Prayer: from To Die and To Live by Paul S. Minear

Few pictures are more ancient, more archetypal, than the picture of the pilgrim. None better expresses inner restlessnesss and outer uncertainty, the sense of continual movement and the ache of fatigue. A pilgrim is incomplete without his packsack into which is stuffed whatever is most precious, most essential. In comparison with all one's possessions, the backpack is a pathetic pittance; but without it a person would be forlorn indeed. Each day, the pilgrim must ask again: what am I able to take along? what must I take? So whenever we think of ourselves as pilgrims, we begin instinctively to choose and to reject, to weigh and to measure, whatever is to go with us.