Mission Trip, Tourism, or Pilgrimage? w/ Dr. Jamie Gates

In this episode of Breathe In Place, Montague Williams sits down with Dr. Jamie Gates, a cultural anthropologist and educator, to explore the heart of pilgrimage. They discuss how pilgrimage differs from tourism or short-term mission trips, and how it invites young people to listen, learn, and witness the work God is already doing in a place. Learn more about The Pilgrimage Innovation Hub by following us on Instagram: @pilgrimageinnovationhub

Transcript

Montague Williams (00:20):

Welcome back to Breathe In Place, a podcast about how pilgrimage can help young people find purpose, resilience, hope and meaning in a complex and confusing world. I'm your host, Montague Williams.

(00:56):

What comes to mind when you hear the phrase mission trip? For many people, it's a group of young people, often from the United States flying across the world to paint a school, play with children or take pictures with smiling babies. Then after a week or two, they head home and may perhaps post about their life-changing experience on social media. For decades, this kind of drop in dropout approach has shaped how many churches and ministries engage with communities in certain countries. The intentions may be sincere, but the relationships and connections made with those regions and the people there can be fleeting. The focus tends to be on what we can bring instead of recognizing what God is already doing there. But what if there's another way to engage with such places? What if instead of arriving to fix or to help, we arrived, to listen, to be present, to learn to bear witness to the work God is already doing in that place, and among the people there.

(02:03):

That's the heart of pilgrimage, and that's exactly what I talk about in today's episode with my guest, Dr. Jamie Gates. Dr. Gates is a cultural anthropologist with ministry training. He grew up in South Africa and later lived on the east coast of the United States in Philadelphia, Boston, and the University of Florida before making his way to San Diego, where he now teaches sociology at Point Loma Nazarene University. His courses explore the intersections of sociology and justice. Since 2005, he has periodically led students on pilgrimages to South Africa where young people are able to engage with communities there and with how the history of apartheid has shaped and continues to shape the country. In this conversation, we talk not only about what makes pilgrimage different from other forms of travel like tourism or short-term missions, but also about Dr. Gate's own background and stories. From these journeys, you'll hear how he's helped young people encounter a world apart from their own and how those experiences have shaped their faith and understanding.

(03:12):

A quick note before we begin. Toward the end of the episode, Dr. Gates will reference taking students to experience different expressions of Christian tradition. In that segment, you'll hear him use the term colored communities. The term colored in South Africa has a specific historical meaning and refers to people of mixed ethnic heritage. It is a legally recognized category under apartheid, but is still used as a cultural identifier today. I wanted to make that distinction clear so as to not confuse the term with how it has been used and understood in the United States. With that context in mind, let's dive in.

Jamie Gates (03:55):

Well, when you think about how do we decolonize Christianity, how do we get away from a Christianity historically, but even in this particular moment that carries with it this power dynamic that is us convincing them or doing something for them as opposed to the start with the pilgrimage. God's already been at work well before we ever get there for good pilgrimages to happen, in some ways, they have to happen with people who are deeply immersed and with leadership that has friendship across the divide that's already well established and well developed.

Montague Williams (04:28):

Jamie, welcome to the podcast.

Jamie Gates (04:30):

Good to be with human.

Montague Williams (04:32):

Yeah, you ready to breathe in place?

Jamie Gates (04:34):

I would love to breathe in place.

Montague Williams (04:36):

So you're a professor here and you've directed a center. You're currently writing a book. Could you tell our listeners a bit about who you are and your journey as a teacher and scholar here?

Jamie Gates (04:48):

Oh, wow. Well, when I was two years old, no, I'm not going to go there, but growing up in South Africa, we'll talk a lot about that today I'm sure came back to the us, which means I was raised in one part of the world and had extended family in another part of the world. That's an important part of my story. Having two homes, I think coming to college as a 17-year-old straight out of South Africa opened my life to revisiting what I had grown up with in South Africa, from fresh eyes from college in Boston, Eastern Nazarene College. Went to seminary because I had grown up in the church, grown up as a missionary kid and had all kinds of questions about what it meant to be church in the world, and so seminary was a exploration of that before there were just many questions that I could not get at seminary. So onto graduate work in cultural anthropology.

Montague Williams (05:53):

Now, I've heard a lot of people talk about missiology as this intersection between theology, ministry and anthropology, but I don't see you necessarily identifying in that way even though you're a missionary kid.

Jamie Gates (06:09):

Tell

Montague Williams (06:10):

Me about that.

Jamie Gates (06:10):

No, that's a good question. I think I have deep respect for Miss Theologists and we're trained by many of them and read them and have deep respect for somebody who stands maybe in a seminary, maybe in a religious school, and from there, maybe a school of theology and thinks about missiology as the central subject. For me, maybe being a missionary kid and seeing some of the hard parts of being missionary in the world and also being quickly steeped in post-colonial literature and looking at Christianity through the eyes of people that were colonized by Christianity. It's always made me shy of wanting to step with both feet in a school of theology. Oh, that's interesting. So to keep one foot in the social sciences. So come at this from cultural anthropology, from sociology, then also in deep conversation with theology has been really important to me in my life.

Montague Williams (07:14):

Okay. Well, here at Point Loma, you have taught a travel course that takes students to South Africa and you've often called it a pilgrimage. Let's dig into that a bit. Dig. Why would you call it a pilgrimage?

Jamie Gates (07:35):

That's a really good question because the language of pilgrimage came to me before I ever created the course early in the two thousands. Yes, I've been here a while. One of my muses that keep my feet in theology while I'm studying anthropology, I was introduced to a Ugandan theologian who was teaching in the United States, Emmanuel Tonle, and in the early 2000, might've even been 2002 or so, he started taking pastors and religious leaders. Catholic theologian was teaching at Duke at the time

Montague Williams (08:12):

Right

Jamie Gates (08:12):

And started taking pastors and theologians and ministry students to East Africa. So this is 2002, and in particular to Rwanda,

Montague Williams (08:23):

And was he doing reconciliation studies?

Jamie Gates (08:27):

So he was doing what he would call then pilgrimages of hope and pain.

Montague Williams (08:32):

Okay

Jamie Gates (08:32):

Pain and hope. And so his pilgrimages were to take people who had not experienced what Rwanda and had experienced in the Rwanda genocide, taking them to places of deep pain as painful as it got in brothers and sisters, macheing each other to death in the Rwandan genocide, and then finding a path of hope through all kinds of ministry. And so I was watching that from afar and when I created the South Africa study abroad, because that's a language of our university, it was built on those theological principles, but I didn't weave the language so much into the language of the courses early on.

Montague Williams (09:19):

Okay. So it sounds like one reason why you embraced the language of pilgrimage is because you saw it having a connect to what Emmanuel Katongole was doing in terms of helping students engage stories of pain up close

Jamie Gates (09:37):

And stories of pain that they see in others, but quickly reflect back onto their own and their own lives and their own neighborhoods.

Montague Williams (09:46):

And it sounds like there is a real importance in going to these places that you can't just talk about it. It is important to talk about, important to read about, but there's something significant and meaningful about going to the places where this pain is held.

Jamie Gates (10:06):

Absolutely, and I think early on, and now even more so I want to make a distinction between missions trips, studying abroad, tourism and pilgrimage. I don't begrudge anybody doing some tourism. It's beautiful to go see beautiful places in people,

(10:27):

Missions trips. I have a complicated relationship with missions trips and how to think about those and have questions about how they connect to tourism and so on that we could talk about if you want study abroad deeper, but can also just purely be academic. There's a whole nother layer. And I think the gift of teaching at a Christian university is that we can bring out both the best of our theological spiritual depth and the best of our studies in other disciplines. And so there's this sense in which it's not just that pilgrimages value added it, it's a different thing to be able to draw on the fullness of who we are, including our spiritual depth, including our devotional depth, including our academic and the ideas that are in our heads.

Montague Williams (11:19):

Let's go ahead and just engage that conversation in terms of the distinctions between a pilgrimage and tourism and a mission trip and study abroad, this is something that I enjoy examining as well in my own pilgrimage pedagogy. Let's just start with one of those. Let's go with mission trips. How would you name a distinction between a pilgrimage and a mission trip?

Jamie Gates (11:48):

Yeah, often mission trips are specifically designed with this notion of helping others as you're going across cultures, as you're going across oceans, as really you're crossing the social class divide and it's hard to escape, it's hard to escape a certain paternalism in that it's hard to escape the helper going to the help the ones helped, and that creates this rather stark distance between me and who I'm visiting In a pilgrimage, your hands are tied intentionally on a pilgrimage where you're actually not on ours, at least not allowed to help, at least not in any sort of planned structured kind of way. Of course, help with the dishes if you're in somebody's home, of course, help watch the kids if that's what they need along the way. But it's not designed as a helping enterprise. It's designed as a listening and learning journey. You're the one in need. You're not going to people in need. I'm the one in need on this journey.

Montague Williams (12:54):

And maybe even that there's mutual need because so much of mission trips are grounded in the idea that there's a certain eye that has something to bring to fix a particular them. We are going to fix their issue. But in the end, as human beings who share life together, we are mutually in need. And it is especially problematic that mission trips from a youth ministry lens often positions a 12-year-old, a 15-year-old, a 16-year-old, as having some power over these adults. They're going to encounter and over whole communities that they're going to encounter of different ages. And that there is something good about saying, Hey, we're going to honor what God's doing in this place and honor these people. And I think it's really important just now, you mentioned this thing. I mean, you might do dishes, you might watch some kids while you're there because you're still Christians there,

Jamie Gates (14:00):

Your guests and your guests. Your goal is to be a good guest and a good neighbor, perhaps you're not a host. Oftentimes, mission trips are like hosts while they're being guests. In other words, they're taking their money with them, they're taking their desire to help with them. And there's nothing wrong with the desires and the good intentions I think often, but the power dynamics are always there. And in some ways a pilgrimage fronts lifts to the surface

(14:33):

And

(14:33):

Intentionally tries to engage, critically engage the power dynamics. And so when you think about how do we decolonize Christianity, how do we get away from a Christianity historically, but even in this particular moment that carries with this power dynamic that is us or doing something for them as opposed to the start with the pilgrimage. God's already been at work well before we ever get there. I guess this comes close to some mission trips where churches design mission trips and go back and forth the same place. They develop deep relationships over time so that really, they do develop a sense of home and place and depth by going back and forth regularly. But I think for good pilgrimages to happen, in some ways they have to happen with people who are deeply immersed and with leadership that has friendship across the divide that's already

Montague Williams (15:24):

Mm-mmm

Jamie Gates (15:24):

Well established and well developed. We're not strangers meeting each other for the first time when we're doing pilgrimage, at least not often.

Montague Williams (15:32):

So pilgrimage disrupts certain assumptions around power that often shapes Christian practices of travel.

Jamie Gates (15:43):

And when you think Christian practices of travel, who do we stay with and how do we stay with them when we are with them? Study abroad talks about home stays and it's one of the most cherished parts of going cross-culturally in study abroad when you can have home stays and there's this category of staying with folks and that gets close. It gets closer to getting to be with a family for let's say a full semester for four months and starting to know their children's names and birthdays and have develop their, get some of their perspective on the world. That is getting a lot closer to making pilgrimage possible because of the depth of relationship there. But then again, study abroad is typically aimed at its aim is fundamentally finishing a class and finishing a course of degree and

Montague Williams (16:40):

Certain learning outcomes,

Jamie Gates (16:42):

Certain learning, all of which are good, but not quite pilgrimage,

Montague Williams (16:46):

And a pilgrimage sometimes far exceeds those learning outcomes and creates new questions that you would've never imagined being a part of a learning outcome

Jamie Gates (16:57):

And intentionally designing those questions in. So thinking of the South Africa journey from 2005 to 2015 took six different groups

(17:09):

And at its shallow end, it could be a study abroad, and I don't mean to call study abroad shallow, just that at its shallow end, it could be a study abroad and students learn a good deal about South Africa, about themselves, but at its deep end for those that leaned all the way in and took all of the advantage of the opportunities that were in front of them, I'm just now getting back some research from those who were on these journeys and I'm seeing some of those who leaned all the way in. I've been reading first because it lifts my spirit and those that journaled the whole time, those that listened to the guests that spoke and reflected on what it was saying about their own lives, not just what it was saying about South Africa, those that took the time to make the connections between the struggle against apartheid and the church's role in apartheid and their own church back home and where it sits in the current racial divide in the United States. Those were the students that took the study abroad to the next level

(18:20):

That's what I would say leaned into pilgrimage.

Montague Williams (18:23):

Let's talk about the distinction between pilgrimage and tourism.

(18:29):

One way that I talk about that is by pointing out that sometimes, well, oftentimes tourism is geared towards certain experiences that ultimately point people to spend more money and intentionally avoids the stories and the experiences that might stop people from being happy enough to spend money. But pilgrimage actually brings people up close to the very stories, the very experiences that tourism intentionally avoids. But it's not just so you can feel pain and hurt and walk away sad. It's so that you can engage a particular sort of mutual transformation and discernment as you make your way home. When you have led these trips, these pilgrimages, how have you seen a distinction between what they've done and tourism?

Jamie Gates (19:39):

I think all of us that are thinking about pilgrimage and have done them, I guess, and anybody who's traveled is pushing against the common tropes of tourism or has to deal with them seriously, fundamentally, structurally, tourists in the United States or from Europe have been traveling for about 150 years in a mass kind of way. Increasingly across the 20th century, people who have extra can travel across their country to be tourists in the Amish country or in the Appalachian Mountains to go see what's there. Or in urban, urban Chicago, what they want to go see if they have the means to travel overseas takes more. But increasingly we have an industry around tourism, an industry around mission trips. I mean, four or 5 million people in the United States go in two to three week trips

(20:35):

That are structured somewhat like tourist trips.

(20:39):

And so I want to struggle. I want us to struggle. What's the difference? Our missions trips in some ways, evangel tourism and when did they slip into Evangel ofour versus something that is more profound? And what I mean by that is tourism is fundamentally about consumption. It's fundamentally about the experience and it's fundamentally about coming home with an experience that you can share with others. And you might share it in pictures and in stories and in videos that you've gained. And now you put together some instant and posts now along the way on your instore or whatever you're posting on these days. And the experience itself is something you go you, you enjoy the food, you consume the food, but you also consume the people. And you come back and you

Montague Williams (21:30):

Consume the land,

Jamie Gates (21:31):

You consume the land, you consume all of the riches of what you see around you. At some level it becomes yours to lookie lu in for a bit. So when I think of tourism as an anthropologist, there's a whole subfield of the study of tourism

(21:50):

And there are some profound exchanges that are good. So this exchange of capital in areas that have tourism done the right way is a good, this sort of built-in business that helps people. Okay, there's the exchange of ideas and friendship that happens in tourism, not as often, maybe not as deep, but it it's there unless it's structured in more carefully. I worry whether it does anything more than create sort of a veneer of friendship rather than actual friendship. And maybe I'm caricaturing tourism a bit, but my experiences and in studying those that are studying, reading, those that are studying tourism, it's really hard to structure short-term, cross-cultural, cross continent interactions that don't remain at the surface.

Montague Williams (22:52):

Sure. I don't hear you saying that tourism in and of itself is always and forever a wrong thing, but I do hear you saying there are some stories, some places, some experiences that fall short of what they could be if it gets locked into tourism. And that pilgrimage opens up a new possibility of engaging stories and people and land and history histories and that because of that, there is a need to talk about it as something different. There can be some overlap.

Jamie Gates (23:37):

There's always a stage involved when people are always on stage at some level, when you are traveling and you're a foreigner, there's fun examples of villages that are set up specifically for tourists and then actors that come in. This happens in Kenya, this happens in South Africa, this happens in Zimbabwe. And tourists get to see true African culture. And just the fact that I said African culture should give you a quick clue that we're talking about tourism here.

Montague Williams (24:04):

Right

Jamie Gates (24:06):

And then the actors take off their watches, take off the things that might clue you in that they're as wrapped up in the modern world as anybody else. Make sure their cell phones are left somewhere else, right. And tourists are transported into this manufactured space and enjoy it because it's different from where they came from. But it has very little to do with how people actually live other than putting on a drama for the tourists that have come. You wonder how many churches put on a drama for the tourists that come as they're having them do VBS or as they're engaged in soccer with the kids and so on. And when the tourists leave, life goes back to the more complex, the more simple, the less dramatic.

Montague Williams (24:53):

Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, you just named an interesting intersection between mission trips in tourism, right? Yeah. Okay. Well, let's take our conversation to what you were hoping students would gain from this pilgrimage, six different South Africa pilgrimages. Some at times or maybe for certain people on them, they could have felt a little bit more like tourism. But ultimately your hope was that they would experience pilgrimage. What were you hoping students would gain

Jamie Gates (25:31):

They're layers? I think just to give quick insight, students would be with me and others for two classes for a full semester

(25:44):

Before we went. So a good amount of prep, strong amount of prep. That's six units of college credit. So of course on the history of Christianity in South Africa so that they knew many of issues are involved in Christianity and apartheid and posta, apartheid protests and the complexity of Christianity's participation and some of its sins and some of its holy moments. And then the other course was a race and ethnicity class. So it was very focused on people, all of us examining our own place in the world from the perspective of the way we structure race and ethnicity in both in the United States and in South Africa. So a great hope was that we would be able to be confessional on a journey to our own place and our own experiences and reflect back on our own place and our own experiences.

(26:41):

And each student was different. They were coming from different backgrounds. They were coming from different parts of many of them parts of California. I can remember for example, on the very first trip I took in 2005, we were on some farms in the northern part of South Africa, owned by long couple generations, three generations of white farmers, large farms, industrial farms, family farms, though owned by families and they had just harvested the cotton on the farm in that particular time that we went there. It's winter time and we, my uncle Larry, who's since passed, may rest in peace, took us out to the farms and we're just getting a lowdown on how the farm works from Uncle Larry standing in the field. A few of the farm workers that were still cleaning up around where Uncle Larry took us were off in the distance and there were two black students only on this trip. It was 11 students and they were absolutely silent in this moment. And I was being the good guest listening to Uncle Larry as he's training everybody as he's telling us about how the farm works. And it was this moment where I feel like what on earth do I say in a context where I could see two students in particular who have caught the connection between this was my history and they later reflected on this in depth, but the other nine students chatty in that moment. Were the other nine students white?

(28:35):

Mostly, not necessarily. At least half were. But these two students in particular stood like pillars. And I dunno if I caught it in the moment, I only caught it as we got back in and they were able to reflect on this later. I later was more conscious about, I learned along the way, this is part of pilgrimage, is that you don't go into pilgrimage as the expert in what's going on. You go as a fellow journey person.

Montague Williams (29:08):

Yeah, you go in as a lead learner.

Jamie Gates (29:08):

I might know a lot more about South Africa, but I don't know how students are going to interact and engage in that space. I haven't experienced the cotton fields in that way that those two students experience that. And I will never experience the cotton fields in the same way again.

Montague Williams (29:25):

Yeah. So it impacted you.

Jamie Gates (29:29):

Absolutely.

Montague Williams (29:29):

Was that the first trip?

Jamie Gates (29:32):

That was the first trip.

Montague Williams (29:33):

So how did that shift? What happened in the next five trips?

Jamie Gates (29:41):

Yeah, I would talk about this very thing more readily. I would ask, dig a little deeper into students our stories and preview a few of the shows, like trigger warnings became a thing. We call them that now. We wouldn't have called them that 20 years ago, but we do. And so basically heads up everybody, here's some things we're going to go into and how might that intersect you, your world? I think early on I was planning trips that were principally for dominant culture kids for the eyes to be opened. And if you weren't of the dominant culture, it was a good journey, but it was different. And the more I've done these journeys, it was for me a lesson in yes, and the entire room in the design, not just in the welcome and the hospitality on the journey.

Montague Williams (30:42):

So from a bigger picture, you call it a pilgrimage and you call it that because you recognize that it is distinct from all of these other forms of travel. But it's not necessarily the case that students signed up for a pilgrimage. For many of them, they may have signed up for a course

Jamie Gates (31:13):

That's right.

Montague Williams (31:14):

And a travel experience,

Jamie Gates (31:15):

A trip to South Africa,

Montague Williams (31:16):

A trip to South Africa.

(31:17):

So at some point along the way, or at some points along the way, you would hope that that would shift for them and that they are now encountering pilgrimage, whether or not they were open to that in the beginning. Your prep is a part of the pilgrimage journey. But while somewhere in there, whether before they go or while they're there, or maybe on the return home maybe reflecting on it after they return somewhere along the way, you want them to have had something different than tourism than just study abroad. You wanted pilgrimage. So when do you think it became pilgrimage for certain students?

Jamie Gates (32:03):

Part of our journey was to visit four or five different expressions of Christianity while we were there. So in a Catholic church, almost exclusively white Nazarene church, an almost exclusively colored Nazarene church, a Presbyterian church, which was almost exclusively black. And so the journey, our students weren't all of any particular Christian background. Some of them would probably not strongly identify as Christian. And so what was offered was here are a few different expressions. Where do you find yourself the journaling that we did along the way, where do you find meaning in engaging in Christian spaces

Montague Williams (32:57):

Okay

Jamie Gates (32:57):

As we're traveling? Maybe you do, maybe you don't. And so for those that I think what we didn't do along the way, as an example, is there were devotional moments in places and spaces where we created specific prayers and specific times to mourn, specific times to lament, for example. But they were, in this case, structured broad enough to where if this was a heartfelt thing for you, you join in. If you needed to stand on the side and observe, you stand on the side and observe. So there was no direct pressure to participate in the components that would be more deeply pilgrimage.

Montague Williams (33:46):

Okay.

Jamie Gates (33:47):

So there's an option, but I think that's also really important that you have at every step along the way, you want to opt into pilgrimage. It's not something that you should be coerced into in any way

Montague Williams (34:01):

That would name something different than let's say simply a travel abroad course where you're checking things off the list. We did this, we did that, we did this. By the way, you got your points for this thing. These are things that they're not getting points for or not. It's just this is formative. And if you're open to this, if this connects with who you are, your spirit, your longing, your sense of wonder, lean in.

Jamie Gates (34:26):

Yeah, the journal was probably the most significant part of the inner reflection. And so there were questions and there were topics that we would put forward, and there were suggested scriptures and so on. Again, the degree to which the persons, the participants, the journey persons joined in and leaned into that was up to them.

Montague Williams (34:50):

Okay.

Jamie Gates (34:54):

I'll say that just one other addition is that they got credit for doing the journal, but not a grade. In other words, pass/fail

Montague Williams (35:04):

Right

Jamie Gates (35:05):

And you've kept a journal.

Montague Williams (35:06):

Okay. Tell me about a place of sacred significance.

Jamie Gates (35:22):

So

(35:23):

We had the great fortune of being served communion in Cape Town at St. George's Cathedral on a number of occasions as we went on these pilgrimages and Bishop Desmond Tutu served us communion five different times I can remember. And his serving us communion. If you know much about the racial dynamics in politics of South Africa, were in the New South Africa in the two thousands into the 2000 teens. This is just 10, 15 years into South Africa's new multiracial democracy. And Tutu is a figure that has, the Archbishop has been a public figure. Some people say he might be a little bit like the MLK of South Africa, I would say he chaplain South Africa into a new South Africa as a very public figure and even a figure of the state as much as of the church sometimes his truth and reconciliation commission made for a level of transition, a more peaceful transition, I think, than what would've otherwise happened. Even given all of the limitations, I think, and the criticisms that have come about that TRC, there's something still miraculous that happened and given his leadership. And so I don't know if the students we were with felt we had the students read some of his work.

(37:00):

No Future Without Forgiveness was a regularly on their schedule. So they got, this was a big deal. And the very first time we met with him, I was humbled down to size by sitting in a room with the Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who was in his eighties sweater that he loved handing us oranges. And the holiness of that moment was electric at some level, but it was also really funny. Our students are students, and I guess that moment was also very human in that it's winter there. We come in all warm and cuddled up in our jackets and sitting there and I see one of our students, I love him to death sitting across the way with his arms folded sitting and slumping, increasingly down into the sofa that he's sitting on falling asleep on the Archbishop as he's talking to us about these great transitions that have happened. And I look back at that as partly as funny, but it was also this holy moment of real humanness. And I felt for the student afterwards, he got mocked by our fellow travelers. I am sure of it. And yet the Archbishop was in stride, just kind of giggled about it.

Montague Williams (38:31):

So he noticed.

Jamie Gates (38:32):

He noticed, but he did not say a word to the student or even to the rest of the students.

Montague Williams (38:37):

I can imagine him looking over

Jamie Gates (38:39):

And smiling. He had my eye while we're talking, and he was looking at me, the students behind, sort of out of his eyesight. He looks away and he looks back, little smile and keeps going. And I said, the graciousness that he has been for all of South Africa was right in that little moment where he smiles and just doesn't mention a word. Yeah.

Montague Williams (38:59):

Well, it sounds like part of the sacred significance there is not only the place and the person, but also this shared humility.

(39:10):

There's

(39:11):

Humility in what Desmond Tutu is wearing. There's humility in the fact that he's handing out fruit. There's humility in the fact that there's a student here that's not exactly recognizing what many are recognizing in this moment. He's just tired.

Jamie Gates (39:29):

Well, I think one other quick moment with him was I started by saying communion. Here's the witness that I had to interpret to them a bit as after they had experienced it. But he serves communion, and he had served communion up until he died at St. George's on a Friday morning if he's in town and anybody who came from all over the world would receive communion.

Montague Williams (39:54):

Wow.

Jamie Gates (39:55):

And he would serve, here's the kicker. He would serve communion in English, in his neosa, and in a cons, the language of his oppressor. Wow. Very active communion was this moment where you knew grace was possible at a scale that dwarfs what we may have experienced personally.

Montague Williams (40:21):

Pilgrimage is not just about getting somewhere. You name this moment of sacred significance, and in many ways you could think of pilgrimage as getting to that moment. But pilgrimage is also about our return home, the travel home, the way we travel home, what kind of commitments we make upon return home. Now, something I'm struck by is the fact that when you go to South Africa and all of these trips, you live in San Diego, but you are also inviting students to a place that you have called home. And so I am wondering, does it feel like you're visiting home when you go and when you've returned to San Diego, does it feel like you're returning home? What do you do with this?

Jamie Gates (41:13):

Yeah, that's the life of a missionary kid, a third culture kid

(41:19):

Having multiple homes and no home at the same time. I would say yes to the way, or let me affirm what you framed there, that every time I go to South Africa, I'm going home. I lived there from time I was eight years old until I went to college at 17 and then have gone back years and years and years and reconnected and maintained friendships and people who are like family. Are there people who I would want to help raise my kids? Are there people who I want to stay friends and touch with? And I'll also say that my ecclesiology, the way I think about church as well, the body of Christ, the way we have knit together by friendships and what may have started as a missions enterprise with my parents is now a multi-layered set of friends. Instead of people who are like home, who, when I go ask me about my kids, ask me about my grandkid and my upcoming grandkid, and I check in on where theirs have gone next, and we've wrestled with things.

(42:21):

I have handful of friends there who we just continue to live life together over a lot of it over WhatsApp. But when I go, it's like we never left. I even saw some folks this last time up in the farming communities that I hadn't seen in a decade, but because they're all intimately related with one another, and Facebook and such has kept us somewhat in touch. We had meals together that, and shared on levels that it's hard to get people here to talk at that level about hard things. And so I could talk to the offer Connor Farmers about being offered refugee status in the United States with people who actually have a stake in that conversation directly. And then of course, that's up in the north and down in Cape Town. I have brothers and sisters who we have just walked life for a very long time, and I think maybe not all pilgrimages need that, but I think there's something about you're going home and you're inviting others to come with you, and you're now sharing all of that. In sociology, we might say social capital, all of those friendships and trust and bonds, and I'm bringing a bunch of strangers into that space, and I'm kind of protective of that space. I'm thinking, don't mess with my family here. But they're gracious enough to let you come in and ask questions about hard things in life,

(43:51):

The

(43:51):

Kind of things you don't normally talk about around your dinner table. So there's a curation. There's a care that has to happen when leading these trips that is like maybe there's some boundaries, maybe some things you don't ask. Maybe you wait to be asked questions rather than prodded in with, so why were you and your ancestors so proa apartheid or something silly like that? I'm just giving a silly example, but now these friendships they're offering and I'm offering something more than just an experience that you can take pictures of and go home and brag about.

Montague Williams (44:32):

I've been thinking a lot recently about how Jesus in scripture is living between homes and finds home between homes. You can think of that as his context of ministry. You can think of that also in relation to the kingdom of God in terms of time, but also in terms of place. You could also think about his journey, his very travel based journey and ministry where he's inviting people to his sense of home while he's making home between homes. It's very interesting to me, and it has struck me, that pilgrimage in many ways invites people to begin to see the world this way, to begin to see their lives this way, that when they visit a place as these students travel with you to South Africa, or as other young people go with other pilgrimage leaders to other places, they don't just go touch that place and leave that if done well. This place in some way, hopefully in a good way, becomes a part of them in some way, especially if commitments start to take place about their lives.

Jamie Gates (45:56):

What you're saying is at some level, maybe if we can create a good model of pilgrimage, it might infect the other ways people travel and are in each other's lives. So that tourist maybe sits and spends some time with a janitor that's in their hotel

(46:17):

And

(46:17):

Hears about their children and shares pictures and begins to have a deeper or profound human connection in that space. It's not all about getting to the gondola on time,

Montague Williams (46:27):

Right? Or you visit a restaurant, someone says, if you go to this city, you've got to go to this restaurant. Well, what if you take some time to learn about the story of that restaurant or the person who opened it or where that food is actually coming from? It begins to incorporate pilgrimage elements into other forms of travel. Hey, let me ask you this. You take young people on these pilgrimages, and here we're talking about college students, so young adults, and you talked about journaling being a meaningful practice. I was wondering if there are any other spiritual practices that you have found that students find meaningful on pilgrimage? So just one, can you tell me about one?

Jamie Gates (47:22):

Yeah. I would say in the journals very intentionally nurturing as a skill to, or at least pointing to a practice of lament.

Montague Williams (47:37):

Okay,

Jamie Gates (47:39):

What does it mean to lament as compared to being really overwhelmed by let's say, the poverty or the violence that you see? What does it mean to lament instead of just feeling sad or feeling deeply sad or being depressed by the complexity of what you see? What does it mean to lament as compared to shutting down? Because you're just so overwhelmed by what you see. What does it mean to nurture the spiritual practice and discipline of refusing to be consoled, I think is the way that Matthew puts it, right? And quoting Jeremiah 15 and Katon really brought this to mind very directly saying, the work of a pilgrimage at some level is about deep pain and about radical hope. But there's this in-between being able to see deep pain and not rush too quick solutions or overly hallmark ideas about what's possible, hope without reality built into it. And that is the space of when Rachel was weeping for her children, because they are no more refuse to be consoled. She was refusing. It's really Rachel's witness to us through Matthew's genealogy that we get this message of refusing to be consoled, and that takes a certain, have you ever read the book of Lamentations all the way through, right?

(49:19):

Your stomach would be, you really can't read it all in one sitting. There's so much violence and so much destruction, so much despair. And yet, scripture calls us 50 Psalms of lament, one third of the Psalms. It calls us to learn to live in the heaviness, develop a thicker skin. Interestingly, people who live in the thickness of and the heaviness of life have some skill at that already. So in some ways, taking people who have more privilege in the world into spaces where people who regularly face pain regularly face a lack regularly face, they also have a gift I learned, something they've learned in that to teach when we go so lament, I'd say refusing to be consult sits right at the core. I think of what a lesson that has to happen along the way for pilgrimage to be the depth that it needs.

Montague Williams (50:15):

Dr. Jamie Gates. Jamie, thank you so much for being a part of this conversation. Such a pleasure. Same. You've been listening to Breathe In Place, a podcast brought to you by the Pilgrimage Innovation Hub. This podcast is made possible by generous support from the Lilly Endowment Narrative production by Guimel Sibingo, technical production by Danny Martinez and Project Coordination and Guest booking by Wanda Gailey, opening Music by Chaos. If you have any comments or questions about today's episode, we'd love to hear from you. Send us an email at pilgrimage@pointloma.edu or message us on Instagram at Pilgrimage Innovation Hub. I'm your host, Montague William. Thanks again for joining us. We'll see you next week.