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Pilgrimage

The strong will long to go on pilgrimage,
Assembling to reclaim their heritage
Of sanctity and stable permanence
Embezzled by debased belligerence,
For life is war, as Job so aptly said;
We battle even when we are misled,
But gaining ground in stout strategic march
We take unrivaled captains for this charge,
The saints who wrought first and thereafter taught
The words that from the Gospel they had caught.
Let’s follow, seeking health on stranger strands
At foreign hallows known in sundry lands.

The day arrives, the hour is dawn. We kneel
To make departure’s clamorous appeal:
In peace and health and joy may we return,
And favors for our benefactors earn,
Do penance for ourselves, and purify
The rot we’re called upon to rectify.

Step off! Attired in fitting modesty,
With pilgrim staff and jolly minstrelsy,
Our shoes well broken in, feet light to lift,
We now advance, our guilt cast off in shrift.
The miles are long, and there are many tests
Of steadfastness, but also many rests,
Encouragement and gratitude and jests,
Halfpenny illnesses and injuries,
Calm rosaries, stunned self-discoveries.

“Come to restore,” the call, “the rest will come.”
We walkers all are frankly venturesome.
For easy stretches, chat and smiles combine;
On daunting slopes, the breath is eased through song,
For no one gasps alone in such a throng.
In camp, to loosen leg cramps, good red wine;
At night, sound sleep—or watchful moments spent
Beneath the glowing adoration tent,
A pillar of fire in forest bivouac seen
Turning these darkest woodlands vivid green.

We reach our goal, just one of many centers
Where pilgrims go to meld with God and mentors.
Experiencing sacred mysteries,
We triumph in tremendous victories,
But forward gaze to future braveries
Of different or repeated pilgrimage.

Home at last, unscathed by Satan’s barb,
The palmer doffs plain penitential garb,
Resumes his daily struggles, prayers, and trade,
Not where he was before the trek was made,
But higher on the spiral thoroughfare
Speeding from homesteads toward Cape Finisterre.

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hallows: holy places
shrift: confession and absolution
palmer: pilgrim bearing a token of having completed pilgrimage
Cape Finisterre: point where the earth ends

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Margaret Coats lives in California.  She holds a Ph.D. in English and American Literature and Language from Harvard University.  She has retired from a career of teaching literature, languages, and writing that included considerable work in homeschooling for her own family and others.

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28 Responses

  1. Roy Eugene Peterson

    My admiration for your poems continues to grow, as if that were possible. I felt like I was one of the penitents on the pilgrimage from the inception to the higher plane of thought and existence after the journey. One of the lessons was not the dreariness of the walk, but the prayerful and anticipatory nature of the accomplishment. Every verse was both a joy and a revelation.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      You have the idea, Roy, and I’m glad you enjoyed the poem as a participant. A pilgrimage is like a military exercise undertaken because soldiers know they will gain ground faster than by diplomacy. They anticipate a mission accomplished! Try it someday. The Pilgrimage for Restoration website isn’t the fanciest, but it has both practical and spiritual information, and ways to join in from home September 29-October 1. I can’t do the walk this year, but I’ll be there somehow.

      Reply
  2. Paul A. Freeman

    I loved the shout out to Chaucer at the end of the first stanza, Margaret. Perfectly done.

    Fave line – ‘no one gasps alone in such a throng’. This really brought home the unity of faith and purpose.

    And the wrapping up stanza put the completion of a pilgrimage in perspective once you’re back in the post-pilgrimage world.

    Strangely, today I was recalling a five-day climb up to a dormant volcano lake in Darfur, Sudan. There were many parallels to your poem.

    Thanks for the read.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thanks, Paul, for noticing Chaucer! He had a good reason to write about a varied group of pilgrims. I’m sure your mountain climb also made good use of company. The end of my poem does indicate that a pilgrimage is of limited duration, with an effect on life afterward. It also reflects “The Stairway of Perfection” by another medieval Englishman, Walter Hilton. Hilton explains that progress in the spiritual life is like climbing a spiral staircase, where you periodically find yourself in the same place, but on a higher level. I applied it to making repeated pilgrimages as purposeful exercises. And Cape Finisterre is again from Chaucer, as a place in Spain where his Shipman had been, though I think Chaucer used it to suggest the place where all of us are going.

      Reply
  3. Russel Winick

    Margaret, your talent is stunning. Like Roy, I felt as if I was there. Brilliant!

    Reply
  4. jd

    I am envious, Margaret, because it certainly seems the poet was there. Thank you for bringing us so close to the experience. I hope many people saw the procession to a
    “higher spiritual thoroughfare” and pined for it in heart and mind even if still unconsciously.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      I haven’t yet been on the New York State pilgrimage (63 miles in 3 days), but the poem has touches from my experiences with Chartres (70 miles in 3 days), San Juan Capistrano (23 miles in one day), and a 7-mile local walk once arranged to make Sunday Mass a pilgrimage destination. For the future, maybe that intriguing Florida pilgrimage to Saint Augustine (90+ miles in a week on foot and by canoe).

      Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      It is fascinating how the grueling physical effort of a long walking pilgrimage becomes a higher spiritual thoroughfare. But as the poem indicates, there is much that goes into it–intention, preparation, exertion, and overcoming difficulties whether expected or not. Find an opportunity near you!

      Reply
  5. Joseph S. Salemi

    The poem deals with a specific pilgrimage to one holy shrine, but in a larger sense it is also a poem about the pilgrimage of life itself, the road here on earth that we take — hopefully — to eventual salvation. This metaphor goes far back in Christian history, because it is a perfect fit, and a natural parallel. Even pagans speak of “the journey of life.”

    The third stanza especially suggests that the difficulties and unexpected travails on the pilgrimage are very like the ups and downs of life itself. We take them the best we can, and trust that our loved companions on the trip will be there to give help and encouragement.

    Reply
  6. Margaret Coats

    Joe, you’re right that “life pilgrimage” necessarily enters into a poem such as this. It is too frequent a motif to be absent. And my reference to Cape Finisterre at the end explicitly includes it. However, I intended to avoid any interpretation of my pilgrimage as an extended trudge like that of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. Bunyan produced a much-read and highly influential story, but he wrote for a culture that had forgotten the practical purposes of a pilgrimage like that in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. I describe a trip of limited duration to a particular sacred center as part of life’s warfare. The pilgrimage is not the whole war; it’s a battle or an expedition. It’s meant to quickly accomplish important objectives such as those named in the second section of this poem. The next-to-last section looks forward to more pilgrimages doing the same in the future. Chaucer identified spring as a favorite time of the year for pilgrimage–travel was the Easter season practice of mortification as opposed to Lenten fasting, a good opportunity for the battles plus pleasures of pilgrimage. Thinking of the pilgrimage as a battle emphasizes the need you see for companions to share the fighting and the loot and to support one another in rough circumstances. As in the military, fellow pilgrims are not necessarily those otherwise close to the pilgrim. On my first Chartres trip, I formed a lasting friendship with a man who carried my pack as well as his when I couldn’t keep going. His wife and my husband were far away taking care of small children; they were absolutely necessary support troops, our benefactors who earned the merit of the pilgrimage in that way.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      To reject a more sinister idea of a lifelong (or longer) pilgrimage, I’m also using the militant perspective here to avoid false Vatican II ideas about a Pilgrim Church that exists in uncertainty, confusion, and misery as a normal and desirable state. This wrecks any concept of a pilgrimage that achieves its goal, and leads to perverted eschatology because it tends to expect defeat and despair.

      Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Yes, “Pilgrim Church” is one of those malignant ideas championed by Bergoglio and the Vat-2 buffoons. They are in love with the idea of confusion, trouble, uncertainty, doubts, and freewheeling “open-ness” — except, of course, when it comes to anyone questioning their own authority to persecute real Catholics. Bergoglio screams “Hagan lio!” but he crushes anyone in the Catholic hierarchy or laity who does not parrot the left-liberal line.

      Reply
  7. Brian A, Yapko

    I very much enjoyed this poem, Margaret, which offers a muscular view of faith which I heartily second. The opening line actually sets the tone and is basically the theme of the entire work: “The strong will long to go on pilgrimage…” which is completely at odds with the cynical views of the anti-religious who claim that faith is for the weak. Far from it as you adeptly demonstrate in wonderful, assertive rhyme. The structure of this piece mostly in couplets but the rhyme scheme varies slightly when we reach the fourth stanza — and then you have an unrhymed “pilgrimage” ending the last line of the fifth stanza. This stands out and, I believe, highlights structurally that the concept of “pilgrimage” is unique to each individual, but I would be interested in your comments on these choices. In a way, I get the sense of a pilgrimage proceeding apace in perfect couplets, but with certain surprises discovered along the way.

    Speaking not of surprises so much as buried treasure, I also love the allusions to Chaucer’s Prologue, the first 18 lines of which I memorized in its original Middle English back in my college days and which has never left me. Your lines “Let’s follow, seeking health on stranger strands/
    At foreign hallows known in sundry lands” gave me great pleasure.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Brian, thanks so much for your comment, and for identifying strength as my theme. It is strength of faith, to be sure, that supports one through the physical rigors of a pilgrimage. One of my “stunned self-discoveries” during the Chartres trek was my woeful physical weakness, carelessness about training, and foolish assumption that I would get through it because thousands of others did. There was help: superb French organizers leave nothing to chance. But how many kinds of bodily suffering tested my mental and spiritual steadfastness! I learned to rely on the strength of Notre Dame, who is “fair as the moon, bright as the sun, and terrible as an army set in battle array.” That was only one of several strengthening lessons. The practice of pilgrimage treats Christians as incarnational beings of body and soul. Both need training and exercise to develop and maintain readiness for battles we face.

      My chosen form is Chaucer’s rough-and-ready couplets, but I didn’t realize I had achieved his assertiveness until you said so. Thanks again! You notice that I allow myself some variation. The place where you see “combine/song/throng/wine” as rhyme words is what I would call a split couplet: the correct number of rhymes in re-arrangement. I justify this as a variation similar to rhymed triplets among heroic couplets, used so often by Dryden and Pope that no one bats an eye at them. The unrhymed word “pilgrimage” at the end of a section is different, and as you suppose, thematic. You are right in thinking that it emphasizes pilgrimage as an individual choice and experience. Also, that line speaks of “different or repeated pilgrimage,” looking forward to future experiences. I thought it appropriate that readers be left without the expected rhyme or rhymes, because these cannot be supplied until some future pilgrimage takes place.

      And I love your calling it a pleasure to hear Chaucer’s famed words echoed. That is so true, and such a good technique. I could wish to hear more classic echoes in what we write. It’s not as if our material to borrow from is limited. Let me say more after I look up what we’re speaking of.

      Reply
  8. Margaret Coats

    Again to Brian, with space for neat Chaucer lines:

    Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
    And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,
    To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes

    Lines 12-14 of the oft-memorized first 18 from the Canterbury Tales general prologue. I adapt them to my theme and narrative as my lines 1 and 11-12.

    And my lines 9-10 come from Chaucer’s long and loving description of the poor Parson, the one of his pilgrims who is most saintly. They are much farther down in the General Prologue, because the Parson had very humble status.

    This noble ensample to his sheep he yaf,
    That first he wroghte and afterward he taughte
    Out of the gospel wordes tho he caughte

    For my pilgrimage poem, these words describe the saints who are examples and therefore captains in our battles. Specifically for the New York pilgrimage, the ideals are the Jesuit missionaries martyred together with their flock of Christian Hurons.

    I will say it is a great pleasure to resound Chaucer’s ideal in his own words applied to saintly strength I can admire and commend. These leaders are to Auriesville what Thomas Becket is to Canterbury.

    Reply
  9. Mia

    Dear Margaret,
    a little while ago you had me looking up river cruises now I am going to look up pilgrimages. Thank you for all that you bring to the SCP that we benefit from.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thanks for your interest, Mia. Especially if you live in New York State, look up The Pilgrimage for Restoration. It’s coming up September 29-October 1, and there are several ways to participate. If you can’t go this year, there is still much of interest.

      Reply
      • Mia

        No sadly I do not live in the USA. I have left it too late to even think of emigrating. I have family in the US and it may have been possible years ago.
        I would love it if you were a neighbour!
        You make everything sound so special in your poems. I think that is marvellous and if I have learned from that I have learned something of real value.

      • Margaret Coats

        Mia, I think I am placing here the link for the “From Home” page of The Pilgrimage for Restoration. We’ll see if I did it right, and you can get the information telling you how to form an intention, pray, and so forth. This is how I am participating this year, so you will be my neighboring pilgrim if you decide to come. Some of my local friends are going to Mass together each of the three days, and we will remember you–together in spirit!

        https://pilgrimage-for-restoration.org/support-from-home/

      • Mia

        Dear Margaret, thank you!
        the link has worked and I’ve been able to access the website. Now reading about it
        how wonderful to be able to take part, totally unexpected
        thank you again.
        best wishes,
        Mia

  10. Monika Cooper

    Lovely: I so want to go on pilgrimage. It seems to have something in common with an austere retreat but it’s rather an advance, accompanied by musical gypsy angels.

    It’s an evocative poem, making me remember and anticipate many things. These lines were my very favorites:

    . . . or watchful moments spent
    Beneath the glowing adoration tent,
    A pillar of fire in forest bivouac seen
    Turning these darkest woodlands vivid green.

    And I love the playful closing note. Something of the bracing diction of Beatrice inspires the whole thing.

    These pilgrimages and processions springing up everywhere seem like so many starting points of restoration, counter-revolution, call it what you will. Some made of just a handful of people, others growing into formidable rivers. What a time to be alive. I recently met a young dating couple who met on a pilgrimage like the one in your poem, maybe the very same one.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      I have that same favorite pillar-of-fire image, Monika. I came upon that glowing adoration tent during a sleepless part of the second night approaching Chartres. It was clearly supernatural that anyone who had walked 30 miles one day, and another 30 miles the next, could stay up for any reason. Yet some pilgrims were rapt before the Blessed Sacrament and I had to be one of them.

      The current pilgrimage movement was, I believe, started by one man in 1982. His son had cancer, and he alone decided to beg for a cure by reviving the medieval trek from Paris to Chartres. His son was cured, and when he made the pilgrimage again in thanksgiving in 1983, some friends and neighbors joined him. Numbers continue to increase, with 16,000 on Pentecost weekend this year. And you are correct that pilgrimages seem to be popping up all over. Some are tourist ventures rather than real pilgrimages, but even these have spiritual value for persons who make the tour in a proper spirit.

      You mention retreats and processions as well as pilgrimage, and I think the three are distinct forms of devout life. Retreats withdraw from the world to a sacred place for spiritual refreshment. Pilgrimages are exercises of body and soul aiming to gain merit and favor. Processions are less strenuous and more formal ways to give public witness of devotion to God or His saints, by carrying Him (in the Blessed Sacrament) or them (in statues) into the world for all to see. So many means of blessing if only we can start moving!

      Reply
      • Margaret Coats

        Saint Michael is here for his feast day, and this sticky process needs to get moving pronto!

    • Margaret Coats

      Monika, trekking together today and remembering you. Please excuse my rather disgruntled note below, made when comments were stuck. Problem now corrected!

      Reply
  11. Laura Deagon

    Margaret, I am glad I persevered to get to your pilgrimage poem. I enjoyed it and prompted many visions of pilgrimages.
    I never considered some of my trips as actual pilgrimages because they did not involve long treks by foot, but in retrospect I think they qualified. As always, your poems send my imagination to new destinations.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thank you, Laura. You may have been on pilgrimages that involved spiritual and physical exertion to arrive at a sacred destination. Walking is typical, but for the classic pilgrimage to the Holy Land, pilgrims in the past usually did some uncomfortable seafaring. Authorities at Compostela in Spain will give you a scallop-shell certificate of completion for 100 kilometers on foot or 200 kilometers on horseback. It just needs to be an appropriate sacrifice! It’s good to think of new destinations; I know one family with long-range plans to visit many holy sites for upcoming vacations. Best wishes on your travel plans.

      Reply

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