I attended the Practicing Pilgrimage lecture by Dr.Stephanie Paulsell. During the lecture, Dr. Paulsell shared her experience going on the St. Cuthbert’s Way Pilgrimage as well as a pilgrimage following Virginia Woolf’s novel To the Lighthouse. She explained the many struggles and realizations she had on the journey and applied the experience of going on a pilgrimage to navigating politics in today’s society. Dr. Paulsell also included different perspectives of pilgrimage in her lecture by sharing the experiences of others and the impact pilgrimage had on their life.
A part that stuck out to me was when she mentioned a comment her sister made on St. Cuthbert’s Way. When the two were lost, they had to pull out a map and written descriptions to find their way back to the trail. This prompted her sister to make a connection between finding their way back to the trail and having to pull out every resource available in order to not be lost in today’s political landscape. I thought this was interesting because it made me think about how many different choices there are in politics and how it might be overwhelming to choose a side when a person fits into more than one category. The response made me think about the topic of intersectionality and how many people can be apart of multiple categories concerning race, gender, sexual orientation, ect. this made me wonder why choices in society and politics are not more flexible and inclusive to people who fall under multiple categories.
Another moment that stood out to me from the lecture was Dr. Paulsell’s reflection on her pilgrimage following Virginia Woolf’s novel To the Lighthouse. During the journey, her group shared personal stories with each other and their reasons for going on the pilgrimage. Their reasons, emotions, and experiences differed, but by the end of the trip they all had gained new perspectives on life that broadened their thought process and decision making. I made a connection to this experience with the topic of ethnocentrism and the importance of seeing difference. By gaining new perspectives through the sharing of stories, emotions, and experiences, I believe that it helps people see the importance of difference. I believe opening up to different cultures, ideas, and beliefs, can help decrease ethnocentric thoughts because it’s widening a person’s perception of the world beyond their own country.
I was surprised to have found this lecture relatable to concepts concerning feminism. Before the lecture, I could not think of connections between the two. Overall, the lecture taught me a lot about broadening my own perspective and slowing down to reflect on life. Most importantly, I believe this lecture showed me the importance of being open to new experiences in order to learn more about other cultures. By attending this lecture, I learned more about what a pilgrimage is and what it means to different people. By focusing on individual experiences in the lecture, I was able to see that people can perceive identical situations differently and that generalizing an experience would cut out the possibility of having a broadened perspective on different societies and cultures.
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