Pilgrimages Change Us

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 A refleciotn written for Trinity by the Sea while I was on pilgrimage to Navajoland, Dine Bikeyah, July 7, 2024, we did not gather because there was a Hurricane making landfall that morning. We missed the worst of it. (Proper 9, Year B) 

One’s hometown is possibly the hardest place to change.

I heard about one of our local graduates who recently attended orientation. His parents talked about all the new people he had met, and I immediately thought about the friends I made when my parents moved me to San Marcos for college. Stephen had a Beastie Boys patch on his backpack. Colby invited us to his dorm room for Sunday night feast: a potluck of pitiful presentation of the contents of our door room fridges. Justin, Jim, and Billy the trickster trio from Cypress Texas. I still keep in touch with all of them. They all moved from their hometowns, too, and we grew and learned together. The experience changed us all forever.

Mike Tocci, Fr. Mike Sells, Sr. Warden Marietta,
and Me practicing music.

Change of geography means change of people, change of our tribe. Now those are the people who know me well enough to notice when I am not being myself…at least not as they know me.

There’s also something to be said for the pilgrimage pattern we humans seem to follow. We go out, we see the world, and we come back. When we come back, our hometown looks fresh in some ways. Maybe it’s not that it's harder to change in your hometown, maybe it just requires a pilgrimage from time to time.

When we travel, especially with a pilgrimage mindset, we inevitably become dependent on strangers. We can more easily be taken advantage of, and more often, we can be offered local insight and hospitality that we otherwise would miss out on. Getting out away from the familiar and what we regard as comfortable opens us up to the changing of the Holy Spirit. We go out so that we can learn anew what God is calling us into.
Jesus loves you just as you are… Jesus also loves you too much to let you stay where you are. The transformation and renewing of your mind that St. Paul talks about means God will be changing the way we see and experience the world. Throughout the Gospel, Jesus is revealing new ways to his disciples, to the religious leaders, and to the crowds. People who thought they weren’t worthy of healing are healed, people who thought they had a special place at the table are asked to sit further down.

Winged Rock (a.k.a. Shiprock) 

There is a give and play in our Gospel reading. There’s a lot of giving and getting throughout this section. Jesus is questioned about where he has gotten the authority, who has given him the wisdom. Then Jesus sends out his disciples and he gives them nothing, they are told to take nothing. It is in receiving less from the world that we get more from God? Is it in becoming vulnerable that Holy Wisdom abides with us?

This morning, I will get to share music with All Saints’ church in Farmington New Mexico. It is part of the newly designated missionary district of Navajoland, home of the Dine people. When I wrote this I didn’t know where I would be staying. I only met the priest over the phone. It’s far from the water, church, and people I love, yet something not-of-this-world is drawing me there. The Holy Spirit has brought the Navajo Episcopal community into our hearts. Our ECW has created and sold a cookbook to support this partnership. Where did we get the authority to forge such a relationship? Who gave us this wisdom?

It is yet to be revealed what God has in mind for us and our Episcopalian siblings on the reservation. Eli, Mike, Joseph and I are not carrying much besides some musical instruments, like the Gospel says, two dads and two sons, we will enter a house, and stay there until we leave. I wonder what I will notice next time I return to Silsbee or even Houston. I wonder what I will notice when I come back to Port Aransas. Thank you for praying for us while we take this pilgrimage, and start praying for what God has planned next for us with the church in Navajoland, and how that might change and shape us…giving us authority to heal, and giving us wisdom to understand.

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