My Pilgrimage through life – Part 1

My Pilgrimage through life – Part 1 – by P.K. Odendaal – April 2024

After traveling for decades to the Celestial City, a city very far from here, I have come to realize that I have to write about my journey to comfort weary pilgrims who have also chosen this journey to redemption, freedom, self-development, self-expression, exploration and exhilaration.

A pilgrimage on which I have been accompanied by the Greatest Of All Mentors, acting as my Lord, companion, friend and inspiration.

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I was partially inspired to embark on this pilgrimage some decades ago due to the inspiration I found from reading the book "The Pilgrim's Progress" by John Bunyan - a book everyone on planet Earth should read and which I might have read about ten time since. It is an allegory tale written as a dream while he was jailed for many years, because of preaching the gospel as a lay preacher without being indoctrinated first, something not allowed by the Catholic Church in those days. Even today, most churches indoctrinate their preachers before they may preach the gospel.

The story is of a man called Christian, and a few co-pilgrims, fleeing from the City of Destruction, meaning This World, to the Celestial City, meaning The Heaven, and encountering vicious physical enemies along the way, such as Mr. Morality and the Giant Despair, as a metaphor for spiritual enemies, on their journey. Some giving up and some persisting.

Bunyan paid a heavy price, being persecuted and imprisoned, for embarking on this journey, which seemed to him worthwhile and which proved to me to be exhilarating, profound, eventful and consoling in the extreme.

Why Bunyan was persecuted, confounds me. Why does one have to be indoctrinated to understand and explain a very simple gospel? Being able to read is quite enough! It is a very simple gospel, totally summed up in John 3:16 For God so loved the world ….

That is really all we need to know.

As a side note, I know that this excursion into some aspects of my pilgrimage, since I was young, will make up a few volumes, I having had the honour and opportunity to travel this road less traveled for seven decades and quite possibly for another few. Therefore, I will publish it as a series of articles as a preliminary work in progress on my blog.

Where and what is the Celestial City and how does one get there?

Who on Earth will travel to some distant country far away, without knowing where it, how to find it and what is to be found there. Columbus is a prime example, but many people I meet in everyday life are too, not realizing it?

This pilgrimage is a serious journey to a well known place of note, from which we never wish to return. It is real and surreal; practical and mystic, dangerous and rewarding, packed with faith and doubt, and packed with fear and bravado. It is the best excursion we can ever go on in our lives. It was and still is that for me – and it is getting more interesting and exciting by the day.

Do not ever look back or yearn to return to the City of Destruction; we do not have eyes in our backs.

This journey you might wish to take with me is not only of traveling, but also one rich in religious issues, spiritual experiences, history, war, peace and philosophy - sometimes plain and simple, and sometimes quite intricate and mysterious.

My readers are of a special kind or select group - people who are here on earth, like myself, to explore life inside out, or from within us to everything around us. Exploring God's plan for us and admiring His universe. Pushing the envelope of experience, knowledge and actions to unfathomable limits.

As they say: We are going for gold.

This excursion we are going on will be manifested in the form of my earthly pilgrimage with a bicycle ride on the French Camino from St. Jean Pied de Port in France to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. A journey of 780 kilometers which I am undertaking to manifest my belief in God's love and suffering for me, and how I can use that to make my love and suffering Godlike.

Some special subjects, people and books I will elaborate on are:

·   The Spanish Inquisition – the killing spree in which the Catholic Church and its military arm, the Jesuits, killed two million Christians, Jews and non-believers.

·   Don Quixote – a book written in 1605 by Miguel de Cervantes, a Spaniard, of a fictional person on a quest of becoming a Knight Errant, meaning a wandering and roving person in search of adventures to exhibit military skill, prowess, and generosity towards other people, to save them from danger and evil, mostly ineptly – just like we often naively do while we wish to do good. Don Quixote is considered by literary historians to be one of the most important books of all time. The character of Quixote became an archetype, and the word quixotic, used to mean the impractical pursuit of idealistic goals.

·    Architecture of Religion – I love Cathedrals and especially choirs singing in Cathedrals. I can sit and watch that for ever.

·    Søren Kierkegaard – a Christian existentialist; yes there is something like that in contrast to the more usual atheistic existentialists like Franz Kafka and others.

·     And maybe something from Nietzsche and the dialectic of Hegel.

I will intersperse the sayings of some of these sages throughout this article series.

You can skip what does not interest you, but be assured that these subjects and people I wish to write about brings us nearer to the essence of life itself and the idea of and eternity.

In this Camino journey that I will be embarking on shortly, I will, in the first place, contemplate my Celestial Journey and converse with God. I will also contemplate who I am and how I fit into the Scheme of Things.

Maybe you can contemplate that too, with me.

 

The Gift of Flight - Part 6 – Escaping death in the Zlin

 

The Gift of Flight - Part 6 - Escaping death in the Zlin

Published January 2023 by P.K. Odendaal

 

ZLIN 50-LS 325 HP

And so it happened that, after I got all my flying licences and flying ratings, that I got bored with flying ‘straight and level’. That was lesson one in my training, and I did not want to stop there.

The Pursuit of Happiness – Part 8 – Becoming a Friend of God.

The Pursuit of Happiness – Part 8 – Becoming a Friend of God.

We have now come to the end of this series, not that the subject is exhausted, but rather that this part is the ultimate happiness and joy any human can live for and even die for; the incredible opportunity to be a friend of God, or more specifically, to be a friend of Jesus Christ, the human side of God. Scripture says 'for in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily'.

The Pursuit of Happiness – Part 7 – Exploring a conversation with God

The Pursuit of Happiness – Part 7 – Exploring a conversation with God

How does one strike up a conversation with God ?

That was my main thought when Jesus Christ came my way some five decades ago, and saved my soul by God's Grace.

I knew or thought at the time that it would be a monumental task and challenge to strike up such a conversation with God, as I thought I would have to remain silent and allow God do do all the speaking, according to the false teaching of the Church I grew up in, which taught that 'God is in Heaven, and we are on earth, therefore our words should be few'.

The Pursuit of Happiness – Part 5 – Genesis to Revelations

Part 5 - Genesis to Revelations

It is not necessary to have or read the Bible to get to know God and communicate with Him.

Millions of people have found Him by searching for Him and He is always ready to reveal and even partially expose himself to those who search for Him, whatever the form or shape of that path may be.

Love of my Life – Part 4 - A poem

Love of my Life – Part 4 – by P.K. Odendaal – October 2017 

I wish I could die whilst knowing that I
Could never be seen to have breached that stream
Which flowed from my heart right from the start
And kept me awake just for her sake 

And indeed it did never stop my endeavour
To try and make sure I would always endure
When love's own sweet grace would shine on my face
Like a blessing on me to let me go free 
And let me forget any kind of regret
As the years would go by without any sigh
Or as troubles would flee in the face of such glee.

Life in the afternoon - Part 11 (Last) - Divine healing revisited ... and please don't feed the animals

Life in the Afternoon - much more than a story of soaring - and reflections of that on my life.

by P.K.Odendaal. 1 January 2012.

Part 11 - Divine healing revisited - and please don't feed the animals.

I believe in divine healing, despite my earlier unpleasant experiences in this regard, and God knew that too - so I had to start from scratch again a few decades later.

One evening during the closing service of one of our yearly conferences, I was suffering from severe back pain, which just did not want to go away. At the end of the service God said that anybody who had an ailment should come forward so that the pastors could lay hands on them and pray for them, and I thought, this was my chance.

Life in the afternoon - Part 10 - Faith and the blessed assurance

Life in the Afternoon - much more than a story of soaring - and reflections of that on my life.

by P.K.Odendaal. 1 January 2012.

Part 10 - Faith and the Blessed Assurance.

My reliance on intellectual interpretations to understand religion and scripture, was about to change drastically - as I thought it would - for the simple reason that only the mind can act on the normal senses which are used for intellectual activities. Spiritual activities are being watched by other senses like faith and discernment - and even many other parts of the body - known as manifestations or discernment in the body.

Life in the Afternoon - Part 9 - Friendship and Free will

Life in the Afternoon - much more than a story of soaring - and reflections of that on my life.

by P.K.Odendaal. 23 October 2011.

Part 9 - Morality, Free Will and Friendship.

Firstly, a not so short digression to introduce you to Morality and Free Will.

Every new Christian meets up with Mr. Legality from the town of Morality straight away, and every new Christian falls for the goods he sells. He is such a gentleman with such good manners and intentions. In fact - you will find no trace of sin in him, because he leads the perfect life. He lives according to a system of rigid moral and ethical rules and laws, and he thinks that his law abiding life will ultimately be awarded with the highest honours in Heaven, but what makes him really impressive, is the pretentious semblance of godliness he wears on his face.

Life in the Afternoon - Part 8 - The search begins

Life in the Afternoon - much more than a story of soaring - and reflections of that on my life.

by P.K.Odendaal. 23 October 2011.

Part 8 - The Search begins

On having heard the testimony of a friend, who told me that God is working today as He worked two thousand years ago with signs and wonders, I had to do something. I would not allow myself to miss the opportunity or possibility of proving this if it was true, or rejecting it if it was false - and I would do it the scientific way, because my training was strictly scientific and technical, and I knew how to prove or disprove a scientific hypothesis.

Life in the Afternoon - Part 7 - My testimony

Life in the Afternoon - much more than a story of soaring - and reflections of that on my life.

by P.K.Odendaal. 23 October 2011.

Part 7 - My Personal Testimony ... Freedom and Peace for ever.

I started this story off with the intention of writing it only in one or two parts, about a specific enjoyable soaring flight, but one thing led to another - as it usually does in life - and I am now find myself in Part 7, observing how the thought thermals of my mind developed around me. Yes, I was personally involved in this flight, but on reflection, it seems to me that I was also just an observer and an onlooker as this story developed and unfolded into much more than that.

Life in the Afternoon - Part 6 - Cry freedom

Life in the Afternoon - much more than a story of soaring - and reflections of that on my life.

by P.K.Odendaal. 23 October 2011.

 

I have inserted disconcerting paragraphs on freedom in the middle of this article recently.

Part 6 - Cry freedom.

I do not know much about crying and even less about freedom, but I can see that all over the world, people who are seeking freedom, people who have freedom, and people who do not know what freedom is, is Crying Freedom. I also Cry Freedom. but why?

Life in the Afternoon - Part 5 - Mapping

Life in the Afternoon - much more than a story of soaring - and reflections of that on my life by P.K.Odendaal. 23 October 2011.

Part 5 - Mapping.

Joburg ATC :    Alfa Sierra Kilo, no 'known traffic' to affect your flight up to flight level 150.

ASK21 (me) :   Copied, Alfa Sierra Kilo.

'Known traffic' - yes - that's the keyword and the reason why I wear a parachute when I fly a glider. If they do not know about traffic due to some pilot not calling them, it is not 'known traffic', meaning that if one of these unknown traffic objects hit me in mid-air by chance, it will not be their responsibility - it will only be me who will be doing the dying. I know that there are normally, over weekends, other gliders in this airspace who do not talk to ATC, so I wear a parachute in the not so unlikely event of a mid-air collision. If you go from A to B, the chances of a mid-air collision are very slim, but if you linger in one area going up and down and circling, it becomes a hazard that you must watch out for.

Life in the Afternoon - Part 4 - Masking

Life in the Afternoon - much more than a story of soaring - and reflections of that on my life by P.K.Odendaal. 23 October 2011.

Part 4 - Masking.

"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes - and ships - and sealing-wax ...
Of cabbages - and kings ...
And why the sea is boiling hot ...
And whether pigs have wings."

From the 'Walrus and the Carpenter' By Lewis Carroll

Today I have had a flying start. It is a new day and a new flight and who knows what the flight of my mind might bring. My hangar neighbour, Willie, has offered to hold my wing up, while I start the take off roll, which enables me to have this flying start without the concomitant yaw and balancing act I normally have to do, starting with a wing on the ground, similar to the yaws and unbalance I had, when I started off my life without someone to hold my wing up.

Life in the afternoon - Part 3 - I have a flying start

Life in the Afternoon - a story of soaring - and reflections of that on my life by P.K.Odendaal. 23 October 2011.

 

Part 3 - I get a flying start ....

The previous part ended with my prayer being answered ... and myself reaching home.

My words flew up, my thoughts remain below

Words without thoughts never to heaven go. (from Hamlet, by Shakespeare)

My story began with the glider reaching two thousand feet, and I, cutting myself loose from the surly bonds of earth, by shutting down the engine, but to have come to that stage, I had to have had a flying start.

Life in the afternoon - Part 2 - I must return

Life in the Afternoon - Part 2 - A story of soaring - and reflections of that on my life.

by P.K.Odendaal. 23 October 2011.

Part 2 - I must return ....

I must return ... how many times have we used that phrase and never got to it,  or did it when we should not have?
I shall return .... the words of the prodigal son will echo in my mind forever.

I will have to return .... how many times have we taken the wrong road or the wrong turn-off?

I am returning .... how many people have started on this road leading from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City like Christian ... and turned back to their own destruction, or how many would have been discoverers, had they not turned back when they were so near their discovery?

I ponder these questions as I prepare to return, as I know I should, and that expeditiously.

Life in the afternoon - Part 1 - a story about soaring

Life in the Afternoon - a story of soaring - and reflections of that on my life.

by P.K.Odendaal. 23 October 2011.

Introduction.

I took this subject name from my favourite aviation writer Richard Bach. The name of one of his short stories being 'Death in the afternoon - a story of soaring'.

In glider pilot parlance, life is up here in the miracle of powerless flight and death is down there on earth - running out of lift and landing in a field somewhere when you can't make it back to base.

And on reflection - that is the story of most of our lives - and specially mine.