Sacred Roads: Adventures from the Pilgrimage Trail Book

How many of us have longed to travel the same roads that Jesus traveled? To walk in the footsteps of the Buddha? In Sacred Roads, Nicholas Shrady journeys to some of the most holy destinations in the world, and in his recollections we can see the beginnings of our own spiritual voyage.

From Medjugorje, Bosnia, where pilgrims flock to the miraculous site of the Virgin Mary's appearance, to Konya, Turkey, where, since 1271, people have traveled to pay their respects at the tomb of the Sufi mystic Rumi, Shrady reveals the wonders of pilgrimage. What would it be like to walk the five hundred miles of venerated ground to Santiago de Compostela, through the countryside and rugged mountains of Spain, to the burial site of St. James? Or, how would it be to climb to the source of the Ganges, high in the Himalaya, and later drift down the sacred river by rowboat to the teeming holy city of Varanasi, where the dead are cremated alongside the river's banks? With vivid detail, incisive objectivity, and even unexpected humor, Nicholas Shrady discovers the paradoxes and the hidden truths of religion, and he shares with us the sublime epiphanies and the absurd dilemmas that await a modern-day pilgrim.

Sacred Roads sends a clear message: If a pilgrimage beckons--walk on! The adventures and insights that await are certain to be worth the effort, and the journey itself will be life-changing. The sacred roads of the world offer an opportunity to reflect and rejoice--and it is in these moments that the jewels of the pilgrim's trail are uncovered: ". . . never had I previously felt so near to the Absolute as when I was bound to a sacred path--not in any church, confessional, or moment of solitary prayer." For, as any pilgrim knows, the real pilgrimage brings us to the true destination: our own sacred road.

"The pilgrim's progress is both an interior journey, a spiritual exercise, and a physical journey toward an actual site imbued with a divine character. The condition of the pilgrim, in fact, comes remarkably close to that of the hero. By abandoning familiar, worldly surroundings, submitting [oneself] to physical hardship and sometimes considerable danger, and paying homage or doing penance at a holy site, pilgrims, like heroes, know that they will return from their odyssey in some way renewed, or at least inwardly changed."

-- from Sacred Roads