Thank you, Victor and Edith!

One of the perks I enjoyed while serving the Presbyterian church as a minister and executive was the annual two weeks of leave that I received for continuing education. Over the years I used that for reading and study, a handful of conferences, hiding away to work on manuscripts and even a bicycle adventure to Everest Base Camp to study the place that mountains play in religious literature.

Camino de Sonoma, 2022

Over the last four years, before transitioning out of that work, I found myself exclusively targeting continuing education plans around two specific areas—pilgrimages and religious mysticism. In 2019 I entered a doctoral program with a specific focus on religious mysticism. The program was not a good fit, but I knew exactly what I wanted. In 2021 I had planned to use accumulated continuing education to walk the Camino de Santiago in Spain over a six-week period. Unfortunately, the Delta virus forced me to cancel that plan. But in 2022 I was able to walk the 84-mile Camino de Sonoma in California over a week.

During this whole period I would explain to people that my future growth was centered on these two areas of study and engagement—mysticism and pilgrimage. But when I would share this information I felt like I was really focusing on one area, but could only talk about it through two different names. It felt like one thing, but I had to explain them as separate realities.

That all changed about a couple of months ago when I read a blog post of Richard Rohr titled “Extroverted Mysticism.” The article (penned by Wes Granberg-Michaelson) was built around this quote from well-known experts on pilgrimage, Victor and Edith Turner:

Pilgrimage may be thought of as extroverted mysticism, just as mysticism is introverted pilgrimage.”

It was just the framing I needed to bring together these two growing passions of mine. Granberg-Michaelson writes, “Pilgrims move in two directions at the same time—an outward direction toward a holy destination and an inward journey seeking an encounter with the sacred.”

Crossing the Nevada Desert, 2011

I know exactly what he is talking about. I recall the hundreds (actually thousands) of miles of cycling in solitude on two separate pilgrimages. It is as if the more I stretched myself in an outward direction the more it forced me to take an inward journey. I still remember the 500 miles crossing the Nevada desert in August during my original pedal pilgrimage. I was about as “out” as I could be, yet the barrenness of the desert forced my mind, heart and soul into a deep, reflective inner dialogue. It is not an exaggeration to say that the experience was a weeklong pedaling prayer. I remember telling people later, “It was just God and me out there.”

Inner and outer.

I don’t think it is any accident that the two times in my life when I have had certifiably pure mystical experiences that they occurred not in the quiet of a familiar environment, but while pedaling toward the top of switch-backed mountains.

There is something about committing to an outward journey that positions us perfectly for the inward encounter.

Some days I will write about pilgrimages. Other days I will explore the world of mysticism. Just know that I am not speaking of two different realities. I am speaking of one reality with two different access points. Pilgrimages invite the pilgrim to explore their inner landscape. And mysticism opens the pilgrim up to share their deepest gifts with the outer world.

“Pilgrimage may be thought of as extroverted mysticism, just as mysticism is introverted pilgrimage.”

Problem solved.

Thank you, Victor and Edith.

Brian Heron

Religious Innovator and Spiritual Pilgrim