For those new Beyond Blue readers, here is a post I wrote back in January about why I love pilgrimages. If I don’t have time to fly or drive or take the train to a “God place,” I find one nearby, like the sea wall of the Naval Academy. I can’t count the number of conversations God and I have had there.
My post begins …

I’m a pilgrimage kind of gal. Throughout my life, I’ve flocked to places marked with divine fingerprints: Lourdes, France, where the muddy hole Bernadette Soubirous dug 150 years ago became a river of healing waters; Mexico City, home to the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe, who appeared to Juan Diego atop Tepeyac Hill in December of 1531; Lisieux, France, the birthplace of my patron saint, Theresa of the Child Jesus; and Calcutta, India, where I prayed with Mother Teresa and her Sisters of Charity for a week during Christmas break in grad school.
Pope John Paul II once wrote that a pilgrimage is “an exercise of…constant vigilance over one’s own frailty, of interior preparation for a change of heart.”