I.

What dream do I pursue,

I want to move,

            connect with nature,

                        with heaven, earth, air and sea.

            Being in the flow, in the here and now.

            See, hear, feel, smell, and sense my body.

Yesterday is history, 

tomorrow a mystery, 

Today is a gift.

I am in the here and now.

I am connected to the whole.

I can be grass.

I can be earth...

I walk.

When I'm out and about alone,

            I'm more at one with myself,

            out of the daily grind,

            break routines.

I can perceive experiences more vividly.

I enjoy new and unknown insights, impressions,

            unexpected experiences and adventures – 

                        so many things that inspire and deepen me

                                                                                                        &

I am doing something that

            my body needs anyway.

At the same time, however, it is also a very good way to

            to let your thoughts run free,

            to have deep conversations,

            to rejoice like a child,

            to laugh together.

To feel this freedom,

            to feel this vibrancy,

            to experience how good all of this makes you feel –

                        isn't that fantastic?

II.

These words come from one of the women on our Hamburg pilgrimage team,

            Gabriela Mußbach,

                         we have just heard.

She wrote this down,

            when I asked people

from our circle of enthusiastic pilgrims in Hamburg

to

            to put into words

                         how it all fits together for them:

                                     making a pilgrimage and dreaming,

                                     Dreaming and making a pilgrimage,

            whatever comes to mind,

                         when they make this mental leap

                          from one to the other.

I can identify with this personal statement.

Because, in fact,

we are pursuing a dream

when we set out on a pilgrimage.

A dream of a different life,

            so very different from our everyday lives,

            unbound by many things,

                         what otherwise holds us back,

            with our eyes open to things,

and we are aware of things <501>

                                                                                                        &

            with another freedom of thought,

                         who go for a walk with us,

                                      we are on the road.

But this is not fleeing from reality into a dream world,

            but a dream come true,

                        which, when we return,

also enriches our lives in other ways,

                                    showing us new perspectives on life

                                                                                                        &

Ideally, then, pilgrimage is not something detached,

            that has nothing to do with our everyday lives.

On the contrary:

Even if sometimes, after a dreamlike pilgrimage,

it is difficult to return to everyday life,

that is precisely a quality of pilgrimage,

            if we succeed,

                         that this dream that we are living and following

also enriches the rest of our lives,

if it gives us impulses

            for how we want to see and approach our lives after the pilgrimage

…

III.

But a pilgrimage is not just

a purely positive experience

and a dream come true.

No!

It can also happen that

            we find ourselves on our pilgrimage

suddenly in a nightmare sequence:

When it rains buckets all day

and then there is an unpleasant wind

from the front.

If you get stuck somewhere on the way,

            because a path is blocked,

            because we have lost our way

            or because our bodies no longer want to cooperate properly.

Or what if the place we thought we booked

didn't expect us after all

and now all the beds are unexpectedly occupied?

Then the road is not a beautiful dream,

            but rather the opposite of it.

But what we can learn from such difficult situations on our pilgrimage

            for our lives, is, 

                        that such nightmares do come to an end

                         and that you finally arrive,

                                      even if it seems endless at times

seem endless...

Even experiences like these,

            which we didn't really need

            in our dream of going on a pilgrimage,

can enrich our lives.

Because the experience of having come through it

strengthens our resilience,

and prepare us for stages in our lives when

            not everything goes smoothly

            but precisely this resilience is required.

IV.

But it is not only from this individual perspective

Pilgrimage offers us dreamlike moments,

            but also in a communal perspective.

Because on a pilgrimage, in special moments, we experience

we also experience a good dream of

how the world could be

– not just the small world of each and every individual,

but the world as a whole:

The world as a place

where people learn to respect each other through encounters and conversations,

           like on an evening in a pilgrims' hostel.

A world where

hospitality is considered a form of wealth,

            and arriving somewhere on the evening of a long day

            and are welcomed

            and realize how good it feels

The world as a place

where people absorb the beauty of creation

deep within themselves

and therefore treat it as a wonderful gift,

just as we feel it

            when our eyes are opened along the way

and we suddenly realize how wonderful this world is,

that surrounds us.

Peace, justice and the preservation of creation –

we experience these noble goals for a better world order when we go on a pilgrimage

– quite literally, in the truest sense of the word.

Because all of this happens more by the by when we walk,

and often quite unintentionally, without any great moral superstructure.

We don't set out,

because we are first and foremost

seeking peace, justice and the preservation of creation.

But we understand in passing

how all this could work:

How peace comes about

when we reach out to others,

seek dialogue, share experiences.

How justice is no longer an abstract ideal,

when people learn to share,

when they have to come to an arrangement with each other

and have in common the goal of

            everyone gets what they need.

And we understand

how the preservation of creation

its essential motivation

in a sense of awe and gratitude

that fills us on our journey.

So we are not only pursuing a dream of a different life from an individual point of view

,

but we also pursue, in passing,

the dream of another world.

What we experience on the way

also shapes our thinking and acting in this regard.

V.

And sometimes,

when we walk,

heaven even opens up to us in a dreamlike way,

            as Jacob experiences in the story,

                         we have heard.

Sometimes we get a glimpse of the dream that

God has in store for our lives.

Just as with Jacob and his dream:

It can happen

that we – like Jacob – are seized by the blessing,

                        that God wants to give us

            and grasp the wealth, 

                         with which he blesses us.

And it can happen

that we – like Jacob – feel God's presence

            that we are touched by the certainty that, 

                         that we are not alone on our journey

                         but there is someone who

is watching over us.

This dream is no flash in the pan either;

we take it home with us

and it continues to have an effect on us there.

Just as with Jacob,

            the dreams we experience on our journey

have consequences for

how we look at the world afterwards

and go through the world.

As Dorothee Sölle expresses it in a prayer,

            which seems to be written for our afternoon,

seems to be written for our afternoon today.

You have me dreaming, God.
As I practice walking upright
and learning to kneel
more beautifully than I am now
happier than I dare to be
freer than we are allowed

Don't stop dreaming me, God
I don't want to stop remembering
that I am your tree
planted by the streams
of life

Franz Karpa, pilgrim pastor of the North Church