The pilgrimage
Malin Kjelsrud, librettist and lyricist
Embarking on a pilgrimage is known from most religions. People have always sought their origin, a closeness to the eternal, which is sacred to them. A place where the distinction between earthly and heavenly is thinner than elsewhere, a place that tells of the divine presence in existence or a place of special importance in the individual’s life. Therefore, the goal that is most important in the pilgrimage is the way to arrive.*
In Norway, the pilgrimage tradition stretches back to the end of the 13th century, but people have probably sought out holy places for many thousands of years. Making a physically challenging journey can be done for healing, purifying and making a penance for something, but also as seeking comfort, forgiveness, and hope. A «side effect» of the journey are exciting adventures, coming into contact with foreign cultures and sometimes developing a profound nearness to people you walk with or meet along the way. One gets to test ones strength and to challenge the limits of the body and mind. Being alone, silent with ones own mind over a longer period of time is difficult for many, so a pilgrimage can be very useful and clarifying.
The pilgrimage concept has in recent years become very popular also for people who define themselves outside of an ordinary religious context. (Along the main pilgrim routes across Europe, hostels flourish, often with facilitated practical help, such as having their luggage transported from place to place while walking.) It’s easy to imagine that this increased popularity is a response to a changed world, and that modern people again feel a legitimate need to get in touch with something bigger than themselves. Bonaventura sees the soul buried in the sensuous world, dazed by worries and desires. That makes the soul unable to return to itself, as a picture of God.
Inspired by both Bonaventura’s The Journey of the Mind into God, and by Dante Alighieri’sDivina Comedia – both structurally and partly in content, we imagine the work divided into three textual parts. Neoplatonisms distinction between between body, soul and spirit / intellect was the basis for Bonaventura’s three-part division.
Bonaventura. Sjelens vei til Gud (The Journey of the Mind to God). I Jan-Erik Ebbestad Hansen (red.). Vestens mystikk. Verdens hellige skrifter. Oslo: De norske bokklubbene, 2005
The three-part structure of the work
1. Body / belief: the preparation and start of the journey. One focuses outward onto the landscape and is mostly concerned with contemplations of the beauty of nature. For Dante, the journey goes down through hell (inferno), but in any way this does yet not concern him personally, he observes and pounders on it more than experiences it. Bonaventura’s first step is to look outward and find traces of God in the outer world. Humans use their five senses to observe the created things, which are all pieces of God.
2. Soul / Hope: The way forward leads from the outer world into one’s own interior. The difficult middle part where one realizes how difficult and demanding the journey really is. One has to struggle with oneself and one’s thoughts, one is silent, introverted and meditative, trance-like. With one’s mental faculties one can derive the existence of a perfect being, God. But neither nature nor one’s interior possesses the absolute perfection that can express God’s being adequately. Dante climbs up the Purgatorio mountain. Bonaventura’s second step is, by means of memories and contemplation, to gaze inwardly to find God’s marks in oneself.
3. Spirit / Love: Completion of the journey, a walk towards the light, the sun, the home. Both Dante’s and Bonaventura’s final steps lead to God (paradisio). Only when the intellect liberates itself from its bondage to the material and its own ego may it, through a cleansed love, approach God and grasp his eternal nature. The ecstasy, which cannot be explained by reason, is a personal mysterious experience of the absolute, may arise. One realizes that God is the true knowledge and all knowledge leads to God. With scripture as a guide, for one cannot do everything alone, and with faith, hope, and love one can rise all the way up and behold the beauty in the end. Bonaventura ends the ascension with the ecstasy’s insight: God is like oneself. One is «at home».
LITERATURE
Bonaventura. Sjelens vei til Gud (The Journey of the Mind to God). In Jan-Erik Ebbestad
https://pilegrimsleden.no/no/about/historisk-om-pilegrimsvandring
Henning Laugerud, Reformasjon uten folk – det katolske Norge i før- og etterreformatorisk tid, s.273
Hansen (ed.). Vestens mystikk. Verdens hellige skrifter. Oslo: De Norske Bokklubbene, 2005
Dante, The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso. Penguin Classics, 2012. Laugerud, Henning, Reformation without people – Catholic Norway in pre- and post-reform,
Oslo: St. Olav forlag, 2018
Pilgrimsleden.no: https://pilegrimsleden.no/no/about/historisk-om-pilegrimsvandring (visited 15.03.19)