Block Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture


This book describes how if a pilgrim is half a tourist, then a tourist is half a pilgrim. The author says, “even when people bury themselves in anonymous crowds on beaches, they are seeking an almost sacred, often symbolic, mode of communitas, generally unavailable to them in the structured life of the office, the shop floor or the mine” (pg. 20). I agree with this statement because I think that even tourists are looking for the same things that pilgrims look for. Tourists go on vacation as a way to find something different than the structured life at the office and to even relax a little. Pilgrims do the same thing. They leave on a pilgrimage in order to find something different in their ordinary lives or to relax by coming to peace with something in their lives.


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