2013 Festival

Pilgrimage & Journey

Winter Road, Isle of Lewis: Jon Macleod

“The only journey is the one within.”   Rainer Maria Rilke

“Wherever you go, you take yourself with you.”  Neil Gaiman

“Always in a pilgrimage there is a change of mind and a change of heart.”   John o’ Donahue

“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.” Ernest Hemingway

“Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old, seek what they sought.  Basho

“We don’t receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.”  Proust

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
Took the one less travelled by…  The Road Not Taken: Robert Frost

A journey implies or suggests that things happen along the way.  We think of The Canterbury Tales, Gulliver’s Travels, The Odyssey, Pilgrim’s Progress or even Road Movies.  The story is more than the destination.  There are staging posts.  There is a quality of striving, aspiration, transformation and fulfilment.   A transatlantic flight for all its great distance is but a means to an end:  A blank trip.

Pilgrimage is an end to an end (a conclusion to a purpose) and synonymous with life’s journey.  It is a definition, destination and a reaffirmation of faith.  A physical homage to an idea or a calling.

Within the broad sweep of this year’s Faclan theme are the choices we make, the paths we take, the forks in the road, the footsteps we follow and the lessons we learn.

Events

Copyright © 2011-2015 An Lanntair