Theologians on Pilgrimage: Karl Barth

Looking at other theologians and their take on pilgrimage.

This is Karl Barth:

Such men and women (like Abraham and Sarah) are pilgrims, prepared always for surrender and dissolution, decrease in honor, ever tireless in descending the ladder of renunciation and death. To be pilgrims means that we constantly return to a starting point of that naked humanity which is absolute poverty and utter insecurity...god is not found on the throne, but on the plain where men and women suffer and sin.

(From Barth's Commentary on Romans 3:22, 23)

Pace,

Brett

Pilgrimage...East Coast Style

From the NYT.com today, this article on the seven highest peaks on the East Coast:

THE world’s Seven Summits — the highest mountain on each continent — were in the news this year when the Alaskan climber Vern Tejas set a record by ascending them all in just 134 days. Inspired by him, I set out to climb a few peaks of my own. My challenge would be to hike what I call the Six Summits — the highest point in each New England state. I required no pack animals, porters or supplemental oxygen. Armed instead with a map, compass, hiking boots and a blue Honda, my journey lasted six days and brought me to six unique places. Below is a guide to my quest, presented in order from the point with the highest elevation to that with the lowest.

Click here for more.

Pace!

B

East London: Great Place for a Pilgrimage

Found this in the nyt.com about a part of London I love:

his is East London, a sprawling area known for its artists, anarchists and immigrants. Neighborhoods like Shoreditch, Bethnal Green and Hackney Wick have long been where a creative class could afford to live and work. Now it’s also where they play, shop and eat.

Though the main arteries are often choked by traffic, the side streets of East London can be as tranquil and pleasant as parks. The area feels light years away from central London, and totally self-sufficient, thanks to a host of enticing restaurants, shops, markets and hotels.

As Clarise Faria, the curator of the Loft Project, a private club that invites acclaimed chefs to cook meals in an airy apartment for select guests, said: “There’s no reason to go to the rest of London.”

There’s certainly no reason to go elsewhere to eat. In 2005, a shed behind a former school that now contains an artists’ studio, where Rochelle Street meets the leafy traffic circle Arnold Circus, became Rochelle Canteen, a restaurant open only for lunch. The food is bright, direct and unapologetically English: fare includes dishes like a salad of fresh peas, favas and pea shoots, and a whole sole sautéed in butter and served with cucumber and fennel. The spot has a casual elegance, and it’s easy to linger over a midweek lunch, with dogs napping in the restaurant’s walled garden and neighbors catching up with one another.

On the other side of Arnold Circus is Leila’s Shop, a small specialty store with raw wood shelves, drying sausages and nougat imported from Isfahan, Iran. On a recent visit, I was browsing the shelves of house-made jams with the cookbook author Anissa Helou, who sometimes holds cooking classes in her nearby loft, and after we stepped outside, a perfectly silent electric car whipped around the corner. The driver and Ms. Helou knew each other, and as they said their hellos under a bank of trees four stories tall, I felt that I was looking into the future, to a time when cities are gentle and everybody is friendly.

Things are busier a few blocks to the south on Redchurch Street. There are boutiques like Caravan (tasteful bric-a-brac) and Hostem (sartorial concept designs for men), and there’s Boundary, a hotel and restaurant that the designer and hotelier Terence Conran opened last year. Shoreditch House, a branch of Soho House that opened as a hotel this spring, is nearby. So is Dirty House, a soot-gray private artists’ residence designed by the conceptual architect David Adjaye; the building’s cantilevered roof seems to hover at night, as the interior lights below give it a luminescent glow.

And then there’s Columbia Road, home to an open-air flower market on Sundays since the 19th century. More recently, it has welcomed dozens of tiny shops that bustle during the week.

Enjoy!

Pace!

B

Book Pilgrimages

There is something about Stieg Larrson and his books about Elisabeth Salander and Mikal Bloomkvist in the series of "The Girl..." set in Sweden. I've heard on blogsites and cable channels that there is a wonderful "pilgrimage" around the places and sights and sounds where the book took place around Stockholm and beyond.

In the NYT.com, there is another idea of a pilgrimage where books are set. Context matters, according to Joe Queenan who wrote this interesting essay on a staycation, in which he visits places in which authors lived or set their books in:

Most staycations combine edification with retail: you visit a battlefield or a museum and then hit the amusement park and the outlet stores. This sounded too downscale for me. Instead, I planned a literary staycation in Pennsylvania. My destinations were Reading, where John Updike’s “Rabbit, Run” is set; Pottsville, where John O’Hara set dozens of his New Yorker stories; and Scranton, where Jason Miller, who won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1973 for “That Championship Season,” grew up. All are within two hours’ drive of my home outside New York City. The idea was to combine local color and cuisine with a visit to the old stomping grounds of these three very different American writers. Throughout the trip, I would reread the works that made these men famous. I thought it sounded like great fun. But in the end, I had to go on my own because my wife and kids declined to accompany me. They preferred to just stay.

Pace!

B

Buddhapath

Interesting website...

Buddhapath.com

A way to discover the footsteps of Buddha.

Peace,

B

God, guide our feet into the way of peace...even in troubled lands

I am at a conference on people with disabilities in Wilmington, NC. I gave a talk yesterday on the place and presence of people with disabilities in faith communities. What I have heard since I've been here has been numbing but not shocking:
* Parents of children with disabilities told not to come to a faith community by a pastor, priest, or other religious leaders;
* Death threats by members of faith communities if a group home of people with disabilities were to open up because it would decrease the value of homes nearby;
* Sequestering people with disabilities into parts of worship in which "they wouldn't disturb others," as if the Holy Spirit isn't the great disturber of life.

So: in the Canticle of Zechariah (NT, Luke), we pray "Guide out feet into the way of peace." This is poignant in lands and people's lives that are torn asunder by such violence.

Pace!
B

Hebrews 11, from the Good as New Version of the Bible!

Powerful reading today at Church from the Good as New: A Radical Retelling of the Scriptures of Hebrews 11, which refers to the sojourners of yore:

Abraham trusted God too. He took God's advice and set out to find a permanent home for his family. He had no idea where he was going. He had to keep on trusting because, although he spent a long time in the land God had in mind for him, it didn't seem like home. He only had tents to live in. The same was true for Isaac his son, and Jacob his grandson. they shared Abraham's dream. He had a vision of a city built on firm foundations. God would be the architect and the builder.

Sarah, Abraham's wife, was able to have a baby, even though she was past the normal age of having children. That was because she trusted God to keep a promise. Although Sarah and Abraham were coming to the end of their lives, they had as many descendants as there were stars in the sky or pebbles on the beach.

Nice translation.

Very nice.

Pace! and Buen Camino!

B