A Viral Pilgrimage
Editor’s Note: We want to thank our writers for contributing unique, moving, and personal stories related to the new reality of a world besieged by the virulent coronavirus. We will be sharing those stories with you, along with our usual articles. We hope they bring you comfort, camaraderie, and company during difficult times.
By Elyn Aviva
Not long ago (though it seems like ages) I would get in my car to buy groceries. I would have a lengthy shopping list, which usually included such absolute necessities as free-range, organic, Omega-3 enriched eggs, grass-fed beef, and recycled toilet paper. At my favorite natural foods store I would stroll through the aisles, nonchalantly pushing my heavily laden shopping cart with its carefully curated contents.
Now, just a few short weeks later, I am in self-imposed isolation thanks to the widely and rapidly spreading Covid-19, AKA Coronavirus. Rather than hopping in my car and driving to my local whole-foods grocery store, I scan websites to find any eggs, meat, fruit, or toilet paper. I order online from whatever company will home-deliver to me in Cottonwood, Arizona. Often the website substitutes (or cancels) my selections because what I requested is out of stock, on backorder, or no longer available.
When the deliveries come, I have them left outside my front door. Then I carefully remove the products from their perhaps-contaminated wrappings, disinfect the packages, and scrub my hands with soap and water for 20 seconds.
I have felt annoyed, disturbed, irritated—and frightened. But then I had an epiphany. I remembered pilgrimage.
I have spent more than half my life going on, studying, or writing about pilgrimage—specifically, the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. The Camino de Santiago is the name given to a number of medieval pilgrimage routes that stretch across Europe to eventually arrive at the supposed burial place of St James the Greater in the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela, in northwestern Spain.
I first walked the 500-mile-long Camino Francés, which goes across northern Spain, in 1982. My husband, Gary White, and I walked it in 1997, and five years later we walked another Camino de Santiago, the French Via Podiensis, which stretches 500 miles from Le Puy en Velay to the Pyrenees, where it joins the Camino Francés.
On these various pilgrimages, I walked for weeks. And weeks. I lost my way. I found it again. I walked in disorienting heat, blustery winds, driving rain. I walked with blisters and rashes and aches and pains. I walked when I could barely stand. I walked regardless. After all, I was on pilgrimage.
On my first pilgrimage, the Camino Francés was barely waymarked, and there were no dedicated pilgrim hostels. In fact, there were villages where there was nowhere to stay and nowhere to purchase food. My companion and I often slept in sleeping bags in a farmer’s field, or under a church’s protective eave, or on the floor of an empty schoolroom, opened for us by the local mayor. Sometimes we resorted to knocking on village doors, asking where we could buy food. Each day was filled with challenging uncertainties.
Fifteen years later, when Gary and I walked the Camino, it had become more popular and had more infrastructure. Naively, we thought we would be able to find a clean hotel room, a comfortable bed, a hot bath, and a tasty dinner at the end of each tiring day. Soon we discovered that comfort, hygienic environments, and well-prepared meals were rarely available. We became grateful for a bed to sleep in, for cold water running in a tap, for food of whatever quality. We were grateful for a sunny day that wasn’t too hot, for a bit of shade by the side of the road, for feet that didn’t hurt with every step, for a day that didn’t end in exhaustion.
We gave up on having expectations—expectations that would almost always be disappointed. Instead, we learned to have an “attitude of gratitude” for whatever came our way.
When I looked at my response to the inconvenience of ordering groceries in this time of pandemic, I realized how completely I had forgotten the lessons of the Camino—lessons I had thought were forever embedded in my consciousness. Instead of being grateful that I had enough money to buy food, and food enough, I was complaining. I realized that I had gradually, unthinkingly, returned to my pre-pilgrimage way of being in the world. I expected a life of comfort, measured by consumer satisfaction.
So I mused: What if I thought of this current, plague-ridden period of unknown duration as a “viral pilgrimage”? What insights would I gain?
A pilgrimage is a lengthy (or not so lengthy) journey to a goal—a sacred place, sanctified by the presence of some residue or residual presence of the Holy. It could be a shrine dedicated to an apparition of the Virgin Mary, the place where Christ was born, the tomb of a martyr, a powerful mountain where the Mountain Gods reside, a healing spring.
A pilgrim embarks on a pilgrimage and enters into a liminal space and time where their usual status and occupation are temporarily left behind or become irrelevant. They enter into a “time out of time.” A pilgrimage is a shared experience undertaken by individuals with various motives traveling together, or by communal groups traveling together for a common cause.
Going on pilgrimage requires effort, and it may be filled with danger and uncertainty. Like Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Quest, there are tests along the way. In the Middle Ages, a pilgrim traveling to Santiago was at risk of attack from wolves and bandits, of cheating landlords and bad food, of shipwrecks and flooded fords. Even today, pilgrims face illness, theft, accidents, and losing their way, both metaphorically and literally.
Like a pilgrimage, this current pandemic provides us with many opportunities to experience fear and anxiety, uncertainty and risk, unforeseen dangers and pitfalls, unexpected tests and challenges. We have entered a liminal time in which normal social life is suspended—how long this will last, we do not know. We may be traveling this path with others with a shared vision, but others may travel it with a different understanding.
During my pilgrimages, I realized that for me the true goal wasn’t the holy place, the shrine at the end of the journey. It was the process itself: the day-to-day experiences and how I chose to meet them. What mattered was the Way, not the endpoint.
I realize now that, like a pilgrimage, this pandemic could be an opportunity for me to reconsider my life, my values—for me to journey inward and engage in deep self-exploration. It could be an opportunity to be present to the moment and to choose to live fully and gratefully in the present, without attachment to outcome—or to free-range eggs and grass-fed beef.
It could be an opportunity to determine not how little daily exercise and spiritual practice I can “get away” with but how much I can incorporate into my daily schedule—a schedule that now opens out like the Camino, a journey of unknown duration that stretches before me with unknown detours and missing road signs, with dangers and perhaps life-determining choices, but also with unexpected delights and insights, and with precious opportunities.
One could argue that people make a choice to go on pilgrimage, but that none of us has chosen to go on this life-threatening pandemic. I know that this contributes to my distress and anxiety—but renaming this experience as a viral pilgrimage gives me a sense of control over the uncertainty that surrounds me. This viral pilgrimage becomes an opportunity to be present to the moment and to practice gratitude—gratitude for today and gratitude for tomorrow, whatever it brings.
Elyn Aviva is a transformational traveler, writer, and fiber artist who lived in Spain for 11 years but now lives near Sedona, Az. She has written numerous books on pilgrimage and powerful places. To learn more about her publications, go to www.pilgrimsprocess.com and “Elyn Aviva Writes” on Facebook. To learn about Elyn’s fiber art, go to www.fiberalchemy.com. Elyn’s latest novel is The Question – A Magical Fable.
Elyn and Gary were interviewed for “Mother Earth’s Sacred Sites” global event, taking place June 1-5. For more information, go to: https://www.MotherEarthsSacredSites.com
