“In a sense, it’s the coming back, the return which gives meaning to the going forth. We really don’t know where we’ve been until we’ve come back to where we were. Only, where we were may not be as it was because of who we’ve become. Which is, after all, why we left.”
– from the TV show, Northern Exposure
Introduction
One of your most important assignments of this quarter is to develop your own plan for a pilgrimage. As you will be discovering, there are many kinds of pilgrimages. Aim for 6 to 8 pages. Be sure to e-mail drafts of your work to yourself periodically so that the work itself is safe. If you don’t do this and you accidentally delete everything, you have exactly one person to blame.
People take pilgrimages to be in community with like-minded people, to be alone, to ask for something, to approach the sacred, to express gratitude, to break out of their routines, to connect to a higher power, to add meaning to their lives, to ask forgiveness, to prepare themselves for death or a major transition, to focus on themselves (as opposed to everyone else), to fill a void, to commemorate an experience, to explore a beautiful/powerful location, to run away from (or toward) someone or something, and many other reasons. Pilgrimages also include performing arts – sound, movement, theatre, costuming, behaviors – worthy of exploration.
Some pilgrimages are formal, with rigid codes regarding route, behavior, food, colors, and destination. Others are deliberately informal. Sometimes objects are abandoned or collected; sometimes water or earth or oil is involved. Usually taking a pilgrimage involves some kind of challenge (physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual). As you will have read in the Sacred Spaces book, pilgrimages are not limited to physical or spiritual places.
Your Job
Your job is to create a plan for a pilgrimage that would be the most meaningful to you. Ideally, it will include some aspect of the performing arts, whether that is in the form of ritual gestures, specific movements, or sounds. Write down your reasons for going, and where you are going. Will you be going alone or with a group? Will you be part of a tour with a guide? Who is the guide?
Plan the route, including which way you will go, your stopping points, and your return. If it includes transportation (trains, cars, walking, airplanes, camels, whatever), indicate that. How much will it cost? Include a very specific budget for transport, food, lodging, and other aspects of the trip.
Name the important elements that you will need to include: list every sense (sight, touch, scent, etc.), your clothing, what words you will use (or silence), what sounds and movements you expect, foods that need to be a part of the experience, bringing something or leaving something, etc. In each case, discuss how and why these elements are important to experience a complete pilgrimage.
What do you expect to experience while you were there? Who might you meet? Who might you yourself be when you return? Read the quotation at the top of the assignment and see how it applies to your return (and your departure, for that matter).
Parameters
- One inch margins all round.
- Double spaced, except for quotations, which are single-spaced and indented
- Normal typeface, such as Times, size 12.
- Endnotes instead of footnotes, if you use them.
- Images are acceptable, within reason.
- Include an effective title. “Final Essay” is not an effective title.
- Include your name at the top of the first page.
- Include a map.
- Use page numbers.
- Place the budget section last.
Suggestions
- Do not write the introduction first. Write it last.
- Do not begin with a dictionary definition of anything, ever.
- Begin with a sense of what you need to explore. Make it relevant only to you, in that you don’t expect to do the pilgrimage that everyone else would do. Be specific about what is missing from your life that a pilgrimage would fulfill.
- Understand that your first section is about making the philosophy of pilgrimage relevant to your own life. Why is it that only you can do this particular pilgrimage?
- Cite sources from both the program texts and from outside resources. These do not all have to be texts; consider that many sources are sonic, physical, and visual. The way to cite a written source is to place the author’s surname in parentheses and to include the year of publication and page number. For example: (Turner 2014: 22). For non-written sources, check O.W.L. (Purdue’s Online Writing Lab) for citation norms.
Intro and Conclusion
The conclusion should contain no new information. It functions as a summative point that collects the ideas scattered throughout the essay and presents them as a coherent whole.
When you reach the end of your essay, you will have a good idea of where you went with it. Return to the beginning and prepare your reader for his or her own pilgrimage in going through your essay. What will you discuss and how and why? Write that in the introduction, and include some kind of a thesis statement that indicates where you are going. Make it smooth and make all the transitions clear and easy to navigate by the reader.
When you are finished writing and revising, make a pdf of your essay. That will preserve it in its final format and avoid any errors in its transmission to us via e-mail. Send it to Sean (williams@evergreen.edu) by Monday, November 24 at NOON. Late papers will not be accepted, and because computers have ways of messing up and/or destroying our best work, we strongly recommend that you send it by Sunday evening.