Liminal Journeys

Pilgrims are people in motion—passing through territories not their own—seeking something we might call completion, or perhaps the word clarity will do as well, a goal to which only the spirit's compass points the way...We mortals make passages—on foot, on horseback, in a boat or raft. Though we are born into families, we all must become what Melville's Ishmael calls 'isolatoes,' islanders, and hence creatures perpetually searching for passages that promise approach to another shore—a shore that will complete us...These physical passings through apertures can print themselves deeply into us, not in our physical senses alone but in our spiritual sense as well, so that what we apprehend outwardly becomes part of the lasting geography of our souls. The pilgrim in us begins to awaken.