Peregrinatio

When the ancient Celtic saints took pilgrimages, they did not travel to Jerusalem or some religious shrine, but to the place to which they were taken by the Holy Spirit.  They spoke of their destination as the place of their resurrection, a place to which they went for the love of Jesus.  Generally, they traveled in a coracle, a small round vessel made of animal skins stretched across a wooden frame and sealed with pitch.  The coracle had no oar.  The pilgrims trusted the wind and current to take them to the place where God called them to go, to settle, to live, and to die.  They traveled not to a destination, but to whatever.

Peregrinatio is the Latin word for the Celtic pilgrimage.  The peregrinatio is a powerful image of what it means to live abandoned to God.  As a boy I learned to sing the song, "I'll go where You want me to go..." but as I got older I wonder sometimes if I did not go too much of the time where I wanted to go.  When the Celtic monk put his foot into the coracle and trusted God to take him where He was calling him to go, we see a new definition of what it means to be completely abandoned to the will of God. 

Of course, none of us are going to build a coracle and set out, but the image of the Celtic pilgrimage speaks to us about what it might mean if we could trust the wind of the Spirit to take us wherever He wanted to take us.  The trite phrase, "Let go and let God" would take on a whole different meaning for us if we embraced the image set forth in this ancient spiritual practice.  Understanding where God wants us to go is not always defined by geography, but much more often it is defined by a life style which does not look back, or ahead.  Perhaps, to travel the road with Jesus without a destination in view speaks to the meaning of faith more than any journey to a holy place.