Hospitality can look different from one situation to another. It can be opening one’s home to another or serving a meal, but it can also be cracking a joke to break the ice or ease some tension. Humor is the hand of hospitality. Today I get my chance to practice.
Wednesday, June 19—This day begins with a trip to Rothenburg ob der Tauber, located in the Franconia region of Bavaria, Germany. It is a well-known medieval old town, having survived the Thirty Years War and World War II (limited damage that was repaired). Rothenburg, a walled village with many towers, is part of the popular Romantic Road through southern Germany.
In Rothenburg, there were many sites to see—churches, garden walks, spectacular views, quaint shops, many Christmas stores, a part Gothic/part Renaissance Town Hall, and beautiful fountains.
“A tourist has new experiences, but remains the same person. A pilgrim experiences new places and is transformed by them.” —Christine Valters Paintner, The Soul of a Pilgrim: Eight Practices for the Journey Within
Photo: Bamberg Cathedral
Being a tourist is a lot different than being a pilgrim. We even prayed about it in our opening Mass. Being a pilgrim has some responsibility that goes with it—to extend hospitality and to practice humility and patience. We have been duly warned.
This experience is not just about sight-seeing. We don’t experience events and then move on. There is a river flowing beneath our lived experience, where we are feeling, processing, and reflecting. What we feel about or interpret an experience today may change tomorrow. This pilgrimage—the visiting of churches, monasteries, and historical sights—is just one level, butthe pilgrimage within is the real experience.
The momentum of the inner pilgrimage, the current of the river beneath, moves in its own time. The outer pilgrimage is on a schedule. The inner pilgrimage is our spiritual experience; we process what has happened with people and places, looking through the lens of the Divine. The lens through which we see is the decisive factor in how the outer pilgrimage impacts our life. Evidence: I thought I would whip out a four-part blog series about the pilgrimage, but it’s taken longer than I expected. I’m on kairos time that cannot be rushed.
Bamberg Cathedral
But here we go…the first FULL day! (and it is full!)
Tuesday, June 18— We celebrate Mass in the morning at Kloster Banz, a former Benedictine monastery founded in 1070, now known as Banz Castle. In the second half of the 18th century, Banz Abbey was known throughout the Holy Roman Empire as a place of Catholic enlightenment and for the scholarship of its monks. This did not save it from secularization and dissolution in 1803. Today it serves as a parish church. The Abbey is not what it once was, but it continues in another way.
Being Benedictine 