Tourists and Pilgrims

My time at Christ in the Desert has been wonderful. Although it was difficult to settle down into the silence at first, it's clear that the quiet atmosphere has been a gift from me. And I feel, that for this short time, I've become part of the monastery community.

In Belden Lane's book on desert spirituality, he writes about our desire to reduce our religious experiences so that they don't have as much of an impact on us. It's the difference between spiritual tourism (merely dropping by and getting some pictures) and the harder work of pilgrimage. Reflecting on his visit to the monastery near Mont Sinai, he writes:

I fear for good and unpretentious monks like Elias [at Mount Sinai’s monastery]. Their religious life is seriously under threat by hordes of tourists like myself who make their way to Sinai every year. Their solitude is becoming almost impossible. Worse, the Egyptian government keeps reviving plans to enhance the tourist trade still more, talking of luxury hotels in the valley where the children of Israel waited for Moses to return from the mount, even a tram to the top of the peak where a gift shop would greet hungry pilgrims. If any iconographic image of Sinai can capture the spiritual poverty of postmodern culture, it’s a parking lot and four star restaurant at the site of the burning bush. Our substitution of consumer tourism for pilgrimage, of canned experience for life-changing risk, is symptomatic of our inability to entertain in any way the reality of our own transfiguration. (p. 136)

So I have to chew on these words a bit. Sure, there's a bit of tourism on my part. But I have come here to seek God and to be changed by God's Word.

And it drives me to examine my role at Sunday worship back home: can I invite the tourists to become pilgrims?