TO BE A PILGRIM: TRANSFORMING OUR BIRDING!

Posted: 02.11.25 in Articles category

 

It made me smile. According to my dictionary, the word ‘pilgrimage’ means ‘the journey of a pilgrim’! But that got me thinking … perhaps there’s something quite helpful there. Maybe what makes a journey a pilgrimage is neither its destination nor the route taken, but rather some quality of the person undertaking the journey. Perhaps what transforms a journey into a pilgrimage, whether an extended hike in the footsteps of saints, a wander in the park or a birding walk, is the purpose and posture of the person. If he or she is open, seeking, expectant, engaging senses in a Godward orientation … if, in the words of Bunyan’s hymn, that is the ‘avowed intent’ … then he or she is a pilgrim and the journey, short or long, with or without binoculars, becomes a pilgrimage.

Travelling the Camino de Santiago (the Way of St. James), taking a few days along Saint Cuthbert's Way from Melrose down to Lindisfarne or one of any of the burgeoning number of pilgrim routes … are all possibilities most of us can only imagine undertaking very occasionally. However, transforming our many small journeys into fruitful mini pilgrimages is within reach of every one of us. What follows is a suggestion to enable you to do just that.

The transformation of a routine journey into something profound and nourishing begins with a pause … and a short prayer … nothing prescriptive, but perhaps a moment of stillness followed by something along the lines of, ‘Here I am Lord … offering myself afresh to you … please open my senses, my mind and heart to what you want to show me.’ This could be as you set off on your regular dog walk, your favourite birding ramble or somewhere you have yet to explore. That moment of quietness and that simple request, lead to the openness and expectancy that characterise pilgrimage.

 

Next, we begin … seeking to ‘notice’, to pay attention as we go (perhaps moving a little slower than usual). It was when Moses was going about his everyday work, tending his father-in-law’s sheep, that he ‘noticed’ a bush that appeared to be on fire, yet not being consumed. It caught his attention and, as he wondered about it, he was drawn into an encounter with the God of his ancestors. One rabbinic tradition suggests that the bush was always burning, but in Moses God found a person who was moving slowly enough and paying sufficient attention …to notice!

Have you ever noticed how the word ‘saw’ recurs several times in John’s account of the resurrection (John 20:1-8)? First, we are told that Mary ‘saw that the stone was moved away’. Then we read that Simon Peter ‘bent down to look in … and saw the linen wrappings lying there’. Finally, we hear that ‘the other disciple ... saw and believed’. These three instances of ‘saw’ translate three different Greek words. The first means that Mary saw with her eyes, ‘she noticed’ or ‘observed’. The second ‘saw’ is the word thereo, from which we get our word ‘theory’. Simon Peter not only noticed. He also ‘wondered’ what it meant. He exercised his curiosity and began to construct theories as he reflected. The word translated as ‘saw and believed’ is a different word again. It contains the idea of ‘realising’ or ‘understanding’. It suggests that ‘the penny dropped’ for the ‘other disciple’.

So, there is a simple outline for a mini pilgrimage: three ways of seeing (although this ‘seeing’ involves all the senses as well as intuition and mental processes). First, what do we notice? Second, what does that cause us to wonder? And, finally, (and this might be some time later and certainly can’t be hurried) what do we realise?

Pause. Pray. Notice. Wonder. Realise.

 

Steve Aisthorpe

Steve Aisthorpe, is Director of Kilmalieu, a retreat centre on the west coast of Scotland, a place where guests are encouraged to be still, pray, notice, wonder and realise

NB Even Sparrows will be running two retreats there in 2026.