Monday, Jun. 28, 2004

The Roads Now Taken

By JEFF CHU

The monks were fed up. By 1420, traffic was so bad inside Canterbury Cathedral that the Benedictines were constantly being diverted from their monkish contemplation by hordes of pilgrims. Ever since the martyrdom of Archbishop Thomas Becket 250 years earlier, people had been flocking here — to the grand seat of English Christianity and the scene of Becket's murder — to ask his saintly intercession and plead for healing. Which was all good and pious of the pilgrims, but who could hear themselves pray with all these visitors tramping around?

So the monks built a tunnel under the stairs at the center of the church, a sort of express lane to the spot of Becket's martyrdom. Over the years, thousands of faithful shuffled through the cool, stone corridor, but gradually, what with King Henry VIII's break with Roman Catholicism, the Reformation and later, creeping secularization, the pilgrims' numbers dwindled to the point that the passageway became more useful as a broom closet. A few weeks ago, however, officials at Canterbury reopened the tunnel. For tourists.

Where have all the pilgrims gone? They are a barometer for the values of an age. Their habits tell us about the spiritual state of a people. What temples do they worship in? To whom do they pay their tithes and offerings? Where do they seek their soul food? The fashionable answer is to say that faith in Europe is nearly extinct. Some theologians call the Continent "post-Christian." But the truth is that neither faith nor pilgrimage is dead in Europe.

In this year's European Journey special issue, Time hitches a ride with modern-day pilgrims to find out what moves people today — how travel helps test physical limits and nourish the spirit. Yes, there are still religious roamers out there: the enduringly faithful Muslims, whose visits to Mecca have given us a word for a center of shared interest that draws people from all over; the Christians who walk the great pilgrim's way of El Camino de Santiago in Spain. But in a secular age, the spiritual impulse is more likely to manifest itself in a cycling or mountain-climbing adventure, or the quiet contemplation of an English garden. Mass worship may take place in a football stadium; and wine is served, with all the reverence of communion, in the caves of Loire Valley châteaus. Many of today's most secular pilgrimages have a ritualistic quality that makes them part of the ancient tradition: what the Very Rev. Robert Willis, dean of Canterbury, calls the search for "blessing and enrichment. In pilgrimage, body, mind and spirit come together in an individual quest," he says. "Jesus was always walking, walking, walking — all the way to Calvary." Our quest need not be so momentous: "Any journey that adds a mini-jigsaw piece to the puzzle of you can be a mini-pilgrimage."

Part of the joy of pilgrimage is a spirit of community that comes from identifying with something bigger than oneself. The pilgrim who sets out solo shares a bond with others who journey on the same path: the aches, the pains and the triumphs. "The experience is very much about helping other pilgrims," says Abbot Christopher Dillon of Ireland's Glenstal Abbey, who walked the rugged Camino last year and hosts occasional pilgrims at his monastery in County Limerick. "There is great companionship on the road." That's the whole point of the Volksmarches, the communal hikes in Germany that attract thousands every year. The preservation of generational bonds is at the heart of the pilgrimages made to the battlefields of Europe, where families go to honor forebears they never knew but will never forget.

And yet each pilgrim is utterly alone, because a pilgrimage is a trip not just to a physical place but also into a person's soul. So one can travel to Dublin to celebrate Bloomsday, be surrounded by thousands of other Ulysses lovers, and yet be absolutely alone with one's own epiphanies about James Joyce's masterwork.

The traditional may argue that only the religious creature is a true pilgrim, but as Phil Cousineau, the author of The Art of Pilgrimage, says, "The phenomenon of pilgrimage tends to hold up a mirror to what is sacred for the times." The world has changed, and so has pilgrimage. There will also always be those who label it foolishness, whether you embark with a belief in an unseen God's promise of salvation or in the power of a pair of devilish stilettos, as the amazingly committed shoppers at the Prada outlet in Montevarchi, Italy, do. A modern miracle — say, a game-winning goal that curled magnetically into the net at Euro 2004 — works as much magic for some as the re-enactment of medieval ones does for others. Faith is not rational. You can't argue a skeptic into belief or force anyone onto the pilgrim's path.

In Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, the Prioress wears a brooch inscribed Amor vincit omnia (Love conquers all). This is true, not least, of pilgrimage. The love that drives it springs from faith, from mockery-proof loyalty, from unwavering belief in the transcendent power of a religion or an idea or even a beautiful game. The pilgrim is no ordinary traveler. His map is in the heart.