The following account is from Tom Wright’s excellent book The Way of the Lord, Grand Rapids,  Eerdmans, 1999, pp. 2-5. Here it is:

I don’t think I really thought about pilgrimage at all, or considered it a live option. I  didn’t exactly reject the idea, it just wasn’t a live option. Thus thought I lived in one of the great pilgrimage areas of England, I knew virtually nothing about it.

            This non-consideration of pilgrimage was strongly reinforced by the  evangelical teaching I received, and eagerly absorbed … This way of thinking, as I met it in my teens, claimed strong biblical reinforcement, though at a cost. Had not Jesus said in John’s Gospel that true worship was nothing to do with being in Jerusalem or Samaria, but was all about worshiping God in Spirit and in truth? … This meant, of course, that all sense of continuity with the Old Testament’s geographical focus, with the idea of pilgrimage to a holy city, was done away with … Nobody, I think every challenged me on this …

            It is not easy to describe, let alone account for, the ways in which my mind has changed (about pilgrimage …). A lot has to do with the slow turning away from various forms of dualism, to which evangelicalism is particularly prone, and towards a recognition of the sacramental quality of God’s whole created world … the discovery of God at work in creation …

            Reinforcement of this line of thought has come from the surprises I have had when discovering the presence of God in particular places and buildings, in ways, I had not expected. In the early 1980s, when we lived in Montreal, my elder son went to a city school which a few years before purchased from the United Church of Canada a redundant church right opposite the main school building. Being a modern structure, it didn’t look much like a church, and they used it for very un-churchlike activities, rock concerts and so  forth. The first time we went there, to a very “secular” occasion, I was stunned. I walked in and sensed the presence of God, gentle but very strong, I sat through the local concert wondering if I was the only person who felt it, and reflecting on the fact that I had no theology by which to explain why a redundant United church should feel that way. The only answer I have to this day is that when God is known, sought and wrestled with in a place, a memory of that remains, which those who know and love God can pick up. Since then I discovered similar places which I had considered unlikely but which had the same effect.

            But the supreme example, in my own life, came on my first visit to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem …

_______________________________________________________________

If this extract interested you then you need to read the entire book which is full of spiritual insights and practical theological reflection. You can order it from REGENT COLLEGE Bookstore or phone toll free 1-800-663-8664, e-mail: Bookstore@regentcollege.edu, or directly from the publisher W.B. Eerdmans, tel. 1-800-253-7521, fax 616-458-6540, or e-mail sales@eerdmans.com

The books title is: Tom Wright, The Way of the Lord, Grand Rapids,  Eerdmans, 1999, ISBN 0-8028-4649-1