounter new cultures and learn about new ways of encountering God. But for a journey to be a true pilgrimage, there must be an interior journey, too. In the end, that’s why we leave home, after all—because the journey out can always lead to a journey in. It’s the interior journey that makes an ordinary trip into a pilgrimage and transforms a tourist into a pilgrim. And while an exterior journey or traditional pilgrimage is certainly a valuable practice for initiating an interior journey, you don’t have to leave home to begin an interior journey—you just need to be willing to engage the journey within.

Here are 5 steps for engaging the interior journey to help lead you along the path:

1. name your question

Every journey begins with a question, and in The Art of Pilgrimage, author Phil Cousineau tells us that it is our questions that lead us to our quest. To discern your question, listen to your longing—What is it that brings you to the interior journey? What do you hope to encounter and discover? Like the pilgrim, approach this step with curiosity, allowing the question to unfold along the way if it isn’t clear from the beginning. (Sometimes this can even be the most authentic form of journeying, as we can be certain that we’re not trying to control the journey and force the outcome, but instead allowing the Sacred Guide to lead.)

2. enter in

When you begin a journey, you cross a threshold. On an exterior journey, the shift is obvious, because the world around you is different—you have left home and entered into foreign territory. This shift in the interior journey is more difficult to notice, however, because we’re often still embedded in everyday life. To fully enter in, establish regular spiritual practices that can help you shift from the outer world to the inner one as you set aside what’s happening in everyday life for a time to focus on what’s happening within. Contemplative practices and the postures of silence, stillness, and solitude are excellent tools for this. Learn how to practice 7 forms of contemplative prayer here.

3. find a guide

Whether it’s a spiritual director, pastor, trusted friend, or favorite author, find a guide to keep you accountable to your commitment and accompany you along the way. Find a spiritual director in your area at sdiworld.org.

4. bring the whole self

This is easier with a traditional pilgrimage, as it’s more obvious that your whole self is joining you on the journey. Life at home, however, can be compartmentalized, and if we’re not intentional, we might end up thinking the interior journey is just about the mind rather than the body and soul. To round out the journey and bring your whole self, incorporate movement into your practice. Emulate the pilgrim by taking long walks or walking a labyrinth, letting your feet do the praying for a change. Creative practice is another way to bring the whole self, allowing the images held deep within the soul to come to the surface and serve as waymarkers along the path.

5. prepare an altar

Most pilgrimages involve a journey to a Sacred site, and just because your journey is an interior one, it doesn’t mean you can’t create a Sacred site of your own. Do so right at home by creating an altar on a side table, shelf, or in a vacant corner. Visit this place to renew your intention, just as you would any other Sacred site, and add elements that reflect your quest and intention as the journey unfolds, allowing it to become an outer representation of the journey you are taking within.

 

(PS: Setting out on an outer journey? Because all types of pilgrimage involve an interior journey, these steps apply for journeys both near and far.)

Create a Mini-Pilgrimage Right at Home

Have the itch to set out on a meaningful journey?

Sure, we’d all like to travel on pilgrimage to far-off places. After all, there’s a reason that some of the pilgrim archetypes include the Nomad, Seeker, and Sojourner. However, because of life’s limitations, this can’t always be a reality. That doesn’t mean, though, that you can’t follow the longing of your heart and set out on a “mini-pilgrimage” right at home or even next door.

To create a mini-pilgrimage right at home, you simply need to apply the 3 elements of pilgrimage: a journey (an intention or desire and time set apart), engagement with the True Self (connecting with you), and Sacred Encounter (connecting with God). Retreats are one of many types of pilgrimage and can serve as mini-pilgrimages during which we are invited to leave our everyday lives, if even for a moment, and learn from wise teachers, ask difficult questions, and try new things, all the while being reminded of what it means to take care of ourselves—mind, body, and soul.

Whether you have a week, a weekend, an hour, or simply a stolen moment after breakfast, here are 9 steps to creating a mini-pilgrimage right at home: 

read more »

3 Spiritual Practices You’re Already Doing (introvert edition)

I have a new post up on Quiet Revolution today about how introverts can turn 3 common practices of self-care into spiritual practices. Not to worry, extroverts—I plan on doing an extrovert edition right here sometime soon to balance things out. Subscribe here so you don’t miss it!

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Image from Quiet Revolution

If you identify as an introvert, it’s likely that you’ve personally experienced the misconceptions of introversion and have been fighting these assumptions for much of your life. You know them well: introverts are reclusive, stuck in their heads, and—let’s not forget—shy.

Because we live in an extroverted culture, these traits are often deemed as negative. If you’re spending a lot of time alone, lost in thought, or are uninterested in engaging with anyone, something must be wrong, right?

But to us, these introverted traits are essential parts of our makeup. We need time alone to recharge our batteries; we process our experiences internally; and we prefer to stand at an arm’s length rather than jump right in. When we become aware of these tendencies, they become not simply traits—but acts—of self-care. Seeking out alone time becomes a practice of solitude; internal processing becomes a vehicle for self-discovery; and standing on the outskirts makes us keen observers.

As introverts, we know that the practices of solitude, self-discovery, and paying attention are part of our daily lives, and when we pursue them with the intention of connecting with the transcendent, they can become spiritual practices as well. Here’s how you can turn three acts of self-care you’re already pursuing into spiritual practices…

Read the rest of the post at Quiet Revolution »

Reflections on My Week of Silence and Solitude

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When I was in college I used to watch Regis and Kelly Live each morning. One day during the host chat they happened to be discussing when a person really becomes an adult. Regis undoubtedly said something like: “When they stop asking for money!” But it’s Kelly’s answer that stayed with me. There was nothing profound about it – it was just an age, a number: “I think around 26.”

At the time I was probably 18, 19, or 20, and while legally an adult, I felt far from it. So I easily accepted Kelly’s notion that you’re not quite an adult until 26. It at least meant I had nothing to worry about and had a few years more to get it together and begin to “feel” like an adult.

Well 26 crept up on me. In mid-February of this year I realized just how quickly my birthday was coming (the middle of March) and remembered Kelly’s words. No, I still didn’t “feel” like an adult. And yes, I knew nothing magical would happen when the clock struck midnight.

Over the past few years I had started to surrender to the reality that I will never quite have it all together as I idealize, and that in fact those hopes are the furthest thing from loving myself. But my awareness of this shift of thinking and my coming birthday gave the opportunity to mark this “coming of age” as a threshold – if not as an era where I finally “feel” like an adult, as a time when I recognize that I am an adult, whether I feel it or not.

I decided to usher in this threshold of new significance with a personal retreat of silence and solitude. In last week’s post, Christine Valters Paintner described her love for thresholds as an image during times of silence and solitude, with the idea that crossing over them “brings you to a liminal space where time takes on a different quality.”

“Liminal” can be defined as “an intermediate state or phase,” and so a liminal space becomes the space in-between – two worlds, two eras, two ways of being. It is a void in time, ripe with potential for self-discovery and Divine encounter.

And so, my retreat became a liminal space. I left my home a week before my birthday no longer 25, and yet not quite 26. I spent 7 days in a small studio apartment on a peninsula surrounded by a lake in the Northeast corner of Oklahoma. Since I was on a lake, most of the peninsula’s inhabitants were away for the winter, making my environment eerily quiet. I brought all of the food and supplies I would need for the week and settled in.

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The first thing I did upon arrival was cover all of the clocks. The only awareness of time I would have during that week would be informed by the sun and the rhythms of my body. I had realized in the weeks leading up to my retreat just how much those numbers we call “time” left me with a feeling of constant lack, and yet at the same time I was addicted to it. And so for an entire week, I pulled the plug, quite literally.

The second thing I did was hide away any temptation to read and absorb. The introverted part of me that dreams of a week away on my own to read was more than devastated when I found out that ideally on a silent retreat you don’t read or write. You give up words entirely.

Since it was my first retreat, and since it was a bit long after all, I decided I would let myself off of the hook a little and allow myself to read and journal after sunset. But I only read a few select books that I wanted to shape my time away (The Gifts of Imperfection, by Brené Brown; Invitation to Silence and Solitude, by Ruth Haley Barton; and The Pilgrimage, by Paulo Coelho, in case you’re curious).

The one thing I did allow myself to do during the day that involved paper? Draw. I sketched out dreams to uncover their meanings. I translated feelings to ink drawings and discovered parts of me that I might’ve never been able to articulate in words. And the truth? Some pretty weird stuff came out that I’m infinitely proud of. Think Salvador Dalí: he didn’t need to use words to communicate the dark uncharted corners of the soul. Sometimes words just don’t suffice.

When I consulted Christine about planning my retreat, she also suggested that I mark the rhythms of the day with spiritual practices. I decided to practice a combination of Centering Prayer and Lectio Divina (a how-to here), and with that slight semblance of structure, I set off into the unknown.

My mornings were spent lingering for hours over a single cup of coffee, allowing my mind to vacillate between wandering and stillness as I stared at the bare trees outside my window. Later I would go on long, slow walks along the shore (I believe the official term would be dawdling). I gathered nature’s curiosities to bring back to my make-shift altar and would pause, watching my companions – the birds and the squirrels – in ways I never had before. At one point as I sat amongst the birds I even tried to teach myself to whistle, in hopes of having some sort of conversation.

Without an agenda for myself or for my mind, I allowed myself to just be. I wasn’t 25, and I wasn’t 26. I wasn’t a daughter or a wife. I wasn’t a sister, and I wasn’t a friend. I wasn’t a writer, a blogger, or a designer. In the silence and the solitude, I just was.

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Through simply being, I realized how much time had passed since I’d been without something I was working toward. And in a way, I still was attempting to work toward something, because I was hoping for something: answers, guidance, peace, sweet relief.

However, nothing seemingly monumental happened on my personal retreat. There was no flash of light or booming voice from above. As in the story of Elijah in the wilderness, God was not in the more seemingly powerful wind, earthquake, or fire.

Instead in the stillness, the Divine whispered: “Be here.”

In the morning when you rise: be here; on your slow and curious walks: wander here; in the excruciating void of the afternoon: stay here; in the evening when the day is done: rest here.

I did not receive any grand revelation, as I had hoped. There was no encounter that moved me to tears. And when I turned 26 the day after my return, I didn’t necessarily “feel” like an adult. But at the end of each full day on retreat, I sifted through the Divine whispers and was given these words: acceptance, awareness, acknowledgement, self-compassion, and presence.

Words seemingly abstract, but significantly profound. Words to set a firm foundation for this new era, and yet concepts that cannot be mastered (as we hope in youth), but must be practiced daily. Words, as a (birthday) gift to one very real “adult.”

I’m 26 now. And I still don’t always “feel” like an adult. But I know being an adult isn’t simply a feeling. As a novice, I won’t claim to be an expert. But while on retreat, somewhere in the liminal space between 25 and 26, I learned more of the practices of acceptance, awareness, acknowledgement, self-compassion, and presence.

I’m starting to think that being an adult is a practice too.

GO FURTHER…

 What would you spend your time doing on a silent retreat? What would be the hardest thing not to do?and When you hear from God or are moved by the Spirit, is it a whisper in moments of stillness, or so loud it can’t be ignored?

Planning a Personal Retreat: An Interview with Christine Valters Paintner

I met Christine Valters Paintner through participating in one of her retreats, “Awakening the Creative Spirit”. Christine is a teacher, writer, and spiritual director, among other things, and refers to herself as the “online Abbess” of Abbey of the Arts, a website devoted to “transformative living through contemplative and expressive arts.” Through the Abbey of the Arts, Christine offers both live and online classes and retreats that invite participants into interior pilgrimage through creation, reflection, rest, and daily rhythms. 

So, when I was planning a personal retreat of silence and solitude of my own (more on that next week!), I knew just who to contact with all of my questions! Christine’s answers were so helpful that I knew I wanted to ask her more and share those answers with you here. Christine’s answers will help you cultivate silence and solitude, whether on retreat or in your daily life. 

 

Belvedere Vienna

From Christine: The photo is of an iron gate at the Belvedere Museum in Vienna, Austria. I love images of thresholds, especially when I consider entering into the sacred space of retreat and silence. I imagine myself crossing a threshold over to a liminal space where time takes on a different quality. (Photo by Christine. Learn to use photography as a contemplative practice in her new book.)

What do silence and solitude have to do with spirituality and Christian tradition?

There is a long and rich tradition of seeking the gifts of silence within Christianity. One of the earliest is the desert monks who wrote extensively about hesychia, which is a deep inner stillness and silence. Hesychia isn’t just about finding a quiet place, but about cultivating a profound interior quiet. Much of their practice had to do with working with their thoughts, which if we are paying attention, can be relentlessly noisy. Through practice we can break through to moments of this silence within, which is also the place where God’s voice rises up most clearly.

What can taking a silent retreat do for our spirituality and well-being? How might going on a silent retreat be a form of pilgrimage?

A silent retreat is an interior pilgrimage. There is a wonderful brief poem by Kabir: “A Great Pilgrimage I felt in need of a great pilgrimage so I sat still for three days and God came to me.”  We do not need to travel many miles to find the presence of God.  In fact, sometimes travel can be a form of running away from ourselves. The real challenge is to sit with ourselves, and all that goes on within our mind and heart, and allow ourselves to dip down into the place of stillness.  This is the greatest pilgrimage you can make.

What are some reasons someone might take a silent retreat?

Often people are drawn to a silent retreat during a period of discernment, when they want to listen beneath the noise of daily life with a deeper attentiveness.

What is the ideal environment for a silent retreat?

Certainly a quiet location is ideal, although with practice, the idea is that we might find silence and inner stillness in any kind of place. I find being out in nature, whether by the sea or in the forest, to be especially nourishing for moving into silence.

What is the ideal time frame for a silent retreat?

It really depends on how experienced someone is with silence. For a beginner, a weekend might be enough to start with.  Although my own experience is that it takes at least a day, and sometimes more, to quiet down the inner noise. I love longer expanses of time, like 7-10 days, where you really can attend to the movements happening within you. Silence takes time to cultivate.

How should someone structure their days on a silent retreat?

Again, for someone just starting out, it can be helpful to attend a structured silence retreat, which are often offered at retreat centers and have meals and liturgies and designated times, often with spiritual direction accompaniment as well. This kind of companioning can be really vital to making it a fruitful experience. So much comes up in the silence, that it can be important to have someone to share it with, and to get some perspective when the inner voices are especially loud.

On the other hand, my favorite kind of silent retreat is to rent a cottage by myself and listen to my body’s own rhythms. There are so few spaces in life where we can eat when we are hungry, sleep when we are tired, move when we need the invigoration. There is something powerful about a retreat that allows us to tune into these more primal rhythms of our bodies.

What new practices might you suggest exploring during the retreat?

I especially recommend any kind of creative practice when on a silent retreat. Bring some collage materials – magazines, scissors, glue sticks, and paper. Then at the end of each day create a simple collage out of the silence you experienced that day. Or bring a camera, and go for long contemplative walks, where you aren’t trying to get anywhere, but simply open to receiving whatever gifts are presented to you. Art is a beautiful way to express our inner movements and prayer.

What should you take with you on a silent retreat?

As little as possible. Part of preparing for your retreat is a time of reflecting on what is most essential.  I would suggest a journal and some art supplies. A book of meditations or poetry can be beneficial at times, but be cautious about reading as a distraction.

What should you not take with you?

I recommend not bringing a whole pile of books and then filling the silence with words. If you can leave behind electronic devices that are distracting, and disconnecting from the internet. Taking a technology Sabbath can be very restorative and a good reminder that the world won’t fall apart if we stop checking our email for a few days. When I am on retreat, I like to set up an autoresponder which explains what I am doing and why it will take me a few days to reply. I often include a short poem in the hope that the person receiving it might be inspired to one day seek the gift of silence themselves.

I imagine there is likely some resistance present once the silent retreat begins. Any words of advice for those times?

In Benedictine tradition, one of the most important principles is stability. This can refer to an outward practice of staying in one physical place. But, perhaps even more vital, is the inward disposition of not running away from struggles. Most of our resistance to silence comes from knowing that there are layers and layers of old habits and thought patterns we don’t want to face. Perhaps our inner critic is especially fierce in the silence.

The greatest gift is to stay with it, to keep breathing as an anchor for your attention, and to simply observe your thoughts without judgment. This means not following them down the trail they want to take you, and not berating yourself for having these thoughts. The purpose of this time is to simply notice what happens inside of you. This constant barrage of commentary is happening all the time, we just often don’t notice it in the rush and chatter of daily life. A retreat gives us a chance to be with it, and ourselves, with compassion. In this softening and attention, the inner noise slowly gives way.

Oftentimes the transition from a silent retreat back into everyday life might feel abrupt. What do you suggest someone in this situation keep in mind during this transition?

I recommend great gentleness. If at all possible, don’t go from a silent retreat straight back to work. Give yourself a day in between when you can transition.

Also be gentle with others in your life and share your experience somewhat cautiously. For those who haven’t been experiencing the depths in the way you have, it may be hard for them to receive and understand your experience. Meeting with a spiritual companion or soul friend after the retreat to share and name what happened is especially important as a way of honoring it.

I also suggest having some small practice from your retreat that you bring back to daily life with you. The purpose of a retreat is to transform the whole of your life. Maybe it is sitting in silence for a few minutes each day. Perhaps it is a journaling practice.

How can we look back and evaluate any transformation during our experiences in silence and solitude?

The key question to ask is: “Have I grown in compassion for myself and others?” This is the hallmark of an authentic spiritual experience, one where we encountered the divine Source of all.

What are some ways to bring the silence and solitude experienced on retreat into our everyday lives? And for those who aren’t able to take a silent retreat at this time: is there a way to practice mini silent retreats at home?

Absolutely! Even a practice of five minutes of silence each day can be transformative and get us in touch with the depth dimension of life. Paying attention to the breath is a powerful way of anchoring our attention. Bring your awareness to the present moment. Anything you can do in daily life to bring the quality of silence and stillness in, will reward you many times over.

If you have a couple of hours on a weekend morning, consider sitting in silence for a longer period of time. Then perhaps some journaling and a long, slow walk, just being aware of the gifts of creation around you.

Any other words of advice, encouragement, or invitation?

Remember that this is a lifelong journey and all contemplative paths counsel a form of “beginner’s mind.”  We are always growing and deepening and when we slide away from our practice, the key is to gently bring ourselves back and begin again.

GO FURTHER…

I want to know: Have you ever been on a silent retreat? What was the hardest part? What new insight did you receive?

ABOUT CHRISTINE

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, is the online Abbess at Abbey of the Arts, a virtual monastery and community for contemplative practice and creative expression.  She is the author of 7 books on art and monasticism, including her latest, Eyes of the Heart: Photography as a Christian Contemplative Practice (Ave Maria Press). Christine currently lives out her commitment as a monk in the world with her husband in Galway, Ireland.

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