Going Home: A Pilgrimage – Ignatian Spirituality

Have you ever thought of going residence as a pilgrimage? Maybe you’re going again to the hometown of your childhood, or perhaps you’re going to the city wherein you attended school or received married or started your profession. If the placement has plenty of which means for you, why not be intentional about your go to?

• Make it a journey of gratitude. As you wander that location, make a listing of all of the presents that place gave you. At key locations, provide a prayer of thanks.
• Make it a journey of therapeutic. Rather than tallying up presents, determine the features of that place that harmed you—the positioning the place your home burned down, or the office that was poisonous, or the house wherein you endured an abusive relationship. Take to these locations clear statements of what they did to you. Offer these recollections and places to God and ask for continued therapeutic.
• Make it a journey of renewed relationship. Reconnect with individuals who had been key influences on you: the trainer who inspired or impressed you, the perfect pal from fifth grade, the priest who helped you discover course as a youngster or younger mum or dad.

I can bear in mind touring with a number of family members out to the “old farm,” the place my nice-aunt and her husband had lived and farmed for years. Throughout my childhood, that was a particular household gathering spot, and it held many recollections. We received permission to stroll by the pasture and all the way down to the creek—what number of instances had we finished that, what number of walks had we taken all the way down to the timber to choose pecans or blackberries? Family not lived there, and all of us sensed it might be the final time we’d see the place. It was a approach of claiming goodbye, and I’m so glad we did it.

Do you have got any tales of pilgrimage to your previous? What knowledge do you have got?

Photo by Susanne Jutzeler, suju-foto.

Explore Advent Attitudes that characterize dwelling as folks of hope. Sign up for the Loyola Press Advent e-mail collection.

Previous articleLooking Back to Look Forward in Advent Vinita Hampton Wright edited books for 32 years, retiring in 2021. She has written varied fiction and non-fiction books, together with the novel Dwelling Places and spirituality books Days of Deepening Friendship, The Art of Spiritual Writing, Small Simple Ways: An Ignatian Daybook for Healthy Spiritual Living, and, most lately, Set the World on Fire: A 4-Week Personal Retreat with the Female Doctors of the Church. Vinita is a religious director and continues to facilitate retreats and write fiction and nonfiction. She lives along with her husband, two canines, and a cat in Springdale, Arkansas.