Pilgrimage to Tombstone

This morning as I listed to "Travel with Rick Steves" on NPR, recorded at his Edmonds WA office, I began to reflect on why we go to Tombstone. That is because the interviewees I heard were

• New York Times columnist Tim Egan, author of "A Pilgrimage to Eternity" (Viking)
• Lori Erickson, author of “Holy Rover” (Fortress Press) and "Near the Exit" (Westminster John Knox Press)

https://www.ricksteves.com/watch-read-listen/audio/radio

Both Tim and Lori talked about their experiences as pilgrims - Tim on a journey from Canterbury to Rome, reproducing a medieval journey; Lori her various holy wanderings and sites she's seen, from Macchu Picchu to Taize. Rick himself mentioned Jerusalem, and also how we can be on pilgrimage when we are "only" out for a walk... as I was this morning while listening to him.

(My friend and mentor Noel King went on a lot of pilgrimages, not least near his home, but that seems to have been everywhere people of faith or doubt were. His attitude was to bring a pilgrim's heart to all his journeys, and all his encounters. See the preface to his two slim books for Harper and Row, San Francisco...)

What I thought about this morning was, first, after hearing how glorious the mountain tops of the Alps (Rick) and the Andes (Lori) were, what if you cannot see? What if you cannot hear? How do you go on pilgrimage then, and what do you experience?

This reminded me of touring the Carter White House with a group of elderly blind people (Eternal Light, led by Evelyn Saile with my mother's help - and my brother driving the bus more often than not, was a social service based at the Jewish Council on Aging in Montgomery County Md., that got people out on day excursions, including lunch and then a tour.) The Carter White House, despite Mrs. Carter's own care for people who are blind, had not yet adjusted their tour package to include them. So I did it myself: I guided the hand of the man next to me to touch the furniture and the walls as we went by.

I bet this helps explain the well-worn walls inside the church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem...

And I thought of the hand labyrinths, as well as the mown-grass labyrinth not far uphill from Rick's office in Edmonds. And I thought of the sounds of pilgrim places, not least the birds and the wind.

But what I also took in was the idea of pilgrimage where ever you are. Rick started me on this trail. You can go on pilgrimage without going to the great holy sites.

(There are substitutes. My older brother and I once took a stack of old photos back to the place they were taken, the Franciscan Monastery in Washington, D.C., which features a church undercroft that has the journey from Calvary to the Tomb - and the Resurrection - stepped out for the full distance.)

And then I thought of the little church in Tombstone, completed in 1882, St Paul's.

St Paul's Tombstone (photo: Jon Donahue)

People go to Tombstone quite often as tourists. It's second on the bucket list to the Grand Canyon.

They want to see where Wyatt Earp, Doc, Morgan and Virgil, gunned down the Clanton gang. But fifty yards from the back gate of the OK Corral, across the intersection of 3rd and Fremont where Billy Claiborne fell mortally wounded on that notorious fall day in 1881, is the front door of the little church that was built within a few months of that dreadful celebrated happening.

And there is a pilgrimage site, if you see or hear or touch it with pilgrim hands. A church. A small church. A few pews, enough to squeeze in 150 Victorians (as on dedication day 1882) or accommodate a slightly smaller group of 21st century worshipers. For it is an active church.

An earlier bishop of Arizona got the congregation to look at it as a potential added stop on the tourist route. Indeed an earlier vicar got the "crib" behind it on that map - adapted from an old tool shed and redecorated to look like one of the little buildings more likely to be found across Allen Street near the mines. But the church itself and the people - they are worthy of more than a tour stop. Be a pilgrim.

See where the Eucharist is celebrated and the Gospel preached and the psalms and hymns and spiritual songs are sung.

Then go on your way, to the OK Cafe for lunch, or the courthouse for an authentic thrill, of bygone cattle ranching and justice days, or just wander the streets. And see what is there now, and who.

Your fellow pilgrims, in life, as well as your fellow tourists. It just requires a pilgrim's eyes to see, a pilgrim's ears to hear, a pilgrim's hand to touch, a pilgrim's heart to feel and take in, that God is here.