The Way of a Pilgrim: Session 1

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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James Finley (0:08)

Greetings, I'm Jim Finley.

Kirsten Oates (0:11)

And I'm Kirsten Oates.

James Finley (0:13)

Welcome to Turning to the Mystics.

Greetings, everyone, and welcome to our time together, turning for trustworthy guidance to one of the great classic works in the Christian mystical tradition, The Way of a Pilgrim. In the previous session, Kirsten and I kind of laid the groundwork for the background of this work. So indicating now, as I said there, that I'm gonna kind of walk paragraph by paragraph through the first chapter.

And I'll be sharing with you what it evokes in me. So hopefully as you listen, you can see what it might evoke in you as a source of your own guidance in your search for God. The Pilgrim begins.

By the grace of God, I am a Christian man. By my actions, a great sinner. And by calling a homeless wanderer of the humblest birth who roams from place to place, my worldly goods are a knapsack with some dried bread in it on my back and in my breast pocket a Bible, and that is all.

So in the very beginning, the Pilgrim sets a tone for the whole story and really is going to say ultimately the tone for our story, the ultimate dimensions of our story. In this great truth that God is love, and when love touches suffering, the suffering turns the love into mercy. And so the Pilgrim's solace, the Pilgrim's peace of mind is in the mercy of God, for him is infinitely precious as the beloved in the midst of his wayward ways and his brokenness, which is the essence of the gospel, the good news, sets a tone for it.

And he says he's a wanderer of the humblest birth. And here I would say we're looking for the ways in which it's obviously, in the literal sense, our life is very different than the Pilgrim's life. And for example, I'm not a wanderer. I'm sitting here in my home, living here for 30 years. And chances are, too, you're living in your home, apartment, or if you live. But we're all a wanderer in a different sense, in an interior sense. That is, St. Augustine, you made our hearts for thee, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in thee. And so we're on this pilgrimage, finding our way to this homeland, of learning to rest in God, who's unexplainably already resting in us. God's resting in us as the beloved, and we, with God's grace, are seeking to be healed from all that hinders us from resting in God who's resting in us.

And this is the pilgrimage that we're on, this kind of this winding path toward this realization. And also, as we're going to see here, too, is that this homeland is not just the ultimacy of it, it just isn't something that's actualized in its fullness in death when we cross over into glory. But it can be intimately and mysteriously realized here in Via, Homo Viator, while we're still on the way, we can realize the homecoming that we're searching for is already taking place. And this is what the whole story is about, really, this way. There's a book I like very much on Buddhism by Baum, BHM on the Middle Way. And he says the thing about Buddhism is the teachings of the Buddha is a heightened sense of ambivalence between means and ends. And the same is true of the gospel. That the path that leads toward the fulfillment, this infinite union with the infinite presence of God, starts welling up beneath our feet on the path in which we're searching for it. So there's this kind of realized eschatology, this realization of what we're searching for is already here, or it's already found us, and it's drawing us towards itself. And so the author, The Way of a Pilgrim, sets this whole tone of interiority of our life and how God is present in our life and guiding us. And we would say here, too, then, as we listen to these teachings and with all these mystics, the light that shines out from the teaching is illuminating our own paths and the sincerity which even draws us to be touched by the beauty of these teachings, which bears witness to that we're already on this path of which the pilgrim speaks this way.

When he says that his worldly goods are a knapsack with some dried bread in it on his back and in my breast pocket a Bible and that is all, is the dried crust of bread, again, it's very different for us. My worldly goods, because I'm sitting here, my worldly goods aren't reduced to some dried bread in it because I'm looking at my furniture in the living room. I have a lot of clothes in my closet, you too probably, and you try to be sensitive and sensitive to those who have less and all of that. But here's the whole point, the deeper level, is that the dried bread in it on his back sustains his bodily existence and his passage through time from birth to death. So as long as you can realize that all your worldly possessions, no matter how big your house is and how many clothes in your closet, when you really look at it really, it's just sustaining you through your brief passage through time from birth to death. And just be grateful for it. Be grateful for it, be responsible for it. But don't base your life on it. Don't base, as if somehow the more you have, the more you are. Because pretty soon you won't be here anymore. I won't either. And we're right now in via on this bodily journey, being led by God into our homeland in God, who's already at home in us. And we're seeking to find our way home to rest in this oneness this way, which is the path. And he says, and over his breast pocket, a Bible that is over his heart is his Bible. And the heart is the revelation of infinite love to the pilgrim as being the beloved of infinite love. And this is the deathless beauty of himself. And again, we have over our heart the revelation that in Jesus is revealed that God's response to us in our dilemma, that is in our confusion, in our wayward ways, that God's response to us in our dilemma is to become identified with us as precious in the midst of our dilemma this way. And I would give another insight into this too, which is the heart of the gospel. You know, sometimes, I see this a lot in psychotherapy too, but let's say you're really burdened by something. And let's say you're burdened by a certain habit of your mind and heart that you know is compromising who you deep down really are and are called to be. You know it's something that is hurtful to you bodily being, emotionally or to another person. And like the thorn in the flesh, you can't quite get over it. You can't get past it. There's maybe a lot of shame around it this way. And so you're sharing this with a trustworthy person.