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Pilgrimage of a Soul: Contemplative Spirituality for the Active Life

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This book is about a journey. It doesn't serve as a handbook for contemplative faith, but instead tells the story of a sabbatical that Phileena took several years back and how it affected her forever. During this time, Phileena and her husband took a month long pilgrimage trek to El Camino de Santiago. They also spent an extended stay at Duke University directly afterwards. During this time Phileena went through what St. John of the Cross called the "Dark Night of the Soul". The story of pilgrimage and sabbatical takes us through a deep personal journey.

Pilgrimage of a Soul is a personal book. It is a book about one person interacting with the Creator of the universe. While the praxis side of contemplative spirituality is in the book, if you are expecting a paint by numbers by a famous "justice'er", it's not going to happen. In the end, Phileena shows us that this is a long and arduous process. It is worth it, but it takes a willingness to rethink just about everything and allow Christ into the very inner workings of the heart and mind.

One of the encouraging things to me about our church is how many folks are structuring their lives in direct response to their faith in Jesus. There is a genuine desire to journey along the narrow way of discipleship despite hardships and sacrifices. Careers, housing, education and neighborhood involvement are all issues I observe people wrestling with in light of their allegiance to Jesus.

Given the age of many in our church an outside observer could mistake this zeal for youthful idealism though I think something deeper is at play. Even so, I sometimes wonder how a young person's wide-eyed devotion to Christ can be sustained over the long haul. In other words, what are the practices and rhythms that can breath life into the Christian as adrenaline and naivete fade?

This is the type of question, born from years of experience, that weave throughout Phileena Heuertz's first book. Huertz has spent the past fifteen years with Word Made Flesh, "an international community serving Christ among the most vulnerable of the world's poor." After many years of service she and her husband took a five month sabbatical; the first month was spent on a pilgrimage along El Camino de Santiago and the remaining time was spent at a retreat cottage in North Carolina.

Heuertz organizes her book along seven movements of the contemplative spirituality that have come to sustain her work among the poor. These movements are described within the narrative of the author's pilgrimage and sabbatical as she experiences the dark night of the soul known by so many Christians in the past. (I'm sure the dark night is still experienced by many Christians, we simply don't understand or acknowledge this painful aspect of discipleship to Jesus.) Pilgrimage of a Soul isn't quite a memoir though Heuertz includes enough personal stories to give the seven movements tangible context. Less a prescription for the young and passionate Christian, the book is a description of the process- sometimes painful- of being reborn to greater union with God.

The world needs more devoted people dedicated to pursuing the mission of God wherever it takes them. Even more, our world needs women and men whose lives are caught up in ongoing transformation in Christ. This alone will sustain the Christian for a life of service. Pilgrimage of a Soul is a gift both to the wide-eyed novice on this journey and the weathered pilgrim in the midst of a dark night.

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A review copy of this book was sent to me upon request by IVP Books.

If you dare to follow in Phileena Heuertz's footsteps you will be following in the footsteps of countless Christian pilgrims over the many centuries that date back to Christ.

The question she poses - implicitly, gently - in this forthright, disarming, humble and thoroughly rich book is whether we are up to the task of pilgrimage, whether we are up to tasks of following Christ wherever he might lead. Because to follow Christ, as Phileena learned during her two pilgrimmages - one in the quiet of a cottage and the other on the Camino de Santiago - is to follow one who will most likely do violence to the preconceived notions of your life... especially religious ones.

Phileena's struggles, so bluntly stated in this memoir/confession/exhortation/spiritual guide, are many. They are born of societal, cultural, and religious influences. They are born of the human condition. But what Phileena, along with her husband Chris, does is to be discontent in her discontentedness. She refuses to sweep questions and pain and uncertainty and faith under the rug or into the subconscious or off until tomorrow. She sets off on pilgrimage. And as she writes, a pilgrimage is not a round trip. So we get the privilege of joining her on her journey and as she wrestles with her questions she ever so gently encourages us to wrestle with ours.

This is not a book to be read quickly. It is best absorbed bit by bit. Step by step even. As if on pilgrimage because, in fact, that is what we are on when we sign up to follow Jesus.

The great news, the joyful news is that our journey with him is rich and rewarding and if we have just that itty bitty smidge of faith wonders can happen. Or at least it seems to this reader that is one of the things that Phileena learned.

I read a book this Summer by Phileena Heuertz called Pilgrimage of a Soul: Contemplative Spirituality for the Active Life. I thought it would be appropriate because a. I'm Spiritual and b. I'm active.

Contemplation and action seem often to be two verbs that produce a tention in my life that I struggle to know what to do with. How do I bring together seeming opposites? How do I leave space for both without shutting one down in order to make room for the other? Phileena very beautifully weaves her story of struggle, of an actual pilgrimage, and of some make-or-break moments into something very readable and understandable.

I was challenged with the amount of research she did of others living hundreds of years before us living in the same struggle. It was encouraging that it is not merely our modernity and increased technology that causes the tension. It's something that others have struggled through for hundreds of years.

As I read about the physical struggle of her Pilgrimage on the Camino in Spain paralleled with her spirituality it increased understanding of the journey because sometimes we can better process our spirituality in light of something physical. It gives legs, so to speak, to the intangibles of something so internal. Learning to live one's spirituality amidst a busy lifestyle is something each individual has to learn based on trial and error, learning one's limits, and being open to making room for what's most important.

If you have ever found yourself smack dab in the middle of a desire for contemplative living while feeling that you have no room for anything else, you might find some treasures of insight from Phileena's journey.

Contemplation is the meditation of the soul. "Pilgrimage of a Soul: Contemplative Spirituality for the Active Life" urges contemplation as part of a healthy spirituality, connecting the conscious to the subconscious. With plenty of discussion on faith and thought, "Pilgrimage of a Soul" is an intriguing and intellectual read for any Christian studies collection.

The re-discovery of Contemplative Spirituality has been on the rise within mainstream, orthodox christianity over the past decade. There are many books which explain what contemplative spirituality / prayer looks like and how it can be done. Not many share about the deep, and sometimes hard experiences of what takes place in the process of contemplative spirituality; of putting yourself into a place where you give yourself, all of yourself, over to God, being willing to shed the junk that has cluttered up your life and your relationship to God and others and then being wiling to receive from him whatever He chooses to give you. This is what Phileena Heuertz does in this book. You feel that she does not hold anything back in this semi biographical / examination of the contemplative pilgrimage. The book revolves around a sabbatical she and her husband took which involved a pilgrimage through Spain on the Camino, walking 20 miles a day. The feelings, experiences, struggles, emotions and joys that she shares will resonate with everyone. Despite differing circumstances we all have experienced the emotions that this author has experienced - even the darkness - the dark night of the soul. What really struck me was that for most of us, we turn back when we start to experience the darkness - when in fact, it is essential for us to go through it to experience what God has for us.

Each chapter of the book is laid out as part of the journey - Awakening, Longing, Darkness, Death, Transformation, Intimacy and Union.

What Phileena Heuertz does is to take us through her journey allowing us to see it in it's fullness so that we can then embark on our own, confident that when we reach that dark night of the soul we must press on knowing that God is working.

To be a woman, a human being, the search for one's identity seems endless. It is as if we begin to search for who we are at birth and desperately seek it out until our death. Unless Grace comes and bids us to revelations of truth about who we are, most of us end up trying to mirror identities that have nothing to do with "who" we were created to be and who we were created for. Pilgrimage of a Soul for me, was an avenue of Grace both revealing and confirming who it is that I am as a woman, and human being, beyond all other titles that others have given me and that I have sought to give myself. Feminist revelations shared in the book uplift both genders in our search for who we are and how we are to relate to one another. The author calls us to realize that we are not who others say we are or must be. To realize we are not defined by what we do: good, bad, or ugly, worthy, or unworthy. To realize that we are not ascribed value by which identities from culture we select for ourselves. This, she states, is one of the first beautifully enlightening, yet devastating steps towards freedom and truth in our search for who we are and how we are defined by our Creator. Phileena Heuertz' book Pilgrimage of a Soul is a powerful read for both men and woman from all faiths and walks of life.

Living & serving in an inner city context, I am as guilty as most in my situation when it comes to not making time or space for the essential disciplines of contemplative spirituality. Phileena's voice on this topic is far from theoretical. It is personal, it is proven and it is powerful. It represents a life rooted in love- a love that begins in the heart but bloom in streets.

This is a must read book. Within an hour or beginning to read it, I already had a list of people I wanted to share it with. You will too, so buy a copy. Buy five!