Making a pilgrimage in our minds can be one of life’s great journeys. Why do we go on pilgrimage? To find ourselves. To find answers. To find a deeper understanding of the foundation of our life. What is the foundation beneath the foundation? Where better to find those things than within ourselves? Identify your life’s essential journeys, even if the circumstances have been bitter.

Being mindful of the now. Being here in the difficulties of our adult body. Finding the essence of beautify within our soul. Feel which streams have flowed beneath your feet. Be aware of the roads your feet have walked. Notice how you’ve been weathered by what comes into your life. Like stones in the river, you’re made smooth, or the stone cracks and shows its beautiful interior or rings and swirls.

Where have you walked? On our journeys we go away and come back. We walk through joy and celebration. Radical peace and revolutionary upset. Abandonment. Imprisonment. Misery. Enclosure. Shelter. Beauty. Wildness. It’s been said in Ireland there’s a pub at the end of every path. Have you looked for the pub? That warm place to spend some time and recuperate before taking the journey back home again?

When life begins to feel small, find a horizon and gaze into the distance. This brings us into healthy conversation with a reality that can feel as if it’s closing in but is actually wide and open as the sky. What horizons are there in your life? When we seek calm and beauty, we watch sunrises and sunsets. We dedicate ourselves at the beginning of the day, and then remember the day’s journey at the end. We choose these times for horizon gazing just as the landscape is drenched with perfect light. These times are calm and glorious. Celebratory and reflective. Both grieving and rejoicing. Like life, our hearts brimming and then overflowing

Look for the conversation beneath the conversation. Listen for the invisible. The unspoken. Find the hidden underbelly of the epochs of your life, the very core of your personal pilgrimage.

The life you’ve lived is astonishing. The life you’ve lived has shaped you. The life you will live as you journey down future paths and stop in future pubs is in conversation with all that’s gone before.