Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages [Promethean: The Created]

Open Development, Promethean: The Created

I took a class on Chaucer in college, and the prof taught us to read Middle English, which sounds more like German or Dutch than it does modern English. Chaucer’s most famous work is The Canterbury Tales, which, as you might know, chronicles the journeys of some pilgrims en route to Canterbury.

A “pilgrimage” is a spiritual journey, and in Chaucer’s time, it kind of doubled as a vacation; people didn’t travel like we do, obviously, and so walking to Canterbury or Compostela or whatever “holy” site you could think of wasn’t just about faith, it was also a way to broaden one’s horizons. People still go on pilgrimages, of course, and the term has different connotations in different faiths and cultures.

I’m not, myself, a man of faith; I’m a pretty dogged atheist. But I’m also a humanist (as if you couldn’t tell), and so, if I were to make a pilgrimage, to undertake a journey of greater personal or philosophical significance to me, where would I go? And what enlightenment might await at the end? Hard to say. But the thing about a spiritual journey, to my mind, anyway, is that the journey is at least as important as the destination, because the lessons you learn on the “road” provide the context for what you see at the end. So I could choose the end of a journey, and I could even choose the route, but I can’t choose those lessons, which of course is the point.

Philosophy aside, on Tuesday you get another Promethean update. And so, keeping this discussion of the Pilgrimage in mind, I have two questions for you to answer in the comments:

1) Where would you go on pilgrimage (taking whatever definition of “spiritual” you want)?

2) Would you like to hear, on Tuesday, about Roles, or about milestones?