My Pilgrimage through life – Part 1 - My Spiritual journey
In Spanish, "camino" translates to road, path, way, or journey. It can be used literally to describe a physical route or figuratively to represent a course of action or direction in life
After traveling for decades on my personal road 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, saviour, companion, friend and inspiration.
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 three times since. It is an allegorical tale written as a dream while he was jailed for many years, because of preaching the gospel as a lay preacher without being indoctrinated by the Catholic Church first, something not allowed by that church. Even today, most churches indoctrinate their preachers before they may preach the gospel.
The story is of a man called Christian, and few co-pilgrims, fleeing from the City of Destruction, meaning This World, to the Celestial City, meaning 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 pilgrims quitting 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, 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 is, 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 mystical, 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.
Also sometimes I will write quite humourously about things secular like in ...
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.
Do you believe in the saving grace of God through the sacrificial blood of Jesus Christ? Then you are on a Spiritual Camino like I am. But, I will not stop there. I will become a warrior in the spirit and join the forces of God to finally triumph over Satan and the forces of evil - in the spirit, but also manifesting or mimicking it in the body. I have no sentiment with an entity or enemy who commands his demons like slaves to destroy everything holy, angelic, sacrosanct and godly.
So, whilst I am on this spiritual journey, called a camino, I will join forces with God's children to travel the earthly caminos called El Camino, leading to Santiago de Compostela. Routes on which over seven hundred thousand Christians yearly travel. I will also take the physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual lessons that I learn on these physical caminos to enrich my own spiritual life and that of others.
