Pilgrimage of Scholarship

There has been little proof of life from me in the last 6 months, and Geoff has been carrying the blog can on our behalf. You will know that we had a wonderful trip to the Brighton Palliative Care Conference together, and that he has travelled extensively this year. My travels have been more metaphorical.

For those of you who don’t know me, I am an enthusiastic walker. I have walked several caminos – 120 km walks over 5 or 6 days. The notion of pilgrimage is compelling. Walking without the destination as the goal, to be present for and intentional in each step as an end in itself, is persuasive. The old Latin origin of the word pilgrimage is of a ‘stranger or foreigner’ travelling in a foreign land. In Middle English, the term refers to travelling to a sacred place. Pilgrimage is a theme explored in many religious and mystical traditions. Here, it means leaving what is known or familiar to embark on a journey of discovery, facilitating a transition from one state of being to another. These journeys often combine metaphorical, psychological, spiritual, and literal journeys. I was captivated by reading “A Cave in the Snow” – the story of a Buddhist nun who lived in isolation in a cave in the Himalayas for 12 years on her path to enlightenment – a journey little of the body, and much of the soul. More accessible are books like “Wild”, “The Salt Path: and “Eat, Pray, Love”. These stories all share common threads of moving from one place or state to another. They tell of the trials along the way, the glorious highs, bleak lows, precipitous clamberings and easy wanderings. These stories have heroes and villains, friends and shapeshifters. Joseph Campbell distilled much of the essence of a good adventure story in his seminal work, which we now recognise as ‘The Hero’s Journey’. The reason the structure works is that we can all relate on a deep personal and emotional level.

Which leads me back to why I have been so ‘silent’. Just over a year ago, Geoff and I decided we would do PhDs. We felt we would be unlikely to see the process through individually, but we backed ourselves to do it together. So I am on the PhD pilgrimage. Or Philgrimage. There has been LOTS of writing.

The first step of a thousand-mile journey and all that. I’m only 9 months in, and already I feel my list of lessons learnt is almost as long as my Endnote library. I am probably closing in on 80000 words already. (Most of them in the delete box).

In a literal parallel, my brother and sister-in-law have just completed the Camino de Santiago. The whole thing. Every fabulous step. They have taken the extended family along the journey, posting daily reflections and a photographic record of the 40 days they walked. 800 kilometres is an unfathomable number of steps until you have walked them. When you start you have no idea about how the journey will unfold, and when it is done you are changed. The family shared in their own daily practice of reading their posts, a pilgrimage of its own, a simple witnessing to something big and significant.

Having lurched from one crisis to the next to write my master’s dissertation, I never anticipated the philgrimage to be a walk in the scholarly park. And so it has come to pass. It is not. While reading Tim and Cari’s daily posts, I was struck by how many of the things they pondered, considered, noticed and contemplated had parallels in the big and small moments of my philgrimage.

If you were to ask Tim and Cari why they did this, I am sure they would thoughtfully account for their decision. I imagine that some of the answers were there from the start, others were revealed on the road, and others still may be slowly sedimenting as they return to their lives. The why question has come to me often. In fact, it was the first one I was asked when I said the words, ‘I want to do a PhD’ out loud to my now supervisor. The answers are evolving. Some are about me and some are about the research. But here’s the thing. The why I am going it will not get me to the end. I am learning I have to walk each day, show up, get sunburned, look at the magnificent scenery, meet fellow travellers, help someone out, allow someone to help me, pay attention to my feet, and sometimes lie down and rest. After all, I have chosen to do this.

Watch this space. I shall send postcards from the edge.