It is Tuesday night and in the morning my dear friend Scotti and I leave for Italy.  This is a long awaited trip, one that called to me for a very long time and now we are preparing to leave.  Scotti and I have been friends for something like 30 years.  We have walked through joys and trials together.  She was with me through my ordination process and I with her through the diagnosis of her husband with a brain tumor and his passing.  She with me through marriage and I with her through breast cancer. Those are just the highlights, but let's just suffice it to say we have journeyed together for a long time.  We have been on the Camino of life together.

Last October I had just had surgery on my leg and Scotti was doing radiation therapy and I told her I wanted to take another Pilgrimage, this time to Rome and she said "I want to go".  We laughed about her going on Pilgrimage with me.  Her family lovingly, at least I think lovingly, refer to me as an RN (Religious Nut).  That started when I was in the ordination process. I think they have always been a little afraid that it will rub off on her! :) Well I told her we are going to have a true RN experience!

When my daughter Angie and I walked the Camino de Santiago de Compostella, a 500 mile walk across northern Spain it took about a week to see ourselves as pilgrims.  After 40 days on the Camino walking with other, we came to know and see ourselves as Pilgrims.  Now Scotti and I are starting our  grand adventure that for us we pray will be a pilgrimage. We wonder, when will it feel like a pilgrimage.  Will that feeling evolve or will it be there from the beginning?

Wikopedia says:
A pilgrimage is a journey or search of moral or spiritual significance. Typically, it is a journey to a shrine or other location of importance to a person's beliefs and faith, although sometimes it can be a metaphorical journey into someone's own beliefs. Many religions attach spiritual importance to particular places: the place of birth or death of founders or saints, or to the place of their "calling" or spiritual awakening, or of their connection (visual or verbal) with the divine, to locations where miracles were performed or witnessed, or locations where a deity is said to live or be "housed," or any site that is seen to have special spiritual powers.

Perhaps now you can see why we are going to Rome, Venice and Assisi to be pilgrims.  It will be a journey where we will encounter the foundation of our faith with the opportunity to visit the many holy places signified by the birth, death and spiritual lives of the saints. I just asked Scotti if she felt called to go.  She said well, maybe....you called me!  :)   Definitely we are looking forward  to visiting the Vatican, the house of much spiritual significance, being in the city during Holy Week and participating in the Jubilee Year of Mercy.

Tonight as we make our final preparations, Scotti is running to the store for me to get a coffee pot for Doug because the pot just cracked and I'm  hurrying to print boarding passes and start this blog.  We know that the best part of this journey is not knowing what we will encounter, just trusting that it will be an adventure and that it will be a spiritual and physical journey wonderfully shared by two friends.