Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture Reading 2

After reading the book Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture, I now have a better understanding of what pilgrimage means. Before reading the book when I heard the word pilgrimage the only thing that would come to mind is the pilgrims that had Thanksgiving with the Native Americans. However, I now know there is more than one definition of the word. The word pilgrimage that’s used in this book is used to describe a journey that someone goes through within their religion. As mentioned on page 21 of the book, “pilgrimages of all types coexist in the same religious field, and each type influences all the others so that a single pilgrimage system comes to absorb “prototypical, archaic, medieval, and modern” features, with variable dominance at different points in time.” Each different pilgrimage has its own level of importance and beliefs that differ from one another. One of the questions that I raised during this reading is, can a non-religious individual go through a pilgrimage or does it just relate to religion? In my opinion, I feel as though anyone can go through a pilgrimage, but in this book, it makes it seem like it only relates to a spiritual journey that someone goes through. This book relates to class discussions and blogs that we’ve read and talked about because many of the blogs are about someone going through a spiritual journey. Some of the bloggers/ hikers only go on the hikes to find God, which is their version of a pilgrimage. And finally, one thing that the author does that I noticed is that they use a ton of examples in order to explain large ideas that are presented in the book. I love that the author does this because it makes it so much easier to understand when there is an example that explains a very complicated topic or idea.