Sacred Pilgrimage: Travelogue & Guide
“Reviving Pilgrimage: Decolonizing Religious Travel to the Holy Land ” Final Project Class taught by Faryn Borella at Starr King School for the Ministry (2020)
Due to the Coronavirus pandemic, my graduate course “Reviving Pilgrimage: Decolonizing Religious Travel to the Holy Land” (taught by Faryn Borella at Starr King School for the Ministry) was unable to physically travel to the land of Israel & Palestine as planned.
We were able, however, able to spend additional time reflecting on the non-physical aspects of pilgrimage – our spiritual practices, emotions or lack thereof towards Israel/Palestine, the intersections of politics and spirituality, the intensification of existing power dynamics due to Coronavirus, how we define “holy land,” the purpose of pilgrimage, and what it means to arrive & return well (both in our lives and in our ancestors lives).
This is my travelogue from home, a place to gather my thoughts & creations on the experience of not traveling and invite others into their own experiences reflecting on Sacred Journeys.
How do you prepare for a journey? What does a Journey mean to you?
Introduction and Welcome
Early on, Omar from Sabeel – the person who would have been our guide on the ground – asked two important questions:
Do you really need to travel to pilgrimage?
And are you ready to let go of who you think you are and be transformed by the experience?
During one of our last classes, I shared with the class my trepidations about travel – how it has been a force of destabilization in my life. This sparked interesting comments from my classmates and teacher…
…Was not the original purpose of pilgrimage to destabilize people’s pagan worship in the places they lived and encourage them to recommit, under supervision, to Yahweh?
How do you relate your transformations to the physical and the psychological realms?
Spiritual Packing List
I began by creating my “Spiritual Packing List” – physical objects I can bring on a journey to support my daily, weekly and monthly spiritual practices. On the packing list is:
Havdalah candle & lighter
Ear plugs for a break for auditory stimulation
Bowl for water for prayer and grief release
Yoga mat for daily stretching and meditation
Blanket for yoga and self swaddling
Cedar for cleansing
Peppermint oil for relaxing perfume
Headphone to listen to relaxing music
Journal and pen for reflection
Soil from home for grounding
A root medicine (maybe ginger) for grounding
Running shoes to metabolize grief
From creating this list, three questions arose:
What can’t I pack that I still need?
When can I unpack?
When can I put the suitcase away?
What would be in your “spiritual packing list?” How would you answer the above three questions?
Ancestral Spiritual Packing List
Then I got curious, what did my ancestors pack for their own spiritual needs? By ancestors I mean a combination of known ancestors, ancient ancestors, and mythical ancestors. The following items came to me:
A Torah to make traditions mobile
Shabbat candles and holders to remember Jewish time
A wine cup
Matzah to flee quickly
Jewelry as a form of universal barter and security
A Jewish star necklace, that might be hidden
A passport
A “Jacob’s” sheep for wool, meat and milk
A dove with an olive branch to check if its safe
From creating this list, three questions arose:
What did my ancestors need that they couldn’t pack?
What was forgotten about?
What could be re-created?
What would be in your ancestors “spiritual packing list?” How would you answer the above three questions?
The Journey
After my ancestors and I packed our bags/suitcases/goat skin pouches and hid our valuables in our passport bags/under our skirts/in our shoes we embarked upon our journey through a particular mode of transport. For my “ancestors” those modes were:
By foot
In an “ark”
Through the “red sea”
A steam boat
My models of travel tend to be:
By foot
By bike
By car
By plane
And that got me wondering:
How does mode of travel impact a journey?
How does it impact the spirit?
How does it impact the earth?
How do you and your ancestors travel? What are your answers to the above questions?
Spiritual Arrival
Next, I began wondering what do I need to do to arrive well? And the following came to me…
I need to take off my shoes and let my feet feel the ground
I need to take off my clothes and mikvah in wild water alone
I need to give my menstrual blood to a tree
I need to offer water, seeds and blood
I need to receive water, seeds and blood
After seeing the water color I had painted, I saw the following questions:
How do I ask permission?
What gifts can I bring?
How practices can I bring?
How can I arrive well?
How do you spiritually arrive? What are your answers to the above questions?
Ancestral Arrival
After thinking about what I would need to optimally arrive in a new place, I wondered how my ancestors arrived on Turtle Island. A year ago, my mother’s cousin emailed the family two pictures side by side of my great-grandfather Eli and great-grandmother Sadie in their early twenties – they were both immigrants from Eastern Europe.
In the photo of Eli, he is standing in a field, dressed in a button-up jacket and pants that end at his knees. In the background is an old tree. In the photo of Sadie, she is sitting on a bench on her wedding day, wearing her wedding dress and holding her bouquet.
I made a watercolor interpretation of these two photos. In the watercolor version, I added Eli emptying his pockets of anything Jewish – menorah, shabbat candles, Yiddish, kiddush cup. I didn’t change Sadie’s image because, to me, she already looks “aspirationally white” in her wedding dress.
Interestingly, when I drew their facial features I wasn’t able to replicate their Eastern European facial features and they both came out looking much more Aryan/Western European/like my father’s side than the photos. Is it possible I don’t know how to draw the Eastern European facial features of my ancestors?
I was left with these questions:
What did my ancestors leave?
What did they dream for me?
What did they give up?
Who did they become?
If any of your ancestors are not from where you live now, how do you think they arrived here? What are your answers to the above questions?
Spiritual Return
On what would have been the second day after the end of the pilgrimage in Palestine/Israel (during which I was planning to travel to the Negev), my cat died. Although she had been lethargic for a while, I wasn’t expecting that the underlying cause was terminal.
Because of coronavirus, the veterinarian office had a new rule that you could only enter the building if your animal was being put down. So, I had to make the decision over the phone, sitting in a park, and then walk back and put on a mask and gloves and enter the building.
I buried her under an oak tree in a grave filled with flowers, leaves and a combination of plants past their prime and taken before their time (at the suggestion of my friend).
For a while, the image that came to me whenever I slowed down was wanting to dig a grave next to hers and lie down in it and be with her again.
So, I painted that image and realized death is one form of spiritual return.
How can I return well?
When am I home?
What am I leaving?
How do you return?
2000 Year Pilgrimage
During one of our last calls, Omar joined us again and asked us what we were most regretting not being able to do or see in the Holy Land. What I am most regretting is not being able to re-visit the Negev, where I’ve felt the presence of my ancestors.
I painted a watercolor of an ancient ancestor of mine leaving behind her red tent and goddess worship and bringing her sacrifice of barley and goats to the temple….and then some time later (2000 years?) another woman (me?) emerges from the security gates guarding the Western Wall and walks into the desert where a purple tent is waiting to honor the cycles of all bodies.
Wonderings:
Why did my ancient ancestors pilgrimage?
Was the spiritual practice deepened by pilgrimage or cut off?
Where is “holy” to me in the “holy” land?
What pilgrimages of your ancestors are you continuing?
My Jewish Ancestral “CandyLand”
Where I am from, where my ancestors have been, and how exactly I got here are becoming more clearly not the kinds of questions that have one/any answer. So, I decided to create a “Candyland” of the answers I’ve gathered so far….
Step 1: Herd your sheep and goats
Step 2: Move for better forage
Step 3: Set up a menstrual tent
Step 4: “Lose” feminine deities
Step 5: Become enslaved in Egypt
Step 6: Escape through the Red Sea
Step 7: Wander in the desert
Step 8: Set up camp in the desert
Step 9: Scout the land of milk and honey
Step 10: Eventually enter the land
Step 11: Conquer the land
Step 12: Exchange cultures
Step 13: Built a temple
Step 14: Rule the land
Step 15: Be banished from the land
Step 16: Scatter around the globe
Step 17: Experience pogroms in Eastern Europe
Step 18: Board a ship to America/Turtle island
Step 19: Be born in California/Nisenan land
What’s your “Candyland?” of where you are from?
My Holy Land/This or That
For class, we were asked to create an expression of our holyland. What came to me was a watercolor painting of an oak tree, a body of water, a desert and a fire, another tree, and mountains.
I labeled them:
Oak: Quercus calliprinos, petrea, OR alba
River: Red Sea OR Tuolumne
Desert: Negev OR Ballarat
Other tree: Cedar of Lebanon OR Pine
Mountains: Sierras OR Sinai
All of these places and trees I hold sacred and holy. Am I supposed to choose one holy land? Is one supposed to be more holy? To me?
Sigh, feeling torn, these questions arose:
Wandering or Belonging?
Leora or Lauren?
Lost or Found?
Diasporic or Settler?
Midbar or Kehilla?
Where do you feel you belong? Where do you have spiritual connections?
Amulet for Protection
I leave you with an invitation to create an amulet for all of your journeys, pilgrimages, initiations, and wanderings.
Our class instructor taught us that in Judaism amulets are either inscribed with prayers or made of plants. She invited us to make our own, and I made a watercolor of cedar, lemon, and poppy with the message “May Goddess Bless & Keep Us.”
What’s in your amulet?
May all of our journeys be in the service of life, be for optimal good, and support the wellness and thriving of the traveller, the lands/realms/people they meet and the land/realms/people they return to. Amen.