Retreat is a time to step back, survey the field and listen for God’s whisper. Pilgrimage is a “call of the wild,” to be open to discomfort, challenge and the rough wild path of change. Spiritual seekers need both.
In Mark 7:24-37, Jesus wants retreat. He’s gone to the beach in Phoenicia, to get away from pressing crowds. Mark says he didn’t want anyone to know he was there. But then a local woman comes to beg a favor. She wants Jesus to heal her daughter.
He tries to protect his privacy. He’s snippy and cold, using language close to a racial slur: “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”
She swats back: “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”
With that rhetorical slap in the face, Jesus himself is changed. His world expands. He’s on the rough wild way of a pilgrimage now, suddenly seeing with new eyes, hearing with fresh ears. He drops an old view, accepts a new reality. Jesus has been changed on the way.
Pilgrimage - journeying beyond our own comfort zone - will do that; shift focus, explode prejudice, reveal God in a new way.
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