“Pilgrimage in that moment seemed less to me like exteriorized mysticism and more a rite of remembrance. The world would have us forget what is painful. It would have us move on and be free of the past; but both as individuals and societies, we have our loyalties to what we have known and endured. Pilgrimage gave us the illusion of a forward movement across space, even as it allowed an inner journey toward communion with our past. It was a crystallization of the poet Joseph Brodsky’s idea that “if there is any substitute for love, it’s memory.””

Taseer, Aatish Ali. A Pilgrimage Year. New York Times Style Magazine. 9 November 2023. <viewed online 12 November 2023 at https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/11/09/t-magazine/travel-bolivia-mongolia-iraq.html&gt;

In pilgrimage our bodies move forward, and our hearts move inward or outward at the same time. I think he’s saying here that our love for God and the saints (however defined) moves us to want to be where they were (are?) so that we can ‘commune with our past’.