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God bless each of us as we travel on.

In our time of need

May we find a table spread in the wilderness

And companions on the road.

• — Iona Abbey Worship Book

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When I first began reading about pilgrims and pilgrimages, I formed an image of a solitary figure, staff in hand, striding over the landscape. And indeed, many authors that I’ve read on pilgrimage seem to have wended their ways by themselves.

I, however, have no desire to go on any kind of pilgrimage alone.

I recall when Mary Lee, my companion for the last thirty-three years’ worth of pilgrimages, and I had stopped to rest along our walking pilgrimage of St. Cuthbert’s Way from Melrose, Scotland to the Holy Island of Lindisfarne off the east coast of England, and a woman passed us going the same way. Head down, so that all I could see at first were the red tints in her hair, she was engrossed in a map encased in plastic hanging from a lanyard around her neck. A compass attached to a mirror dangled from another lanyard around her neck, and a GPS hung from her belt. She appeared startled, even frightened, to come upon us. She said her partner was hiking toward us from the town of Fenwick and that she hoped they would soon pass each other as he walked to Wooler behind us to pick up their car, which she’d left for him.

“This way we don’t have to wait and pay for public transportation to get back to our car,” she said.

“That sounds like a clever idea,” I said.

But the more I thought about it, the more I thought the woman and her partner weren’t being clever at all. The woman was obviously nervous about getting lost. I doubt if she saw much of the beautiful landscape around her. Several times a day either Mary Lee or I would say, “Now, do we go this way?” or “Hold up. I think it’s this way.” We were continually pointing out to one another a view or a strange bird or a gnarled tree the other had missed.

While we passed much of our time in silence, we also reminisced, made up stories, and sang. After several months of dealing with my mother’s death and her father’s moving into assisted living, we got a chance to debrief, restoring and building a deeper relationship, and I wonder if not only the trip itself but also preparing for it and talking about it afterward was part of the “holiness” one associates with pilgrimage.

It was also fun watching Mary Lee climbing over those stiles in a hiking skirt.

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I think of other companions on our pilgrimages, who have sustained us and whom we have sustained.

There was Paul, a young curate with a goatee, at Saint George’s Cathedral in Jerusalem. When Mary Lee and I, jet-lagged and overwhelmed by the strange sights, sounds, and smells of an alien culture, arrived to stay in the guest house, he invited us to go into the old city of Jerusalem with him, guiding us through the labyrinthine streets, recommending places to eat, and introducing us to local shopkeepers.

There were Dick and Judith Graham from Indiana, whom we met at Mrs. Jenkins’ Bed and Breakfast in Cambridge, England, and who invited us to share the day with them and their rented car. In the morning, we toured Cambridge, and in the afternoon, drove out to the ash-gray ruins of a twelfth-century castle at Saffron-Walden, after which we’d walked an outdoor labyrinth that according to the guidebook measured exactly 5280 feet, none of which Mary Lee and I would ever have seen without them. After Judith flew back to Indiana, we tried to return the favor by making Dick our constant companion during a three-week Elizabethan Studies program, introducing him to Daddy’s Sauce for his scrambled eggs, and taking him with us punting on the Cam and searching the pubs of Cambridge for the perfect pint.

Both times Mary Lee and I stayed on the island of Iona off the west coast of Scotland, we stayed at Duncraig Guest House, where we befriended and were befriended by pastors, rectors, poets, visual artists, and two delightful spinster sisters. Mary Lee learned about Christian exorcism, I learned about puffins, and everyone else learned about Maine.

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But if the companions I’ve met on the various roads through Israel, Scotland, and England have been helpful, the companions I’ve met on my pilgrimage through the grief and grace of losing a child have been essential.

Like Mary Lee on St. Cuthbert’s Way, Paul in Jerusalem, or the Grahams in Saffron-Waldon, my companions in groups such as Compassionate Friends, the Center for Grieving Children, or my Twelve-Step program give me another set of eyes to help me see the support available or the beauty and love I might have missed because, like the woman we met between Wooler and Fenwick engrossed in her maps, I have my head down, absorbed in my grief, nervous and fearful about the path I’ve found myself on.

I need someone like Paul, who knows the territory, knows how to negotiate the dark, twisted passages my mind can take me, shows me how to get sustenance, introduces me to others who can also help. Instead of puffins, these companions introduce me to writers, speakers, who broaden my awareness, and I, hopefully, do the same for them, whether it be recommending Daddy’s Sauce or a writer I especially admire.

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One such writer is Christopher Wiman, author of My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer. “I never feel closer to God than when I’m in conversation with someone about God,” he says, reminding me that companions are essential on any kind of spiritual journey.

Mary Lee and I have just returned from a five-day silent retreat, where we spent much of our time sitting in contemplative prayer with eight other companions. Sitting together in contemplation, we literally feed not only off each other’s silence but also off God’s.

This feeling of being fed makes sense, because the word “companion” comes from the Latin, meaning “one with whom I break bread.” I’m writing the first draft of this blog in a local coffee shop, sitting across the table from Mary Lee, who is trying to finish both her half of our muffin and the book she’s supposed to read for her upcoming book group. I don’t think we’ve spoken in the last hour. And yet for that hour she’s supported me, fed me, in ways that even a Morning Glory muffin cannot do.

There was a time in my life when I thought that being a real man meant being strong, silent, and self-sufficient. My dream was to live by myself and my black lab on an island off the coast of Maine.

Thank God, not all dreams come true.

I’m more of a cat person, anyway.

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