Tourists and Pilgrims

I haven't seen the paper yet today but if they weren't pressed for space this should be in it.

Tourists and Pilgrims

I took my family back to our favourite campground in the Finger Lakes Region of New York. This was our fifth summer in a row visiting there. We love it, the kids love it, we make day trips to various locations in the area, and we're always kind of sad to come home. As nice as a vacation is, it's not real life. It's an escape from real life. When we're on vacation we're only tourists.

Trips, journeys, vacations, they're wonderful things. Once the anticipation and excitement of Christmas is over my family starts looking forward to our summer camping trip to the Finger Lakes. But that vacation lasts a week or two. It's an escape, a change of scenery, a break from the everyday. We have a different experience there from the locals who are there year-round.

A book that I read while we were on vacation talked about tourists and pilgrims. It mentioned Trinity Church in New York City, one of the oldest churches in the United States, that sits near the edge of the World Trade Center site. Since September 2001, more than two million visitors a year have passed through its historic doors. Most of these people are spiritual tourists, nomads trying to make sense of the violence, suffering, and war that have engulfed us. Rev. Dr. Jim Cooper, the senior clergyperson at Trinity Church says, "They come. They come in droves. But I don't want them to leave as tourists. I want them to become pilgrims. I want them to connect, to know that there is something more."

We're all on some kind of spiritual journey. One researcher did a search of numerous articles about spirituality to come up with a definition and concluded that spirituality, in whatever form, is about making meaning. We're all on a spiritual journey of self-discovery and meaning but simply being on the journey doesn't mean that people will find meaning. When we "connect," when we discover that journeys can become pilgrimages, then we change from being tourists to being pilgrims.

As pilgrims we're not on a vacation to escape life, instead our journey embraces life more deeply. We find meaning in the destination of our pilgrimage and in the community of fellow pilgrims. Like the year- round residents of a vacation community, the locals, becoming a pilgrim is about being a year-round member of the community. It's about walking together through all the seasons, celebrating in the festivals, living through ordinary times, suffering at dark moments.

In the church we are on this pilgrimage together. We journey together, we change and grow and find meaning for our lives. And it's not just a journey of self-discovery and personal meaning. As pilgrims we find that God is transforming us as a community and together we work to transform the world through God's love and peace.

After our vacation we came home, and it's good to be home. For a while we were tourists but now we're back to being pilgrims, traveling life's journey connected to our community of faith, connected to God.

Family Camping

We're back. We went on our 5th annual summer vacation to Hickory Hill Family Camping Resort in Bath, NY. We had a wonderful two weeks. We didn't do all of the things we normally do, well some of us didn't. For some people it's enough to just hang around the campground, by our trailer of by the pool, and a lot of the time that's what we did. But we always make some day trips. We might just take a drive through the beautiful countryside around the Finger Lakes and the hills of the Alleghany Plateau but we also make some trips to various destinations.

We ended up at the Arnot Mall one day. We thought about seeing a movie there but we couldn't agree on which one to see so we skipped it and just wandered around the mall and did a bit of shopping.

Some of us went to the Windmill Farm and Craft Market.

We went to Watkins Glen State Park as we do every year and this year we made it all the way up the gorge and back.

We went, for the first time, to the Glenn H. Curtiss Museum in Hammondsport. I never realized what a huge part of aviation history this guy and this village are.

Some of the kids went with the in-laws to the Corning Museum of Glass. We've done it a couple of times over the years but skipped it this year.

We always go on a wine tour and tasting and this year we went to the Widmer Winery. They are, for some years now, owners of the Manischewitz brand and produce all of that brand of Kosher wine. We saw the facility and met one of the rabbis who oversees that production.

At the campground the kids usually went to the craft time each morning. They do themes each week and our first week there was "Death by Chocolate" week. The second week was racing week since NASCAR was coming to nearby Watkins Glenn.

During the Chocolate week nearly all of the crafts were edible. On one day they had a chocolate slip- and-slide where they laid a tarp down on the grass, sprayed some water on it, then dumped a bunch of chocolate pudding on it. Two of my kids braved the mess as did my sister-in-law. They had a candy bar bingo night where the price of a card was one candy bar and all of the prizes were candy bars. One of my daughters won twice, totaling 8 candy bars.

As we were leaving we booked our two weeks on the same site for next year. Yesterday after my wife finished cleaning the trailer so that I could close it up she said she could easily camp out in there longer. We have such a great time. The kids love it. We love it. Our 9-year-old boy says he likes sleeping in the trailer because we're all so close together. That's sweet. It's a shame we don't use it more but it's hard to take the time off. We've considered going somewhere close to town for a weekend, close enough that I could be in church on Sunday morning for worship and then head back again afterward but we never get that together. But even if the trailer only gets used for 2 weeks out of the year I think it's worth it. I'm looking forward to next year already.