A long way toward compassion

Abstract

Pilgrimage to a shrine of healing in northern New Mexico provides a ritual possibility for a community's passionate response to human suffering. Drawn to their substantial and robust performances, I join one of several groups traveling to the sacred site. During the passage I am guided by fellow travelers whose practices resist the silence of a society more receptive to a discourse of pleasure than of pain. As the pilgrims figuratively and literally gather the concerns of villagers along the route, they manifest this distress in their bodies as they make their way across the landscape. In an autoethnography of my journey, I explore my physical, emotional, and intellectual participation in the habitus of a pilgrim as I am confronted by the question of compassion at the center of my life.

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