A Pilgramage to Eternity - Timothy Egan
This book was like a nice little 101 class on the big names and thinkers of Christian doctrine. Timothy Egan embarked on a journey along the Via Francigena, that officially starts in Canterbury and terminates in Rome. I appreciate that Egan came to the trail as a true pilgrim. Rather than just looking for a trekking adventure, Egan was looking to see if he could, or even wanted to, rekindle his Catholic faith. Along that road, he went through regions of Europe that prompted histories of the apostle Paul, Martin Luther, John Calvin, and even Dom Parignon; all figures that I know of but don’t really know about. It’s nice to have a basic roadmap of these kind of figures now.
I was drawn to the book because it deals with a long-distance trek — a topic that will always get my attention. There were some nice descriptions of the peace that settles in from the simplified life on the trail but its not enough to satisfy a reader that’s just coming to the book tall hiker tails. But it will probably satisfy most readers looking for a story of self-discovery and exploration.
It shouldn’t come to any surprises that Egan doesn’t end the trail with any concrete answers. Rather, he asked some interesting questions along the way, explored the answers that historical figures came to as well as the ones that came to him, and tried to make a little sense of those big topics of faith along the trail. What more can we ask for?
Other Annotations:
“Mythology is not a lie, Mythology is poetry, its metaphysical. It has been well said that myth is the penultimate truth — penultimate because the ultimate cannot be put into words” — Joseph Campbell
“Rome’s Pantheon, built by slaves a century after the death of Augustus to honor all the gods of the Empire, stands today as it did 1,900 years ago, though now it is dedicated to “Saint Mary and the Martyrs” — the first pagan temple to be transformed into Christian church. To throw out the old entirely would be saying our ancestors were wrong, and to realize that future generations will say the same thing about us. So we keep the best parts, and believe little lies in service of a larger truth, or so we hope.
“Each version of religion is trying to get at the same “ultimate” that cannot be put into words. Those words evolve to match how that society operates.”
“You don’t solve a labyrinth. You sacrifice for others. When you run your fingers over the grooves of pilgrims past, you’re humbled any the not-knowing, the lack of direction. You need courage to enter and help to exit, though most Catholics would say once you’re in, you never get out”
For months, every step taken was in the direction of Rome, the complexity of life simplified to a journey, one of the oldest of human callings. Each dawn promised something new or startling in a wondrous part of the Old World. Each day Brough some twist from nature, some quizzical artifact from the past, a small personal challenge”