"Exhausted, Glorious and Fully Alive" : The West Coast Trail and the Spirituality of Pilgrimage
June 19, 2013, POSTED BY Rob Crosby-Shearer (guest blogger)
At a recent church meeting, a colleague noted that in Europe the Churches are empty, but the pilgrimage sites are filled to overflowing.
I’ve just come off of the West Coast Trail – 75km of God’s best hiking – an epic, remote, rugged coastline walk that runs from Bamfield to Port Renfrew on the west coast of Vancouver Island. The trip was a pilgrimage of sorts for me – in part to mark the start of my 40th year on this planet. Nine of us brave souls spent six days walking and building community together.
As I think back to my last week, there were many kinds of markers along the way.
There were the numerical ones – ever-anticipated (and sometimes elusive or missing!) yellow signs marking each kilometer. There were nature’s climaxes such as the majestic sea lions, a surging moment of power in the ocean, the ...
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