Intro to Religion Blog

During class, we are discussing a few of the many definitions of pilgrimage. The definition that I understood the most was that pilgrimage is social re-structuring. The reason that I understood this definition the best was because of the Turner Model. I found this model very helpful in my understanding of a pilgrimage and what it entailed.

Within the Turner model, it is explained that the first step of a pilgrimage is to leave the world of convention. You have to cross a threshold, or a limin, and you are separated from what you know and anti-structure is created. Through this anti-structure, you build a new community. You share experiences with people who you build new relationships with. After this step, you have this metaphorical death where you become your new self. The last step is to return, and throughout the whole process you should go back a new person. Without that change, there wouldn’t really be a pilgrimage.

I believe that I have gone through this Turner Model of pilgrimage when I left high school to go to college. In high school, I did the same things every day and had this sense of familiarity. I had to leave high school to go to college, and during that process I left my world of convention. I left the security of my life and went out into the world. I think the moment I crossed the threshold was when I was all moved in my room, and my parents left. After this point I didn’t really know much about anything. It was a totally new environment for me. There was definitely a lot of anti-structure.

After a while, I did build a lot of close relationships with the people that I met and I shared many experiences with them. I changed a lot as a person in many different ways in just my freshman year of college. My attitude, my priorities, and how I dealt with things all changed in more of a mature way. I think that I really grew up. I think that my metaphorical death came when I got too much into the fun aspect of college in the fall. I realized that that wasn’t what college was all about, so I had to change my ways which is why I changed as a person. When I went back to my regular home life after my first year of college, I was really a new person. I kept all of my good tendencies and carried them with me throughout the whole summer and now onto my sophomore year of college. By the Turner definition, I did go on a pilgrimage such as Kevin did in the Unlikely Disciple.

The Turner Model and being able to relate it to events in my life really helped me understand the concept of pilgrimage. It may not be the same for all of the definitions, but it gave me a good idea of the basic ideas of what a pilgrimage is. I think that I liked this definition the most because it has order and structure which I am really big on for a lot of things in my life.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 28th, 2011 at 4:24 am and is filed under Uncategorized and You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.