BILL TAMMEUS Finding the way of the pilgrim

Twice in the last year and a half, I have been in Plymouth, Mass., where the Pilgrims landed (after they first stopped at Provincetown on the tip of Cape Cod).
Mostly I was just passing through, having previously visited Plymouth as a tourist. But it's impossible to be in historic places without imagining what occurred there.
So while I was in Plymouth, I thought about the Pilgrims and the first Thanksgiving. That eventually meant I thought about many of us, because many of us are pilgrims.
The idea of pilgrimage did not start with the English Separatists who came to the New World in 1620. (Nor did the idea of setting aside a day to give thanks.) As the Catholic Encyclopedia notes, the concept of pilgrimage has roots tens of thousands of years old in the idea of local deities with limited authority.
"Hence," the encyclopedia says, "when some man belonging to a mountain tribe found himself in the plain and was in need of divine help, he made a pilgrimage back to the hills to petition it from his gods."
A journey
To be a pilgrim means to be on a journey, to be searching for a place, a person or even (and maybe especially) for God -- something or someone to help make sense of who we are and what we're supposed to be about. To live an unexamined life is never to be a pilgrim.
But pilgrimage can also be more interior in nature, as is the case with someone in my extended family. She has been on a pilgrimage recently back into her childhood to see if she could find the origin of a destructive behavioral pattern she's experienced through much of her life: When she's enraged, she often simply shuts down emotionally instead of understanding her anger.
Her pilgrimage, aided by a counselor, has led her to various events in her childhood that gave her a deep fear of abandonment. As a result of that fear, she wouldn't risk abandonment but would curl up, shut her eyes and hope everything either goes away or turns out all right. Because of the discovery she made on her interior pilgrimage, she's now trying to fix that.
We live in what's often called a "therapeutic culture," in which concepts of evil and sin get truncated into something less scary. In our narcissistic age, the culture encourages us to imagine that to fix ourselves all we need is the right therapy, self-help books, counseling, meditation techniques and, most of all, the right medications. Some combination of those things will allow us to reach the goal of our personal pilgrimage.
And what does the therapeutic culture tell us that goal should be? A personal nirvana, in which all our needs and wants are met.
Healthy relationships
So when we start a personal pilgrimage, it helps to remember that no matter what the culture says, the true goal is to make us whole (precisely the goal of my family member) so we can be in healthy relationships. The goal is not to find someone or something to blame for why we aren't whole, though it may help to know that, and counseling and medications may be needed along the way.
The religious pedigree of the pilgrimage idea is impressive. Islam requires adherents who are healthy and can afford it to make a pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, birthplace of their faith. The Christian Crusades in medieval time were first dreamed up as a way to make the path from Europe to Jerusalem safe for Christian pilgrims. And Buddhists make pilgrimages to Kapilavastu, Benares and other places connected with Buddha's life.
While many religions are familiar with humans going on pilgrimages to seek the divine, Christianity posits the idea of God making a pilgrimage in search of -- and to rescue -- humanity through the incarnation of Jesus Christ.
God as pilgrim
One reason this story has such pull on the hearts of so many people is its audacity -- describing God as a pilgrim seeking out people.
But, of course, the idea of sacred pilgrimage also gets twisted at times. In early Christian history, pilgrimages were meted out as punishment. This disciplinary system sent countless people off on journeys of terrible hardship to make up for their crimes or sins and to find redemption.
However strange and intricate the history of pilgrimage, it is an idea deeply embedded in the human psyche. We sense some emptiness in us or a profound desire to experience what the ancient Celts called "thin places," where eternity touches time, and we set off on our searches. It's an honorable instinct that deserves our homage at Thanksgiving.
X Tammeus is a columnist for The Kansas City Star.