Welcome to our May 2013 Pilgrimage Creations Newsletter. Read on to see what's happening at Pilgrimage Creations these days.

Finding your Camino Rhythms

Although the early-bird special for our seven-day Finding your Camino Rhythms package has expired, you can still sign up until July 10.

Preparation for Walking a Pilgrimage

Our next new offering at Pilgrimage Creations is our Spiritual and Practical Preparation for Walking a Pilgrimage, an online workshop. We have scheduled one for June 22.

This workshop encourages you to become more aware of your “call” and motivation for going on your pilgrimage. In addition, the workshop gives you many insights into the practical side of pilgrimage walks. We encourage you to face fears and emotional feelings and come to see them as gifts to help you to discover new insights. We help you to decide what things to take along and to discover and celebrate the gifts of the joys, doubts, crisis, and fears that will surely come up before you walk and as you walk.

In the past we have facilitated this workshop for many in group settings. Now you can take this workshop from the comfort of your own home at your computer and save the expense of travel and lodging. Click the link above or go to Our Offerings, Workshops on Pilgrimage Creations.

Walking classes

Petra has begun her new walking classes in Santa Fe, New Mexico. This is a walking class of a different kind. You will learn how to walk with more joy, awareness, and relaxation. At the same time you will develop your strength and health. Step by step you will experience how walking can also be a meditation.

Both pregnant moms and the several others have already enthusiastically taken part.

Each class session is one and a half hours and between 1.5 and 3 miles long. Among other things, you will learn and practice step by step walking meditation. Petra uses her doula experiences as part of the pregnant moms walk.

Classes for pregnant moms are late afternoon every Monday. Everyone else walks morning or late afternoon every Wednesday. See our Walking with Awareness Walking class page for details.

Petra is away for the rest of May. Classes will resume on June 3 and 5.

From the posts on Steps

This month we give you a couple posts from Steps, our almost-daily sayings, meditations, and observations on our pilgrimage through life.

Be different
Whenever someone goes off and does something so radically different, so contrary to accepted norms, so true to their inner desires, we all are moved to looking into our own journey down the path of life.

This proved true during our walk across America to Jerusalem. Following our dream, we made many think about their dreams too. People we talked with often said, “You know I’ve always wanted to …. I think it’s time to think about that again.”

Peace on it
Develop peace within. When things get you down, remember the peace mantra, “Peace on it.” Say you lost your job, Peace on it. Someone smashed your car, peace on it. Ah Peace on it. Now doesn’t it feel good to get really peaced?
- Swami Beyondananda ’98

Santuario de Chimayó

Chimayó

We hear of the distant pilgrimages in Spain these days. But there are also pilgrimages here in North America, in the United States, and in fact there is one here about 25 miles north of where we are in Santa Fe, Chimayó.

Around 300,000 people a year come to the Catholic Santuario de Chimayó, officially, the Santuario de Nuestro Señor de Esquipulas. It is known for its dirt that heals both physical and spiritual ills. The site is often called the "Lourdes of America." It is one of the most important Catholic pilgrimage centers of the United States. The sanctuary was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1970.

Unlike on the Camino de Santiago, those walking to Chimayó concentrate on Holy Week. Annually thousands visit Chimayó that week. This year they expected upward of 50,000 to arrive by Good Friday. Most arrive on foot after what is often a multi-day journey. Some walk all night and through the day to arrive. The roads coming from all directions are packed with pilgrims seeking to be healed and blessed by the red dirt in the church.

From the pages of Pilgrimage Creations

The words from the pages of Pilgrimage Creations today come from our Why walk to Jerusalem page:

“Why walk? We like walking. We like the lure of the next horizon. We like living every day differently, in a new environment. We walk for simplicity. We walk for unity. We walk for the environment. We walk for peace. We walk for both external and internal peace, but mostly for that internal peace that lets us walk in joy through our pilgrimage of life no matter the turmoil outside. We walk to meet all of you who are out there along our way. We also walk to experience the joys and adversities that make our lives stronger and more whole as we live through them. We walk to feel the warmth and strength of the sun, the gentle pushes and heavy blasts of the wind, the heat of mid-day and the cold of late night. We walk to live fully our pilgrimage of life day by day as we take each step into the East.

“We knew we would find a new place where we would stop someday. But for that time we were headed for Jerusalem on a two-year odyssey, a two-ear pilgrimage in the Pilgrimage of our lives. We knew that when the way said stop, we'd stop. But until that time we'd walk to learn from the road, to meet and learn from new people, to see new lands, to cross horizon after horizon, to celebrate life in all its many forms. And our aim was to live with what we have on our backs. Whatever else we “needed” the road, the Universe would provide. If it didn't provide it, we didn't need it. Our aim was to have only those small pieces we truly needed and no more.

“Beyond all that, we had an additional goal. Though we knew it is true intellectually, we wanted to demonstrate that one can walk from anywhere in the Western Hemisphere to Santiago de Compostela and then to Rome and Jerusalem and beyond [actually ‘around the world,’ was in the corner of my mind]. As we had given our slide shows and workshops in the U.S. we were saying, "You can walk from your home to Santiago." It was time to do it ourselves.

“…the bottom line is that we walked because we liked to walk, because we wanted to walk. With the walk looking at us in the face, I was apprehensive. But for that very reason I was excited to face it. We conceived it. We gave it birth. We were ready to live with it to see where it would take us. We intended to learn from our child as much as we feared it and looked at it with awe.”