A Pilgrim's Journal

Whan that Aprille, with hise shoures soote,
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open eye-
So priketh hem Nature in hir corages-
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages ...

--Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, Prologue.

Saturday, June 22, 2002

It is Summer, and outside my bedroom window I am awakened by the sound of "smale foweles maken melodye." I find my heart stirred by that distant and ancient call of which Chaucer spoke--"to goon pilgrimages."

Of all the many and varied devotions practiced by Catholic people, the simple practice of pilgrimage is the one which has most appealed to me. It's been referred to as an "externalized mysticism"--a way of putting legs on our prayers. When we go on pilgrimage, we act out in symbolic way the journey of faith upon which we set out on the day of our baptism, which will conclude when we join the Church Triumphant. We follow the example of Abraham, of whom the apostle wrote:

By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went. By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise: For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.  ... These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.  --Hebrews 11:9ff.

Pilgrimage is a metaphor for the Christian life, as we see in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, which I first read in high school, by which time my love of pilgrimage had already been instilled by my Adventist upbringing. Seventh-day Adventists don't speak of "shrines," but they do have a strong historical consciousness, and have preserved key places in their history, sometimes only in memory and in story, and sometimes in fact. Though not calling them "shrines" nor referring to "pilgrimages," Adventists have visited these memorials to their history in great numbers (sometimes to the annoyance of the current property owners). In recent years, Adventist Heritage Ministries has raised money to purchase the most significant properties to make sure they are protected, that they may stand as reminders of the struggle the Adventist "pioneers" faced in witnessing to the truth as they saw it.

My first experience of such pilgrimage came in the spring of 1975 on my 8th grade class trip. I was attending the Rockford SDA Church School, and our ultimate goal was the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village in Detroit, MI. Along the way, however, we stopped at Andrews University in Berrien Springs, MI, and then in Battle Creek. Now known as the home of Kellogg and Post cereals, Battle Creek was once the center of the Adventist world. We saw the homes of James and Ellen White and John Harvey Kellogg; we saw the sites of the "Dime Tabernacle," the Review & Herald, Battle Creek College and the Battle Creek Sanitarium. We visited the cemetery which is the last resting place of SDA pioneers and apostates and those influenced by them. We stood in silence over the graves of Ellen and James White. It was more than a historical tour for me--it was an act of faith. It reinforced to me the sense of connection to these men and women of faith. I can probably trace to that trip the emergence of both my interest in church history, and my vocation to ministry.

The thing about journeys, though, is that they move onward. As the years passed, I found myself at Atlantic Union College in South Lancaster, MA. I learned to preach at a pulpit used by William Miller. I worshipped at a church where Ellen White had addressed the SDA General Conference session. But just a few miles down the road were other places, with other stories. One of these was Kings' Chapel in Boston, beside which some of my Puritan and Pilgrim ancestors are buried, including John and Mary (Chilton) Winslow, who came to this land in the 17th century on a journey to freedom and opportunity.

I've always been intrigued by the shrines of others. When I was attending Gettysburg Lutheran Seminary, I took several classes at Catholic seminaries in Washington, DC, that were members with us in the Washington Theological Consortium. A van of Gettysburg students would go down early in the morning each Thursday, drop us off at our respective schools, and would pick us up at the end of the day at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. I didn't experience it as a place of pilgrimage then; it was more of a mystery to me, this farrago of Christian faith and kitsch. I was repulsed by the glow-in-the-dark rosaries and dashboard St. Christophers in the giftshop (and the promise of so many days and hours of indulgence for the faithful recitation of prayers on the back of laminated cards). I was intrigued by the stern mosaic of "Christ in Majesty," whose eyes bore down on me from the distant apse, and was curious about the tiara of Paul VI on display near the stole of John XXIII. Yet there were many quiet, prayerful places in the Church, which drew me back often.

When I was a campus minister at UC Santa Barbara, I sat in on a graduate seminar on "Pilgrimage in Christianity, Hinduism, and Islam." For my part in the class, I read about some Catholic shrines (including Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico and Lough Derg in Ireland)--and about one which I had visited a couple of years earlier when I lived in upstate New York: the Shrine of the North American Martyrs at Auriesville, NY.

When I first visited Auriesville, I was repulsed by what I saw as tackiness. Yet something kept drawing me back as a curious observer. While taking that course, I came to feel I needed to make a return visit to the Auriesville Shrine -- this time, as a pilgrim--to pray and to listen, to see if I could hear the stories of those who look to this place for whispers hope to comfort them on their pilgrimage.

This week, I make that trip. We'll be going to Vermont; I'll spend a few days with my in-laws, with whom my wife and kids will spend the month, and then I'll return. On my way back to the Albany airport, I'll make a side trip along the Mohawk River to Auriesville.

Pilgrimage is a time to reflect on the fact that our lives are in God's hands, and that faith calls us onward. It is a time to give thanks for his aid in our journey, as he has aided so many others in theirs. We can feel alone, abandoned, on this journey. We can sometimes see only the clouds. But the cloud we need to see is that "great cloud of witnesses" who have made the journey before us. Our troubles fade into insignificance compared with the pains they suffered. Our burdens, beneath which we fall again and again, seem so trivial, compared to the heroic burdens they bore with grace and joy. Who are we, then, to grumble? Who are we, to doubt God?

"What shall I render to the Lord, for all his benefits to me? I shall take the chalice of salvation, and shall call on the name of the Lord."

Monday, June 24—From Houston to Vermont

It is 9:30 p.m., and I’m in the Pittsburgh airport, the halfway point on my trip to Vermont. In an hour, I’ll fly to Albany, and there, rent a car for the drive to Rutland. I call Joy to let her know that I’ll be there about 1:30 a.m. She and the kids arrived at her parents’ home a few hours before, as they were able to take a morning flight.

This is the start of a month long vacation for them, and a week long vacation/pilgrimage for me. Joy has made this trip each summer since we moved to Houston four years ago. I haven’t been able to do it until now. In fact, it’s been five years since I was last in New England, and that was for a family wedding.

I have a number of hopes for this trip. It is a pilgrimage. I intend to end with a full day at the Shrine of the North American Martyrs in Auriesville, NY, just west of Albany. I also intend to visit significant points from different stages of my journey of faith—I’ll attend a bit of a couple Seventh-day Adventist camp meetings; I’ll visit Atlantic Union College, my alma mater, where I first stepped out on this journey; I’ll go to Montpelier, where I was a Lutheran pastor. I’m going to take plenty of pictures.

I think it was in 1995 that I first visited the Auriesville shrine. It was at a time of indescribable stress in my life, both professional and personal. I was working at a church in upstate New York which was engulfed in conflict. My three-year-old daughter, diagnosed with a congenital hip dislocation about eighteen months before, required frequent trips to the Shriners’ Hospital in Springfield, MA. Auriesville was a convenient resting point in the middle.

My visits to Auriesville were brief, perhaps 30 minutes each of three times. I just looked around. I knew the story of St. Isaac Jogues and his companions, and the shrine, marking the location of their martyrdom, was primarily an object of historical interest to me. My first visit coincided with a Polish National Pilgrimage, and I found myself surrounded by hundreds of Poles praying the rosary and singing the “Star Spangled Banner” at a Shrine devoted to a French priest killed by Mohawk Indians.

It was too much for my brain to process, and I wasn’t able to simply enter into the atmosphere of prayer.

Yet a seed of some sort was planted during those visits that slowly took root. For the next few years I thought about returning. In the summer of 1997, when I was attending a campus ministry institute at Boston College, I went to the library and looked up every book and magazine article I could find. I photocopied many pages, from historical journals to a short story by Tobias Wolf, "In the Garden of the North American Martyrs." That story, in his book of the same title, uses the site of martyrdom as a backdrop against which a young woman interviews for a position as an English professor. She is the only one present who does not know that the decision has already been made, and she will not get it. If they had no intention of hiring her, why then interview?  And why subject her to the humiliation of the process? It was for her a gantlet, like that run by the Jesuit victims.

I began to think that I might write a book about the shrine, and toward that end I developed an outline. As in the Wolf story, the shrine became more than a historical site to me—it became a metaphor.

Rereading that outline on the flight to Pittsburgh, I saw that it still reflects the cynicism of my first visits. Clearly, I experienced the shrine on a different level at that time than I would today. And the fact that I kept returning, if just in thought, showed that I was dissatisfied with that initial experience. I needed more from it. I needed to bring more to it than simply a thirty-minute visit and a cynical heart.

I re-read the story of Jogues, of the shrine, of the search by one Jesuit for the trail of Jogues from his capture by Trois-Rivieres to the Mohawk village of Ossernenon.

As I read, I am gripped by the horror of the experience—and by Jogues’ serenity. How different from my own reactions to the occasional discomforts of modern life! I thought of my own attitude yesterday; nervous about the final preparations for the trip, arguing with wife and kids, hurrying them and yet not doing all I could to help them in their chores.

So many memories flood back, of so many experiences over the past 22 years. There are so many people from years gone by that I could meet in the next few days. Who will I see? What will our meeting be like? Classmates. Former pastors. Former parishioners. Family. Friends. Not-so-friends.

Later that night, on the plane to Albany, I look back over my scribbled reflections. I see that this is indeed a pilgrimage I upon which I embark. Pilgrimage is about liminality. It is about a journey—and return. This journey is at once both. To go on pilgrimage is to seek to be changed by the experience. I need to be changed by this one. I need to complete some circles. I need to experience a healing. It needs to be a time of penance, and of prayer.

I’m now somewhere over New York. A dreamscape floats beyond the window … memories drift through my mind, like the wispy clouds beyond the wingtip. The landscape is dark, some six miles below. A few scattered lights suggest farms in mountain valleys. The clouds thicken, and the distant lights are obscured. Above them, the first full moon of summer shines, casting a silver gleam upon them, and upon the Mohawk River which I can now see through a gap.

I think of the schools I attended, of places I have ministered, of people I have known.

There are things I miss. Relationships I wish could have endured.

I recall something I read about Jogues. During his time back in France, following his escape from Ossernenon in 1643, he found himself longing to be with the painted faces of the Iroquois instead of the powdered faces of the French. And God answered his prayer.

There are things I miss. But God called me from there to where I am today. I don’t yet see fully his plan. I don’t grasp all the details of the pattern, but faith assures me that there is one. Faith speaks to me in subtle whispers to be open on this trip.

I need to accept the many gifts that have been given along the way. And I need to find ways to give back. To forgive, and to love. What is it that Bl. Josemaria Escriva said? “Be a man … and then … be an angel!”

I need to pray. I need to pray especially for priests I have known who now stand accused—and for others removed some years ago.

My thoughts return to the present, to the ghostly scene out the window. How different the Mohawk valley appears from this perspective, to what it seemed to Jogues three hundred and fifty years ago. We are so far removed from those days.

That is what I need on this pilgrimage—the grace of a different perspective. To look at my journey, and the Christian journey itself, in the light of prayer and detachment. Let go of the emotions of the past—and of the present. I think of a John Michael Talbot song: “Behold now the Kingdom—See with new eyes.”
 

Tuesday, June 25—Vermont

II reflected on Psalm 102. I wonder, did Jogues’ thoughts turn to its words?—Like David, he was in a desolate place, forsaken, taunted by his enemies.

O Lord, listen to my prayer
and let my cry for help reach you.
Do not hide your face from me
in the day of my distress.
Turn your ear towards me
and answer me quickly when I call.

For my days are vanishing like smoke,
my bones burn away like a fire.
My heart is withered like the grass.
I forget to eat my bread.
I cry with all my strength
and my skin clings to my bones.

I have become like a pelican in the wilderness,
like an owl in desolate places.
I lie awake and I moan
like some lonely bird on a roof.
All day long my foes revile me;
those who hate me use my name as a curse.

I also thought of Psalm 137: “By the rivers of Babylon.” Some time after his release, describing his experience in a letter, Jogues described his entry into Ossernenon as entering into Babylon in captivity. In my prayer in the next few days, I’ll meditate on the psalms in light of Jogues’ experience…
 

How strange it feels to visit once familiar places years later. Northfield and Montpelier seemed almost foreign today. We went first to the Norwich University Apartments on Roxbury Road just south of the village of Northfield. These white townhouses, stark in their plainness, devoid of trim or shade of tree, sit like a pair of tombstones in the field. Once a residence for military faculty (and friends of the manager), they had been demoted to student housing, and signs of the loss of rank were evident—broken panes of glass, peeling siding, unmowed grass. We parked the car and walked down the trail behind the apartments, leading from field, through wood, past an overgrown beaver pond, to the river. Our children liked to play here. The swimming hole is just visible round the bend. But the sand bar is now a patch of knee high weeds. And a circle of charred remains of a fire, ringed with brown and green bottles half filled with stale beer, shows that this former play spot (and private prayer chapel) has become a party zone.

A dozen miles up the road, on the outskirts of the capitol city of Montpelier, we turn into the parking lot of Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran Church. A sign tells us that a Christian counseling service is now using the building during the week. I recognize the secretary. When I resigned in October 1992, Dan Steinbauer, a hospital chaplain, became the new, part-time pastor; his wife, Jan, became part-time Associate in Ministry. After ten years of joy and headache, they have just announced that he has accepted a new call. In the foyer, I paw through a photo album while Joy and the kids explore the Sunday School rooms. I find one picture from my brief time as pastor. I’m standing on the steps, wearing an alb and a multi-color Guatemala stole, and Andrew (so tiny!) is playing at my feet. The parish council president, grinning, is standing on the next step, while his father sits, scowling, as if wondering why in hell this person sees the need to take our picture.

The sanctuary looks more like a garage sale in the making. Someone’s donated an old piano to give companionship to the electronic organ, but they appear not to be on speaking terms with one another. There’s a worn set of storage shelves standing next to the pastor’s pew, looking embarrassed to be in that place in that condition. Bits of flotsam and jetsam on the floor and the pews suggest that a mischievous child turned the ceiling fans on high and tossed a wastebasket’s contents into the maelstrom. There’s no sense of sacredness to this space. It’s the living room of a family that’s tired and would rather call out for pizza than clean the space necessary to prepare a meal.

Next to the photo album, I see a document summarizing the results of a parish survey. Some think the pastor preaches too long. Some complain that he doesn’t visit as much as they think that he should. The editor remarks that there are only two or three people disgruntled, but they are a vocal few whose grumblings are amplified by the smallness of the congregation.

What a funny little place this town is! Cooking schools and new age bookstores, tie-dyed clothes and incense, and some of the longest traffic jams I’ve ever sat in.

We resume the role of tourists after lunch at the Coffee Corner. We take the tour of the Ben & Jerry’s factory in Waterbury, and willingly take seconds on the free samples when they are offered. Then to Stowe, to the Trapp Family Lodge, where we pause at the grave of the Captain and Maria, visit the gift shops, and admire the alpine view.

I have no regrets about leaving, nor about being unable to return. And yet I miss the mountains of Vermont and these gentle flowered meadows. The deep forests of pine and maple and birch. The rocky brooks and covered bridges. The hairpin turns on gravel roads that turn to bottomless muck in Spring. The rock walls that make good neighbors, and the sagging barns held erect by the dust of the hay in the air within. Black and white cows and brown eggs. Antique shops, book stores and sugar shacks. Gifts of syrup made by retired friends who have all the time it takes to watch the sap boil down to sweetness.

And I miss some good friends, one of whom I did see downtown today; another had told me he would be out of town; yet another I wasn't able to connect with. And the many others who, like me, have moved on to other things.
 

Wednesday, June 26—Vermont

Joy and I left the kids to play in grandma’s cool basement while we ventured off to explore the town of Woodstock for a few hours of quiet couple time. I was struck by how little we explored Vermont when we lived here; I mention this to Joy, and she reminds me that our lives were rather caught up with children and parish life and then, unemployment. We venture into a bookstore in an old mill. Joy finds a book for her mother—it’s her birthday—and we are about to leave when out of the corner of my eye I spy a box of books with a sign: “Sale: $1.” I figure it wouldn’t hurt to look. Old high school algebra texts, out-of-date used car blue books, city directories … I flip through them quickly and am resigned to the fact that there’s nothing here. Then I see it. A small paperback, 80 yellowed pages—Brébeuf and His Brethren, a poem by E. J. Pratt. I snatch it up like a child, and Joy wonders what could possibly have excited me so much. I show it to her, but it doesn’t mean anything to her. I explain.

We return to the house for a late lunch. Joy’s parents are in the habit of taking two meals a day; a hearty breakfast around 8, and a late lunch around 3:00. We celebrate her mother’s birthday, and give her the card, book, and Russian nesting dolls that we found in Woodstock.

I’m exhausted, so after the cake and ice cream (they’re vegans, so it is actually “Rice Dream”), I retire for a nap. But I also need to break away. The silence is painful. The talk around the table has been about friends and family, gossip about strangers I’ll never meet. No questions about my work or life for the past five years.

The nap helped, but not enough. I needed to get out. I went for a drive. I drove past a Catholic Church where a chaplain friend from the Vermont National Guard had been pastor until he was accused of sexual abuse of minors.

I park and walk up to it. A man and wife out for a walk with their dogs restrain the one that seems determined to have me for dinner. I try the front door. I try the side door. All are locked.

I find a coffee shop and then take my iced latte to the bookstore around the corner. I find a Maine guide that will be helpful in a few days.

When I return, I pick up Joy and the kids, and we go to the mall to find some things that Joy will need in the next week when they go camping. We stop by Friendly’s and order four “Reese’s Pieces Sundaes.” When we were eating in Montpelier the day before, my daughter had asked, “Why are all the people here white?” I was stunned by the question—but it had been true. Since then, I’d been more observant of who was around us. We all looked around at all the people in the ice cream parlor—customers and employees alike. All were white. Our kids had never seen anything like it.

We visit another bookstore on the way home. At last we see someone with darker skin than our own.

It’s a nice store—but I start to compare the space on the shelves devoted to different kinds of books. There is one shelf of religion, new and used — yet two shelves of used Tom Clancy. There’s a whole bookcase of New Age and Feng Shui.

By the door is a stack of the local alternative paper. The editor rails against the “Taliban” threatening to destroy Vermont’s freedom—he means Republicans opposed to the state’s “civil union” law, which recognizes homosexual liaisons as the equivalent of marriage.

On the radio, we hear of the news from San Francisco, a federal court declaring the Pledge of Allegiance “unconstitutional” for affirming that the nation is “under God.”

While the kids are getting ready for bed, I look over the book about Maine I had purchased, wondering what we might see that is in keeping with the theme of this pilgrimage.

I turn to the poem by Pratt. More than anything, he underscores the hatred of the Iroquois for the Jesuits they martyred. The Iroquois were right to hate and fear the Jesuits, for the gospel they preached must put an end to a society in which torture and mutilation and sexual abandon were the chief entertainments. But the world has no reason to fear the Church today, for most Christians are not preaching a message or living a life which threatens the world’s ways in any way. We have taken the path of comfort, of self-absorption, of conflict avoidance. We have accepted the ways of our world.

And yet the world still hates us. The world of today hates us even more than the Iroquois hated the Jesuit saints. It doesn’t need to lift a hand or a hatchet against us, for we have proven ourselves quite adept at destroying ourselves. What would our world do to a saint?

I return to my plans for Maine. The only stop we have to make is in Freeport, where Joy and the kids and her parents will spend the next week at the camp meeting of the Northern New England Conference of Seventh-day Adventists. I think of the town where Joy spent many childhood years—Norridgewock. It was a Jesuit mission in the 17th century, like Ossernenon. Where Augusta now stands Plymouth once had a trading post manned by my ancestor, John Winslow. Here my Puritan ancestor met the Jesuit missionary, Fr. Gabriel Dreuillette. What, I wonder, is left in these towns, or along the Kennebec River linking them, commemorating those days?

In the evening, I read Psalm 139: “See that I follow not the wrong path.” And Colossians 1, the hymn affirming that all creation is held together in Christ. After a couple of days of looking at the past, retracing my steps of previous years, and seeing no resting place here, I’m ready to continue the pilgrim journey.
 

Thursday, June 27—Vermont

Having made the decision to continue forward on the journey, I’m frustrated by having to stay another day here. I felt like today was a completely wasted day. Joy was ironing and packing for the trip to Maine. Andrew has come down with laryngitis and a cough. And Aimee was in a foul mood because she wanted Andrew to play with her, and he wanted to lay down and die.

I went out for coffee, and spent some time walking around downtown Rutland. I picked up some maps at AAA, and a few things Joy had forgotten the day before.

Back in the car, I saw a sign which said, “College of St. Joseph, 1.6 miles,” and thought I would take a look. You would think a college would be easy to find in such a small town, but the school didn’t want to be found that day. I followed the road down, and over a bridge, across the railroad tracks (to “the wrong side”), went further than 1.6 miles, and ended up in the country. The road came to an end at a T-intersection, with no sign indicating that a college lay in either direction. So I doubled back. Seeing what looked like a campus to the left, I turned aside and found St. Peter'’ Church, a convent, and a very rundown “Academy of St. Joseph.” This couldn’t be it, could it? But this would be the right place for a Catholic college in Vermont. It was a working class neighborhood; the stores and the mailboxes bore Italian names. This answered Aimee’s question as to why everyone was white — the Catholics did the dirty work for the Protestant Yankees that people of color did for whites in the South. [July 2—I look up the College of St. Joseph Webpage. I see that I didn’t go far enough. “Follow River Street to the end, turn right and the College is just around the bend on your left.”]

On returning to the house, I retreated to the cool basement with the kids. Aimee and I played Scrabble and a couple of other games. We had a good time, but I was still antsy. I felt trapped. Tomorrow would bring a full day, and I couldn’t wait for it to arrive.
 

Friday, June 28—From Vermont to Maine

We were on the road at 6:45 this morning, winding our way over route 4 through the mountains east of Rutland. The clouds were low on the mountain, and mists hung in the valleys. At every “Moose Crossing” sign, we craned our necks to see if we could see one of those majestic dim-witted beasts, but were disappointed.

Passing through Woodstock, we pointed out to the kids the store which sold dog sculptures, the “Russian Renaissance” shop where we bought the nesting dolls, the “Aubergine” kitchen shop which had model cows from the Houston “Cow Parade,” and “Scotland by the Yard,” where for $1400 a man could get complete formal Scottish attire.

The kids couldn’t see much from within the car when we crossed the bridge over Queechee Gorge, so I pulled into the parking lot, and we took a little walk. The iron bridge is spindly, and it feels like each step makes it sway. We go out into the middle of the bridge, and peer down into the deep, rocky gorge just as an 18-wheeler zooms by, making the bridge sway by yards (or so it seems!).

By noon we were in Maine; getting off the Maine Pike at Scarborough, we took country roads to Two Lights, and then to Portland Head Light, the picturesque lighthouse reproduced in so many Hallmark store miniatures. It started to rain, and the rain would continue intermittently for the next several hours. We went over to the Old Port, found a Lobster shack for lunch (though I was the only one that ate any of the overgrown crawfish), and then explored some of the shops alongside the worn cobblestone streets.

Arriving in Freeport, our final stop, we went to L. L. Bean, and then continued on to the Adventist camp meeting ground just outside of town on Pownal Road. The SDA Freeport Church is by the road, along with Pine Tree Academy and the Northern New England Conference offices. In the field below, the big white campmeeting tent was in place, and row upon row of khaki Army tents (the kind with wooden floors and high ceilings). Joy’s tent was ready, but the three beds hadn’t been put together, the tent wasn’t put together quite right, and in trying to fit it over the floor, they managed to leave a gaping rip in one corner. We put the beds together, and exchanged one, and were wondering what to do about the rip when Joy’s parents drove up. They unloaded shelves, and chairs, food and rugs, and took Duct Tape and plastic wrap to the rip. They went looking for the camp set-up chief to see about getting the tent squared away, and we went back into Freeport for pizza.

It was a long rainy night, and we stayed in the tent instead of going to the evening meetings. We do a sung Evening Prayer on weekends, and though we didn’t have the booklets we use at home, we were able to sing by heart quite a bit. And then Joy and the kids and I just sat and listened to the rain and talked and laughed. It was a crazy day, but we had a great time together. The sun set late, and by its orange rays we suddenly realized it had stopped raining. We wandered the camp meeting grounds to see if there was anyone we knew, found some people we hadn’t seen for fifteen years, and then, relaxed and feeling that all was right with the world, we returned to the tent for a pleasant night’s sleep.
 

Saturday, June 29—From Maine to New York

We woke up around 6:00 to the sound of the birds singing. Joy and Aimee headed off to the women’s shower, I went to the men’s, and we let Andrew, who had coughed much of the night, sleep awhile more. Everyone got dressed, opened the tent flaps wide to the new day, and we said our good-byes.

I had decided that I would follow the Kennebec River north, tracing the routes of my Puritan ancestor, John Winslow, and of the Jesuit missionary he befriended, Gabriel Dreuillette. I left the campmeeting grounds at 7:30 and followed US Route 1 to Bath, and then followed the road on the east bank of the Kennebec up from Woolwich. The road took me into the country, and between the trees I got glimpses of the river and the forests beyond that, with a little imagination, gave me an idea of what it might have been like here 400 years ago. Outside of Dresden, I saw a sign which advertised books. Of course, I had to turn off to go look, but since it was 8:30 a.m. on a Saturday morning, the shop in the old barn wasn’t yet open. But it did bring me into the village center, for a glimpse of the town’s little Episcopal Church, St. John’s, which a sign told me was built in 1769. It was like so many other New England Churches … double doors in the front, shuttered windows on the side, a steeple with four points on the roof. But unlike the vast majority of its cousins, it wasn’t white. The shutters were green, the walls were a yellowish-brown, and the trim was a darker shade of the same ochre.

Entering the next village up the road, a man with a full white beard and suspenders saunters across the road after putting the day’s mail in the box for the mailman to pick up. Further down, on the steps of a little cottage not much bigger than a broom closet, another old man, gaunt, with a scraggly gray beard and bald head, sits and smokes a pipe. I’m almost tempted to stop the car and ask, “Does this road go to Portland?” (To which I would expect the answer—“No, this road stays right heah.”)

In Augusta, the state capital, I come upon “Fort Western,” built in 1754 to defend British interests against the French and Indians. The historical marker on the riverbank noted that this was also the location of the earlier Plymouth trading post at the Indian village of Cushnoc, where John Winslow had once been the agent. Another sign informed me that the actual site of the Plymouth post was now occupied by the Christian Science Church. My guidebook recommends that I see the exhibits at the Maine State Museum on the other side of the river, next to the capitol, but it doesn’t open until 10:00, so I decide to head up the road to Norridgewock.

I’d been in Norridgewock several times before, and I had remembered seeing a plaque in a churchyard telling about the Jesuit mission, but I go up and down each of the five roads of the village and find no historical markers. I pass the post office and cross a crumbling concrete bridge, past the town library, and then follow the road down the opposite river bank, past another little church, before heading back into the center of the village. I stopped in an antique store, hoping to find some old books, or even something of local interest, but was disappointed. I should have asked about the mission, and the site of the Indian village, but the day was getting along, and so I headed back to Augusta. [I've since learned that the site of the Indian village and marker are not in the present day town of Norridgewock, but in the neighboring town of Madison, about eight miles away.]

When I’d been in Portland the day before, I thought of William Miller’s meetings held in a local church in 1843 and 1844 in which he shared with them his calculations for predicting the end of the world. In those meetings, he converted the Harmon family to the Advent message; their daughter, Ellen, would be the prophet of the Seventh-day Adventist Church which would emerge out of the Great Disappointment which followed the failure of Miller’s prophecy. We drove past the school on Brackett Street which Ellen had attended. We went past the location of the Methodist church where her family had been members, and past the site of the church where Miller had preached. Those Advent believers of the 1840s expected the end of the world. The Adventists at the campmeeting in Freeport still thought it soon.

I went to the Maine State Museum in Augusta. Verrazano sailed the Maine coast in 1524; in 1604-1605, Samuel de Champlain conducted a thorough exploration of her harbors and rivers. In 1609 Henry Hudson followed, and then John Smith in 1614. The fur trade began in 1610, as the European fashion trendsetters developed an insatiable desire for felt. In just the four year period from 1631-1635, and along just the Kennebec and Penobscot rivers of Maine, English fur traders brought in 12,000 lbs. of beaver pelts and 1,000 lbs. of otter. The beaver pelts were sold for £10,000, and the otter covered the shipping costs.

The rapid depletion of beaver and otter populations near the cost necessitated trading with tribes deeper into the interior. The different European powers struggled for domination of both the trade and the continent. French, English, and Dutch competed with one another, especially for the cooperation of the various tribes who were the key to fur. In exchange for the furs, they gave beads and pipes, iron tools and copper kettles, axes, Brazilian tobacco (which the Indians came to prefer over the local variety), Jew’s harps (one of the most popular items, though there are no written records of Indians playing them!) — and firearms.

Into this volatile mix the Jesuit missionaries came to preach the gospel. In 1650, Gabriel Dreuillette came to the Indians at Norridgewock. What began as an evangelical enterprise which even my Puritan ancestor could encourage, soon became shaded by political concerns. A generation later, the French began to see that the Indians could be formed into an auxiliary military force, and the Jesuits were enlisted to assist in this. In 1694, Fr. Sebastien Rasle took over the Norridgewock mission; in 1724, a combined force of Mohawks and Massachusetts militia destroyed it, bringing the booty—including 27 scalps (Rasle’s among them)—to Boston.

In the museum’s display cases, I saw Rasle’s writing box, his pewter sacramental vessels, the mission bell, crucifixes—a larger one that was perhaps worn by Rasle himself. A pewter jar bears the seal of the Jesuit college at Lyon, where Rasle once taught.
 

Four years later, the mission was reestablished. But the Indians who were friendly to the French gradually retreated before the increasing numbers of the English settlers. In 1754 Fort Western was built at Augusta, and Fort Halifax at Winslow — and the mission at Norridgewock was abandoned once and for all.

Leaving the museum, I got back on the highway and headed for Massachusetts. About 3:45 I arrived in Lancaster, the little village to the northeast of Worcester where I went to college. Lancaster was founded in 1653, and was the site of an important battle in “King Philip’s War.” A large pine marks the location of the Rowlandson Garrison House, the home of the minister whose wife, Mary, was captured and held for ransom by the attackers.

Some of my early ancestors lived in Lancaster in the 17th century, and I wanted to see if I could find their graves in the Old Settler’s Burying Ground. Across the street from the field where the Rowlandson pine stands, you’ll see the modern cemetery. To get to the old cemetery, you have to go all the way to the back corner, and follow a steep path down into the woods (I startled a raccoon!), then down the railroad tracks about a dozen yards, and across, and down another steep path, into a pine glade filled with worn, ancient tombstones, most with 17th or early 18th century dates. I looked for the names of Welby and Farnham, but found none. But I took some pictures anyway—remembering that here, 21 years ago or so, on a Saturday afternoon much like this one, I shared my first kiss with the girl who would be my wife.

Retracing my steps, I got back in the car for the short drive to the Atlantic Union College campus. I wasn’t expecting the crowds I found—it seems that while the English campmeeting was taking place in the campmeeting grounds on the other side of the campus, behind the Southern New England Conference office, the Hispanic campmeeting was taking place on this side, in the College Church—and the Haitian campmeeting was taking place in the college auditorium. I had difficulty finding a parking place, as the lots were filled, and the aisles were double and triple-parked. Groups of families and friends covered the lawn of the campus, sharing their Sabbath lunch. I walked across campus, past familiar buildings that I had classes in, past other buildings which have gone up since, past what had been our first apartment (and was now a parking lot), past the Village Church (locked), and into the campmeeting grounds. Whereas in Freeport the meetings take place in a big white tent, here in South Lancaster there is a great wooden tabernacle, like a large barn, filled with wooden benches, and with lots of doors on the side that can be opened up for full ventilation on a summer day like today. The campground is wooded and hilly, and the tents and buildings are tucked into whatever spaces and clearings are large enough. The land slopes steeply down to an open field, reserved for campers and trailers. I spent about 45 minutes walking around, remembering where friends customarily had their tent, or their trailer; I poked my head into the tabernacle long enough to tell that it was no different a talk than I might have heard twenty years ago (or one hundred years ago).

The Northern New England campmeeting was all white, and mostly elderly; here, almost all the whites were elderly, but there were lots of young men and women and families—mostly black and Hispanic. Maine’s is an Adventist campmeeting as it had been for generations; the South Lancaster campmeeting gives the face of Adventism today. The tabernacle is not very crowded this hot afternoon; but the youth/young adult tent has standing room only. The music they are listening to might be heard in many other youth gatherings, evangelical and Catholic.

But I see no one I know, so I cut the visit short, and decide to leave. I go through Clinton, past the Presbyterian Church, which I spent some time visiting while in college. Down the road from it is the Wachusett Reservoir. At the base of the dam, there’s a beach along the river that used to be filled with kids swimming on a day like this; but the beach is overgrown, and signs warn against trespassing. I ask the young Arab cashier at the Cumberland Farms across the street where I purchase gas about it, but he knows nothing. As far as he knows, it was always like that.

I swam there for the first time in the summer of 1980. I remember walking out on the dam one day, gazing out into the deep waters of the reservoir. The wind picked up, and white caps were raised on the surface. A strange feeling came over me, as if I was somehow looking at my life in the years to come. It was as if a voice was saying to me that I should be ready for a tumultuous time—but that through whatever came, I needed to have faith.

I follow the familiar roads through Clinton and Boylston to Worcester. To the left I spot a Catholic Church that had intrigued me since I had first driven through Worcester in the summer of 1980 -- a relief below the roof depicts either the poor souls in purgatory or the damned in hell.  I've never been able to stop and find out, and the picture I took out the window this time came out blurred.  But that fit my mood this day, speeding down the highway, eager to get on my way, and I quickly passed through Worcester to Auburn and the Mass Pike, which I took westward toward Albany. I stop at the Ludlow rest area to jot down some more thoughts.

I feel disconnected from my past, uprooted. The things I had once found comfort in, my heritage as a New England Yankee, my friends and extended family, all the things that one usually turns to for support, or which provide a safety net as one makes their way in life — all these things are but empty shells for me. God has called me from these things, to follow him. He has set me out on a journey, in which I live in tents with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. I’ve found new things to give me courage and comfort. Things that I now see were with me all along, though I never saw them on the other side of the street. Parts of my New England heritage that no one told me about.

The journey goes on. The road takes me through Springfield, where Aimee spent so many weeks in traction, and underwent repeated surgeries at the Shriners’ Hospital. Quickly I pass through the Berkshires, into New York, beyond Albany, to Amsterdam. I find a motel, and here I’ll spend the night, to head to the Shrine tomorrow.

It’s clear to me that the journey and return of a pilgrimage is not a circle, but a spiral. We don’t return to the same spot we left. We are changed by the journey. And so I come to familiar places in New England, only to find that the attraction they once had, the connection I once had to them, is severed.

Junipero Serra, the missionary of California, had as his motto, “Always forward, never back.” More than a variant of the cliché, “You can’t go home again,” it is a call to leave the security of the comfortable, to journey into the unknown which is God’s future for us.

I flip on EWTN to hear a Redemptorist priest talking about patience. It isn’t something that we can ask God to give us, for “patience is a by-product of tribulation—it isn’t given, it is earned.”
 

Sunday, June 30—Auriesville, NY

A hot shower, and a night’s rest in fresh sheets on a comfortable bed, and I’ve made the perfect transition from the journey of yesterday to the contemplation and rest of today.

Most of the motels in the area were full when I arrived last night, but I found a place at the Super 8 on Route 5S in Amsterdam, just about five miles or so from the Shrine. It's a quick drive, and I soon see the sign directing me to turn left up a steep hill. To the left of the parking lot is the esplanade with the "Automobile Stations of the Cross" (when I was first here, that made me think of Robert Schuller's church in a drive-in theater). But I turn to the right, and park under a tree before the Coliseum.

I arrive just in time for the 9:00 a.m. mass. A couple of hundred people are scattered in one pie-like section of the great round church.

The Gospel, from Matthew 10, seems especially appropriate for this place, and for my meditations today:

"Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

The priest didn’t have the greatest liturgical skill, but he made some excellent points in his homily. The Church is always a pilgrim, in need of repentance and reform. Looking to the great pilgrimage of World Youth Day in Toronto this summer (which would bring many of those youth to the Auriesville Shrine in the course of their journey), he spoke of two young adult saints commemorated in the summer: St. Aloysius Gonzaga, and Bl. Kateri Tekakwitha. Both died in their 20s, but lived and died with courage and faith. The final song of the mass: “Be Not Afraid.”

After mass, I circle the Church, gazing up on the statues of the 8 North American Martyrs above the main doors of the Coliseum: Daniel, Garnier, Goupil, Jogues, Lalande, Brebeuf, Lalemant, Chabanal.

Back in the Church, my attention is drawn to the reliquary before the altar, which holds relics of St. Jean Brebeuf, St. Gabriel Lalemant, and St. Charles Garnier—bits of their bones, returned to France after their martyrdom in Huronia, in Canada. The plaque says that the reliquary is meant to resemble a lighthouse.

I skirt the edges of the grounds. On the periphery are various statues. There’s a Knights of Columbus memorial to the unborn. A modern sculpture of Our Lady of Fatima, by Frederick Shrady, cast from the same mold as the original in the Vatican gardens; pilgrims have hung plastic rosaries from the branches of a bush in front of it. A rosary laid out in stones on the ground, to remember Theresa, a Huron girl captured with Jogues who made a rosary of stones when the Mohawks took her rosary from her. A massive cross of evergreen trees, planted into the hillside, symbol of the planting of the gospel here by the preaching of St. Isaac Jogues.

These are the kinds of things that once struck me as tacky. What strikes me now is the peace and serenity of this quiet shrine.

In the Martyrs’ Museum there is a diorama of Jogues being tortured by the Mohawks upon his capture—they pull out his fingernails with their teeth, and gnaw on his fingertips until they are bloody pulp. They’ll become infected on the long journey from Three Rivers to Ossernenon.

In the display cases are artifacts found on the grounds: many pieces of shell and broken pipes, nails and flint. But not labeled.

A mock-up of a section of the wall and beds of the longhouse, with Iroquois mask and drum—these get the attention of a family with two small children who enter the museum after me. The boy, about two, and a girl, about four, have lots of questions, and they expect their dad to have all the answers. “This is what beds used to look like,” he explains. “What’s this?” “This is an Indian drum.” The boy pounds on it and whoops. “What’s this?” “I dunno.” “Oh. What’s this?” “I dunno.” “Oh. What’s this?” “An Indian mask.” “Oh.”

I make my way toward the center of the grounds. A towering mission cross marks the location of the long-gone entrance to the palisade. Each of the four corners is labeled. Cement markers with inlaid mosaics depicting the Seven Sorrows of Mary surround the palisade. To one side, a statue of the Pieta, Our Lady of Sorrows, Queen of the Martyrs. In the center, a crucifix, marking the location of the platform on which Jogues, Goupil, and their Huron companions were tortured before the jeering crowds. Jutting off at an angle, climbing up a hill a short distance away, are the stations of the cross — leading to the Hill of Prayer, where Goupil and Jogues often went to pray the rosary, and where, one day, Goupil was tomahawked to death for having earlier made the sign of the cross on a child.

There are no crowds this Sunday morning. Squirrels scamper about playfully among tall trees, ancient giants that had not sprouted 350 years ago. Birds sing in the branches. I wonder why there are so few people—and then I remember that the 10:30 mass has just started in the Coliseum.

There are two other chapels on the grounds. The first chapel, built in 1885, is a small octagonal gazebo that once held an altar, with enough room for a priest and a server—now it contains a statue of Jogues, a small copy of that erected by the state of New York at Lake George.

The second, the Martyrs’ Chapel, was built in 1894; like the camp meeting tabernacle in South Lancaster, it is open at the sides. There’s a rack holding wooden crosses that you can carry as you make the stations. The votive candles are electric. There’s a small, enclosed Blessed Sacrament Chapel, with a panoramic view of the Mohawk River. The central window, with stained glass, depicts Bl. Kateri Tekakwitha, the “Lily of the Mohawks” who was born at Ossernenon a generation after Jogues’ death.

The religious articles store is boarded up; a sign says it is now across the street, in the cafeteria. The cafeteria, I learn upon entering, no longer serves meals. You can get a prepackaged chicken sandwich in the fridge to warm in the microwave, some chips, a soda.

Like the Adventist campmeeting, most of the people I’ve seen here are older whites. There are a few young couples with children. But most of the young adults I see through the day are Hispanic or Filipino.

The kids laugh and play, oblivious to the significance of the place. Unable to comprehend the horror that was endured here. But they, and the grass, and the birds, are all signs giving witness to the fact that the message of the gospel did triumph over the evil which tried to silence it. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it.”

I follow the path of the Seven Sorrows, circling the palisade, recalling in my minds’ eyes the scenes of torture. I look down a path leading down toward the river, perhaps the path up which Jogues and his companions were forced to run the gantlet, between two lines of 100 shrieking Mohawks each. I imagined what it could have been like. I continued around the palisade, imagining the scene within, as they were led to the torture platform. The suffering! And the faith!

I next follow the Stations of the Cross, reflecting on the suffering of Jesus. The stations themselves were in the process of being stripped, cleaned, and repainted. The first one I saw seemed amateurish, even cartoonish ... but then I saw that it had but the first coat, and subsequent coats of paint on other stations were more sophisticated, giving shade and highlight.

I reflected on some words of Josemaria Escriva. The meditation at the tenth station, the Stripping of Christ, makes me pause.

“For us to reach God, Christ is the way; but Christ is on the cross, and to climb up to the cross we must have our heart free, not tied to earthly things.”

The twelfth station:

“Love sacrifice; it is a fountain of interior life. Love the cross, which is an altar of sacrifice. Love pain, until you drink, as Christ did, the very dregs of the chalice.”

The fourteenth station:

“We must bring into our own life, to make them our own, the life and death of Christ. We must die through mortification and penance, so that Christ may live in us through love. And then follow in the footsteps of Christ, with a zeal to co-redeem all mankind.”

At the top of the Hill of Prayer stands a life-size crucifix. This is the quietest part of the shrine. A gentle breeze blows from behind. Here Rene Goupil and Isaac Jogues prayed the rosary. In this spot, Rene was attacked with a tomahawk, by a young Indian furious at him for daring to pray over and bless a child. He died whispering, “Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!”

On trees all over the grounds the sacred name is written in red letters, accompanied by a cross. St. Isaac Jogues carved the name of Jesus, and the cross, in every tree he could. Claiming this place for Christ. Offering himself for the people, like Christ. Praying for those who hated him, like Christ.

I sit on the bench at the top of the Hill of Prayer and pray silently.

I’m struck by the similarities between this Catholic shrine and the Adventist campmeetings I’ve glimpsed. The Adventist meetings could be seen as a pilgrimage festival, bringing together the scattered faithful for a time of prayer and devotion, celebration and fellowship. A time to remember, to tell stories, and to have faith strengthened for the difficult journey that still lies ahead. Even the physical structures, these wooden tabernacles open to the wind, are architectural cousins, in themselves transitional between the portable tents of true pilgrims and the permanent stone monuments of those who have decided to put down roots.

Behind the Hill of Prayer is the St. Rene Goupil chapel, and behind it, the cemetery of the Jesuit New York Province. Two priests who died in 1928, one in 1945, then regularly since 1961. Eighteen pages of priests and brothers, up through 1999. The road passing in front of the chapel and cemetery continues to the east to a now empty retreat house, and to the west to the residence of the Jesuits who staff the shrine.

I descend the hill and return to the cafeteria to purchase two bottles of cold water.

South of the cafeteria is a wooden sign with a single word, “Ravine,” and an arrow pointing to a trail. In my previous visits I had never gone to either the Hill of Prayer, or to this. I wasn’t quite sure what I would find. I crossed the parking lot and a field. A picnic shelter at the edge of the woods was filled with a large family gathering. A teenager who wanted to escape sat in a car with the windows open and the stereo playing rap music with the bass turned to maximum.

But the sound of the drums fades as I enter the ravine trail. The path descends steeply into the woods, following a small rocky stream. Every twenty feet or so a sign on a tree tells a part of St. Isaac Jogues’ account from the Jesuit Relations of the death of his companion, St. Rene Goupil. An Indian becomes upset when Rene makes the sign of the cross on the head of child. Ugly glances. Isaac is afraid. He hears Rene’s confession, as he has heard each day. He encourages him to have faith. Two young braves come out to where they are praying and order them back to the village. As they turn, one tosses aside a blanket draped over his arm, revealing a tomahawk, which he brings down onto Rene’s skull. The body is dragged around in sport; dogs rip chunks of flesh from the thighs. Isaac, fearing he will be next, nevertheless wants to protect the body of his martyred friend. He places it in the stream and covers it with rocks. When he returns, it has been moved, and weeks go by before some children tell him where it might be found. Isaac finds the skull and some bones, and kisses them reverently as the relics of a martyr. He finds a spot under a tree to bury them, hoping that some day he might retrieve them.

The path opens into a glade. A crucifix marks the end of the trail. A rude wooden altar stands alone. A statue of Rene blessing the child has been damaged by a tree falling from the woods. It has been sawn, but not removed. Beyond, another path leads across a larger stream and up a hill to a sepulcher; in a cavity, an image of the dead body of Christ. I sit before it now. The music of babbling water from the converging streams provides a soothing background for my meditation.

The water reminds me again of that day standing on the reservoir dam in Clinton. Feelings of fear before the unknown. Now I am led beside these gentle waters, to a quiet, serene place. I am at peace.

Returning up the trail to the main shrine, I see Fr. Marzoff, the director, chatting with a couple of visitors in front of the information cabin. I stay to chat with him. There will be Stations of the Cross at 2:30, assuming there is a group of pilgrims who would be interested. I had hoped that I might be able to participate in some group devotions this day, but there are few people on the grounds.

It seems Fr. Marzoff’s parents lived in Watertown and were members of St. Patrick’s. His father died a few months before I arrived. We shared stories of the town.

He tells me that the Coliseum has been filled to capacity only about six times, most recently in 1997 for an anniversary celebration of the diocese. He mentions a picture in the Coliseum of the largest crowd in the 1950s when Cardinal Cushing came from Boston. I remembered seeing it.

The shrine really depends upon about 20 regular groups that come each year, especially various ethnic organizations. Some come in groups of 30, others have 300. They expect a really large crowd of youth and young adults on their way to Toronto for World Youth Day in late July.

Fr. Francis Menezes, SJ, comes by. He is from India, studying at Weston School of Theology in Cambridge, MA, and is here for the summer.

Fr. Marzoff explains how they do the Stations, and shows him how they make the announcement over the loud speaker. He fiddles with the equipment for awhile before it will work. Fr. Jack Paret, SJ, joins us about ten minutes later and says that no one is at the first station. Fr. Marzoff decides to cancel the Stations.

Fr. Marzoff says he had just come to the information cabin to change the batteries in the bullhorn that’s used for stations, and had ended up chatting with several people and giving them blessings. “The people were really moved by my blessings,” he said. “One 73 year old man, here for his 50th wedding anniversary, even started to cry.”

He tells Fr. Menezes that though Stations are advertised for each Sunday afternoon at this time, they’ve cancelled every week but one because of lack of interest. He wonders whether they should even advertise it. People can always do it on their own, and they don’t need a priest to lead it. In fact, most places wouldn’t have the luxury of being able to spare a priest. He seems settled, that except for special pilgrimages, the tradition of a 2:30 Stations is now over. He tells me of the old days, when there would be large processions of the Blessed Sacrament across the grounds. There are pictures in a brochure I have, but he says that’s all different now. We talk about the state of devotions today, and he asks me what I see among young adults and college students. Actually, I say, I see a rising interest—much to the chagrin of some campus ministers. He seems a bit skeptical, as he hasn’t seen any evidence of it there.

He leaves to do some other work, and I sit with Fr. Menezes and Fr. Paret for another thirty minutes. I recognize Fr. Paret from a video about Auriesville done by Bob and Penny Lord. He shakes his head. They should have come this time of year, he says, when the grounds are beautiful. Instead, they came in April when the weather was bad, and they had to stay inside the Coliseum for most of the filming.

He’s been here twelve years. He hasn’t really seen much decline during his time—the real hey-day of the Shrine was forty years ago, when there might be as many as 20 or even 40 buses in the parking lot. Now, on the best day, you might get two or three. He enjoys the ministry though. He talks about some of the different groups that come. Next will be the Boy Scouts, and there will be lots of confessions to hear. Some of the biggest crowds come for healing masses, and the confessions will go for hours. I ask about the “Pilgrimage for Catholic Restoration,” which I’ve read about on the webpages. It’s a group praying for the return of the Tridentine mass, which they celebrate in the Coliseum at the end of it. But despite this, his eyes light up as he talks about it. They were influenced by people from the Chartres pilgrimage, and so they’ve include a walk as part of it, starting at the Kateri Tekakwitha Shrine in Fonda, about five miles up the river. As many as 1200 people participate, singing and praying and going to confession as they walk along. A smaller group starts a few days before, at Lake George, and walk the full 65 miles through the woods following the route of St. Isaac Jogues.

On an island in Lake George is a statue erected by the State of New York to honor Jogues. He’s called the “discoverer” of Lake George; but he named it “Lac du Saint Sacrement.” Fr. Paret tells me there’s still a boat by that name that cruises the lake [I happen to see a picture of it in the Albany paper next morning]. He’s amused by Jogues receiving credit for “discovery,” when he was simply a captive passenger in a Mohawk canoe. I mention the painting in the museum which shows him standing in the canoe invoking God’s blessing as he names the lake. We share a laugh.

On my way out, I pass the old entrance to the shrine, down on the highway.  This was used in the days when pilgrims came by boat or train from Albany. They'd pass within these stone pillars and make their way up the path along which St. Isaac Jogues ran the gantlet.  Now these pillars are crumbling ... symbols of a shrine that has passed its glory. And I leave with a note of sadness, because this place deserves to be remembered.
 

July 1--The Journey Home

After leaving Auriesville yesterday afternoon, I went up the road, and across the river, and then further up the road to the Bl. Kateri Tekakwitha Shrine in Fonda, NY. She was born in 1656 at the Mohawk village of Ossernenon (Auriesville), was baptized in 1676 at the village of Caughnawaga near the Fonda shrine, and fled the following year to a place near Montreal that was also called Caughnawaga, where she died in 1680.

It's a much smaller shrine than Auriesville. A crowded chapel in a loft (with a niche shrine to St. Maxilimilian Kolbe, as this shrine is run by the Conventual Franciscans) a museum below, a gift shop, a larger chapel, open on the sides, for larger pilgrimages, some statues, the stations, and a retreat house. On the hill above the shrine is a field filled with metal stakes of various colors sticking out of the grounds. This was the actual site of the village, and the stakes indicate the post-holes of the palisade and longhouse poles, discovered during an archaeological dig. For more about her and this shrine, visit www.KateriShrine.com.

I just did a quick visit on this trip, and then went to KFC for dinner, and then back to the motel. I had purchased quite a few books at Auriesville, and spent a quiet night reading them. The night before, the motel was packed -- this night, a Sunday, it was nearly empty (and much cheaper).

I got up, weeded out the various papers and brochures and maps I wouldn't need, had breakfast, prayed, checked out, and left for the Albany airport. As I write this, I'm in the plane in Pittsburgh, getting ready to take off for the final leg of the journey home.

While waiting in Albany, I visited the business center at the airport, where I checked my e-mail and read some blogs. Today's news is that five priests in Albany were suspended, including John Bertolucci, a famous charismatic Catholic faith healer. Yet there are few details in the Albany paper, and the blogs add no more info.

My mind wanders to the question of how I will tell the story of my journey...
 

In an earlier age, to go on pilgrimage was to risk life and limb. The pilgrim set off with only what he or she could carry, without protection of sword or bow, with only the money that could be held in a purse. It was a risky venture, bringing to mind the exhortation of Jesus to the apostles:

Carry neither purse, nor scrip, nor shoes: and salute no man by the way. Luke 10:4

Today's pilgrims are often indistinguishable from tourists, with first class accommodations and checked bags, guides (who may not be Christian), and a fixed schedule with no time for dalliance. My parents encountered such as these on a visit to the Holy Land. As they knelt in silence to touch the star marking Jesus' birthplace in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, a group of tourist/pilgrims came in; their guide shoved my parents out of the way, loudly encouraging her group to come and touch; they rushed forward, gawking, eager to have something to tell their children; eager to get their money's worth.

Perhaps the Muslim going on Hajj best captures the ancient experience of pilgrimage. He may fly to Saudi Arabia first class, but once there, he puts aside his business suit and cell phone and dons Ihram, a simple white garment of two pieces of unstitched cloth. Thus attired, the businessman looks no different from a nomadic camel herder or a prince. He sleeps in a tent, walks on foot through the desert, and participates in all the rites of the pilgrimage as his ancestors have since the time of Muhammed. And he returns home a different person, honored by the title, Hajji.

I couldn't go on foot, nor could I wear a single garment for a week. But I went simply, with only a small carry-on bag with a couple of changes of shirt and pants, underwear, socks, toiletries, camera, rosary and prayer books.

I set off alone, though I would spent part of the week with family. I return alone, as they will stay with relatives for another three weeks. And the highlight of the day was spent at Auriesville, alone in prayer with God.
 

The July 1-8 issue of America includes a review of No Heroes: A Memoir of Coming Home, by Chris Offutt. Offutt says, "Home is a feeling, nothing more. Home is illusory, like love, then it disappears. Once you leave, you become a stranger."

That's my feeling after this visit to a place I once considered home; a place from which I was exiled when in kindergarten. A place I remembered fondly as a child as a place of happiness. A place to which I sought to return repeatedly--first simply to visit as a child; then to work after high school; then for college; then to pastor. New England was home, for ten generations of my family. This was where I must return. In any other place I would forever be moping beside the waters of Babylon.

But I leave now with a sense of detachment -- detachment from friends, family, and places. And with it comes freedom. That's the main thought in my mind as the plane begins to drop through the clouds toward arrival in Houston. The cloud is bright from the hidden sun -- it hurts my eyes. It obscures my vision of what is before. In two days I'll take off again to visit my brother in Atlanta for the 4th of July.

The news is full of threats and fear for the holiday. Yet George Bush today was both confident and defiant. I saw bits of his speech when I was at the Albany airport (until the cable cut out). Earlier this week he was scorning the California court decision which claimed that the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance was unconstitutional. Absurd. We are under God, whether we acknowledge it or not. The founders of this nation believed so, and they saw this not as triumphalistic, but as a cause for humility -- because the God whom we are under is the one who will judge "both the quick and the dead."

For me to be "under God" is to be under call ... under a yoke. At times I've wanted to run, like Jonah, to the uttermost ends of the earth. At times I've shouted out in pain and anger like Jeremiah, "You duped me! and I was deceived." And now I say with Peter, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life."