A One-Day Pilgrimage

Alexander Massey

Called to pilgrimage

In the middle of the Hebrew month of Elul, when in the Jewish world we journey inwards to examine the state of our soul, and do the work of personal transformation, I received an invitation to Hope4Creation’s one day Oxford conference: ‘Pilgrimage, Nature and Us’. I replied to the convenor, my friend the Rev’d Dr Charlotte Bannister-Parker, saying “I don’t think I’m an obvious candidate for this. I don’t have any expertise in ecology or environmentalism. But I’ll send the invitation to a friend of mine.” Charlotte immediately wrote back saying that I was very welcome, coming from a ‘faith perspective’. That little bit of encouragement from Charlotte was all I needed, and so I booked my place. My pilgrimage had begun – though I didn’t know it at the time.

In Genesis 12:1, God says to Avram “Lech l’cha - Go forth”. Avram is to leave the home he knows and go to a place that God will show Him. The Hebrew is unusual: it really means something more like “Go to yourself …” It is a spiritual message also to go inwards. My month of Elul was a rich period of preparation leading into the month of Tishrei and the Jewish High Holy Days, first Rosh Hashanah, the New Year that celebrates the birth of the world and the wonder of Creation, and then Yom Kippur, a fast day that brings the promise of God’s forgiveness, so that we might have a second chance to grow from our mistakes, and learn to live in greater harmony with ourselves, others, and Creation. So, I went forth into the unknown.

The conference began two days after Yom Kippur when, catastrophically, two Jewish men had just been killed in a brutal attack on a synagogue in Manchester. I arrived at the Friends Meeting House in Oxford tense and preoccupied, wondering whether I would manage to be present, and still not knowing why I was there.

As I sat waiting for the first session to start, I mused that the Jewish year closely follows the seasons and moon cycles, and that in just a few days we would be celebrating Sukkot, connecting to the natural world in a harvest festival. This was a fitting time for the conference, not least because 4 October is also the Feast of St Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of ecology and the environment. And it coincided with the tail end of the long Jewish season of t’shuvah, a word usually translated as ‘repentance’, but actually meaning ‘return’ to God and our soul’s true path. A question quietly formed: perhaps pilgrimage was a form of t’shuvah – return to earth, to our Source, to our true Nature?

The outward and inward journey

With passion and clarity, and confidence born of many years of experience as a traveller and guide, Esther de Waal, the first speaker, led us conference participants onto the path we would be taking together. Two phrases stood out for me: to savour experience of the natural world “with opened eyes and listening ears”, and, through pilgrimage, to penetrate deeply into the mysteries and blessings of nature and learn a way of “living from a transfigured centre”.

Beautiful.

If I had heard or learned nothing else from the day, these two ideas would have been more than enough to sustain me for a long time. I summarised a thought in my journal: “A pilgrimage is an external, physical process to accomplish an inner journey, healing both the external and internal.”

Life as relationship

Guided by their tradition, Farhana Mayer and Dr Engy Moussa talked together about humans having “a custodial, caring role for Creation, not one of dominion”. Islamic teachings often resonate with Jewish texts. Rashi, a key 12th century commentator on the Torah, noted that the Hebrew word for ‘take dominion’ (v’yirdu)[1] comes from the same root as ‘to descend’ (yarad). He wrote: “When humanity is worthy, we have dominion over the animal kingdom; when we are not, we descend below the level of animals, and the animals rule over us.” We have a sacred responsibility towards the natural world. Farhana warned us: “do not overstep the balance”[2]. Jewish tradition tells a midrash (a parable):

“When the Holy One, blessed be He, created the first man, He took him and led him round all the trees of the Garden of Eden, and said to him, ‘Behold My works, how beautiful and commendable they are! All that I have created, for your sake I created it. Pay heed that you do not corrupt and destroy My universe; for if you corrupt it there is no one to repair it after you.’”[3]

God walks through the Garden of Eden with Adam. Farhana and Engy reminded us that pilgrimage, and life itself, can be a sacred act of “walking with God - towards God”.

Walking, walking, walking together.

Walking in relationship – with God, with each other, with the earth.

There is a wonderful practice in Judaism called chevrutah[4], meaning ‘friendship’. It is when two (or occasionally a few more) people study together, slowly, methodically, mindfully. We read aloud a verse of scripture, weighing, and sometimes pausing after, each word. Our partner listens, and responds. And so begins a dialogue in which we learn about the text, about ourselves, about each other, about life, about God. We learn differently when we learn in relationship. Chevrutah is a relational model of learning. As I listened to Farhana’s and Engy’s conversation, I wondered what might change if I were to spend more time connecting to the natural world when I study, even when by myself. Perhaps I could have a plant by my desk, and contemplate it before and during my writing sessions? What if I were to spend time in nature before I had an important conversation, or made a big decision? What if I embedded myself in nature while I was doing those things? After all, Farhana’s message was that we are “part of, not above, Creation”. Perhaps getting on with my tasks and activities, and connecting to nature doesn’t have to be an either / or decision?

As I felt into these questions, I noticed something else was happening. I realised that I was returning to the pain I was feeling at the Manchester attacks, and to the horrors of the Middle East, to injustices across the whole world. To return to myself meant to dare to feel my wounds and pain, and the wounds and pain of others. Moreover, to be able truly to return to feeling our place in nature, we must be willing to feel the wound and the pain of the natural world, and the pain of society – as well as our complicity in the suffering, and the huge response-ability and opportunity for playing some role in their repair.

We can’t do this alone

The Rev’d Professor Andy Gosler, both a priest and a distinguished scientist, shared how his immersion in the natural world brought him to his faith. (How could it not? The alternative might well be despair.) Andy’s message was that “problems of climate change are too big for scientists alone to solve”, and require scientists to partner with a wider set of skills and perspectives. His idea of collective problem-solving also chimed with the mantra of my dear rebbe, Zalman Shachter-Shalomi (1924-2014): “The only way to get it together is together!” Relationship again. We humans need to be with each other in this climate and social crisis, to understand that we and the natural world inter-are[5] and depend on each other, and to know that, without God, we cannot do what is necessary to avert disaster. Like Andy, we need to be grounded in science, and rooted in God.

“Lose your head and come to your senses”[6]

The talks stimulated our minds, our spirits, our hearts. But where was my own body in all this? I wanted to move, to connect physically with what we were learning. Rabbi Judith Rosen-Berry began her session without speaking, sharing a 3-minute video of a walk following sheeps’ tracks from the remote, open hilltops down to the seashore of the Treshnish Isles off the West Coast of Scotland. We heard the wind whisper and the sheep bleat and the birds chatter, watched the waves move and the sun glint off the sea as the dry grass crunched underfoot. (I’m listening to the video again, while I write.) My breathing slowed, my muscles let go, the world widened. I rested in the space. Judith spoke softly, musically, poetically, of “reading the landscape as a text” (there was Esther’s “opened eyes and listening ears” again), and reaching a “state of profound empathy”. I thought of a verse from the Book of Job: “He teaches us from the animals of the land, and from the birds of the heavens He makes us wise.”[7] And I was grateful to Judith for the sensory experience of the video – it helped me listen with my whole self to what she had to say. As she said, “it’s all to do with paying attention”.

Walking towards the sacred

Dame Emma Bridgewater shared with us her “eco-conversion” – what a great word! I don’t think I have, in fact, yet eco-converted, and that makes me sad. There is so much that we need to do to help this world, and I know I’m not doing enough to help. I don’t feel I can claim the title of eco-convert without doing much more to tread softly on this earth, and to help put things right. Perhaps I’m on the path to eco-conversion. This conference was certainly part of my pilgrimage.

Emma suggested that a pilgrimage must have a sacred space as its destination. I can see the sense of that. But what if that sacred space is a church, or a stone circle, a space that might have deep significance for many people, but might feel, for me at least, like someone else’s space? Within Judaism, there is a paradox. On the one hand, the whole world is already sacred, as hamakom, ‘the place’ of God (Hamakom is even one of many Jewish names for God). On the other hand, nothing is inherently holy in itself. From a Jewish perspective, we make things holy, in partnership with God, through kavanah – ‘intention’. We make a thing, a place or a moment holy through what we bring to it, framed with an awareness of God’s presence and agency. Perhaps for me as a Jewish person, a pilgrimage needs a sacred intention – much the way one sets an intention for a ritual, a spiritual retreat or a shamanic journey.

Into the self and beyond the self

Charlotte, our host, drew the sessions to a close. “Everything is connected,” she said. How right she was – the day had been a lesson in that truth. “Eco-conversion needs to happen with friends.” Yes, I made new friends that day – strengthening me in my resolve to deepen my eco-journey and its spiritual dimension. Emma taught us about the value of making a one-day pilgrimage (actually, take your godchild on a one-day pilgrimage – I love that!), and I felt that was exactly what I had just experienced. What did I learn? That my spiritual life is incomplete without a healthy relationship with the natural world. That pilgrimage takes us into the natural world, beyond ourselves, and into ourselves. And that, in the words of the cartoon characters Calvin and Hobbes[8], “there’s treasure everywhere”, and I don’t have to wait for the ‘perfect’ conditions to experience insight or grace, because I can create internal conditions for this through intention and attention.

A few days after the conference, when I began writing this article, I looked back at Charlotte’s original invitation, and noticed a wonderful typo in her email: “Please pass the initiation on …”.

Absolutely!

Alexander Massey, Oxford 9 October 2025

[1] Gen. 1:26-28

[2] Qu’ran 55:8

[3] Midrash Rabba Ecclesiastes 7:20

[4] The ‘ch’ is pronounced as in the German name ‘Bach’.

[5] A term coined by the Vietnamese Buddhist Zen master, poet, scholar, and peace activist Thich Nhat Hahn – see https://www.awakin.org/v2/read/view.php?tid=2619 and https://plumvillage.org/mindfulness/the-14-mindfulness-trainings

[6] Fritz Perls, founder of Gestalt therapy with his wife Laura

[7] Job 35:11

[8] A daily American comic strip created by cartoonist Bill Watterson that was syndicated 1985-95.