Personal theology ought always to be a pilgrimage, a work in progress, stemming not from dogma, but from our own God experiences. Like pilgrimage, our personal theology should give expression to our doubts and questions. Like pilgrimage, our personal theology should give expression to our own deaths and subsequent resurrections. And, like pilgrimage, which by its very nature has no “hands and feet” destination (as does a journey), personal theology is never static, never dogmatic.
Just as pilgrimage incorporates many places of new beginnings and seeks no fixes destination, our personal theology (to be truly) personal can never have a preconceived end view, a view that we are told that me must arrive at. Rather, our pilgrimage must always flow from where it has been, those new beginnings — deaths & resurrections — we have experienced, without knowing where it is going. Practical theology, as is pilgrimage, is always a process.
As a pilgrimage, our theology is our thinking out loud, examining where we believe ourselves to be at the moment, while being both unsure and unconcerned about where we might be heading. A true pilgrimage centers around a theology that holds everything we think we know in abeyance; realizing we cannot possibly know the Infinite Mind beyond an occasional fleeting glance wrought by experiencing the divine along our pilgrimage.
Frank A. Mills
Sheffield Lake, Ohio