A Quote by Terry Tempest Williams
If the desert is holy, it is because it is a forgotten place that allows us to remember the sacred. Perhaps that is why every pilgrimage to the desert is a pilgrimage to the self. There is no place to hide and so we are found.
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It's strange how deserts turn us into believers. I believe in walking in a landscape of mirages, because you learn humility. I believe in living in a land of little water because life is drawn together. And I believe in the gathering of bones as a testament to spirits that have moved on. If the desert is holy, it is because it is a forgotten place that allows us to remember the sacred. Perhaps that is why every pilgrimage to the desert is a pilgrimage to the self.
If this were so; if the desert were 'home'; if our instincts were forged in the desert; to survive the rigours of the desert - then it is easier to understand why greener pastures pall on us; why possessions exhaust us, and why Pascal's imaginary man found his comfortable lodgings a prison.
Over time, each day has become another stretch on an endless pilgrimage road. The terrain of this sacred journey has become fluid and ever-shifting. Every step of the way is an arrival, but not a place to linger.
Pilgrimage means being alert to the times when all that's needed is a trip to a remote place to simply lose yourself, and to the times when what's needed is a journey to a sacred place, in all its glorious and fearsome masks, to find yourself.
Immigration is a kind of pilgrimage. That's the way I see it. Just to go back to the desert, biblical metaphors, that's the story of great migration right there, the Old Testament.
I walked in a desert.
And I cried,
‘Ah, God, take me from this place!’
A voice said, ‘It is no desert.’
I cried, ‘Well, But -
The sand, the heat, the vacant horizon.’
A voice said, ‘It is no desert.’
L.A. as a geographical entity is very much a mixture of surf, desert, and the mountains, earthquakes and urban sprawl. Within an hour of driving, you can be out into the desert. I like that very much about living on the edge of a continent, conceptually is an interesting place to be. You're at this kind of juncture of a tectonic plate. The idea that the Pacific Ocean is right behind us, on a macro scale, is an interesting place to be.
The paradox: there can be no pilgrimage without a destination, but the destination is also not the real point of the endeavor. Not the destination, but the willingness to wander in pursuit characterizes pilgrimage. Willingness: to hear the tales along the way, to make the casual choices of travel, to acquiesce even to boredom. That's pilgrimage -- a mind full of journey.
The journey to sacred places is the most common way that people travel in India. They are always going on pilgrimages to sacred places. They are always undertaking spiritual journeys to visit the great shrines in the Himalayan tier of pilgrimage places; these places are called tirthas, a word that means "crossing place," a place where you can cross the river to the far shore but also cross over into another dimension of life. Cross over to heaven, in one sense it's used.
Why do I live in the desert? Because the desert is the *locus Dei*.
The object of pilgrimage is not rest and recreation – to get away from it all. To set out on a pilgrimage is to throw down a challenge to everyday life.
People find beauty in the desert. I don't know where they're looking because I haven't found it. It's ugly. It's nasty. It's dirt. It's desert. It's sand. It's rock. It's cactus. It's lizards and snakes.
A cactus doesn't live in the desert because it likes the desert; it lives there because the desert hasn't killed it yet.
Regret is a pilgrimage back to the place where I was free to choose.
People have responded to the pictures I make as mystical things, and they somehow carry the illusion further thinking that the place is this mystical, magical place. The desert is also a very barren place, a very lonely place, a very boring, uneventful place.
I am convinced that pilgrimage is still a bona fide spirit-renewing ritual. But I also believe in pilgrimage as a powerful metaphor for any journey with the purpose of finding something that matters deeply to the traveler. With a deepening of focus, keen prepartion, attention to the path below our feet, and respect for the destination at hand, it is possible to transform, even the most ordinary journey into a sacred journey, a pligrimage.
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