MONTHLY CHALLENGE

The Journey Within: Navigating the Intersection of Travel and Spirituality

Off the tourist trail

Jet lagged and sleepless during the night, I’ve decided to try to write to this month’s prompt. I have no idea what I’m going to write.

Quite possibly I’ll be referring to my last adventure that ended this morning when I landed at Brisbane International Airport after 4 months of travel through Europe.

I’ve gained inspiration from Scott-Ryan Abt who writes, “But what does it actually mean, to be in a spiritual or sacred space? Different things to different people, would be my first answer. Is it a place that is so monumental that you have no choice but to share it with busloads of others while you are there…”

With this in mind, I simply cannot find spirituality in places that are crowded. Maybe that’s why going to church on a Sunday is not my scene although I did go to church every Sunday as a teenager and even taught Sunday school before church. I know it’s hard to believe but my class was the littlies — 2 to 3 years old. Who indoctrinates their kids at that age? But I’m getting off track here. (Blame the jetlag.)

Spirituality in Churches

When in Rome, I refused to go to the Vatican City. I don’t like crowds, I don’t like standing in a queue, and I don’t like the Roman Catholics’ ostentatious display of wealth in their churches and cathedrals whilst billions of their most ardent believers live in abject poverty hoping for a better life in “heaven”. I don’t like the way Christianity in general has suppressed the masses over the centuries by the promise of a better life in heaven if they believed or would suffer eternity in “hell” if they didn’t.

That’s not to say I don’t like visiting churches. Their architectural amazingness – La Sagrada Familia and the Duomo di Milano – are two that immediately spring to mind. I visited the Duomo the day before yesterday.

Or their history. St Joseph’s in Gdansk, Poland and the Orthodox Cathedral in Timisoara, Romania.

Or because of the person I might meet there. The priest of Sveta Bogoroditsa, Plovdiv showed such pride in his church that he was watering the garden himself. At first, I thought he was the gardener.

But those churches where I felt a spiritual presence were those I entered alone. Maybe with a slight amount of fear or trepidation that I was entering a place designed for Christians and I was breaking some unspoken law that forbad infidels. They were the places where I felt a spiritual connection.

Back to Rome. Instead of lining up for St Peters and the Sistine Chapel, I visited a little-known, certainly not touristy, out-of-the-way little church called Sant’Ignazio de Loyola. I loved it. I certainly felt this was a church that wasn’t a showpiece and I absorbed the spiritual presence. My daughter and I were the only visitors. I cannot find our photos of this visit but check it out here.

Did I feel that spiritual presence in Lourdes, France or Fatima, Portugal? Nope. Nothing. Some young girl out looking after the sheep was hungry and ate some mushrooms that gave her hallucinations. Why did I visit these places if I’m such a cynic? My partner.

I did not find spirituality in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Hundreds of others obviously did. But not me.

Spirituality in nature

Carol Labuzzetta,’s story also inspired my thoughts to places that have awakened spirituality in me.

“Firstly, looking at the huge, ancient, old-growth redwood trees is awe-inspiring. They have survived so much — centuries of human years, continuing to grow in their peaceful and stately way. This is the thing with spirituality. You find it where it comes to you — it cannot be dictated, prescribed, or forced…

If that isn’t spirituality, then I don’t know what is! Being there made us better, calmer, and more in-tune with ourselves and the world. The forest made us step gently and talk softly — we acted with reverence.”

I’ve felt spiritual connections to a 1000-year-old tree in Ohrid. And a weird sort of spiritual attraction to the lake in Ohrid but not diving in to retrieve a wooden cross on 19 January.

Maybe these connections were some sort of reward to surviving the bus trip over and down the mountains from Skopje to Ohrid. It was a nightmare journey getting here but I wanted to swim in Lake Ohrid. It’s the geologically oldest, deepest and cleanest lake in Europe. I’m unsure about the oldest or deepest but I can attest to its clarity. The water was crystal clear and cold, but not too cold for this adventurous Aussie.

I truly thought we were all going to die on that bus trip. Our driver was a lunatic with unresolved rage issues. I wasn’t the only terrified passenger. A lovely Iranian couple who have travelled to 77 countries experienced the same fear as did a girl who crossed herself when we reached Ohrid.

Swimming with the swans in Lake Ohrid in winter was a truly spiritual, if cold, experience. When I emerged from the water, my body was tingling all over and all my aches and sore joints had been healed by the lake’s clear waters.

And then there’s Plitvice in Croatia. More of a tourist destination than Ohrid, but being winter we had the park to ourselves.

For me, finding my spiritual peace in a forest or a lake or a church or cemetery or anywhere requires two factors: age and solitude. I have never found crowded “religious sites” to have meaning for me. But to each their own. In Paris, I found ‘La Petite Ceinture’, in Bydgoszcz I discovered the river behind the museum, and in Kraków, the little private courtyard behind my hostel or the hilltop park where I went to feed the squirrels are just a few of the places I pondered on the meaning of life and how infinitesimal I am in the eons of Earth’s history and my place in the universe.

My thanks goes to Scott-Ryan Abt and Carol Labuzzetta, MS Natural Resources, MS Nursing for their wonderful responses to the challenge. Those stories were my inspiration. You don’t have to go looking for spiritual places — they will reveal themselves to you.