These peregrini, as they were also known, viewed their wanderings, or peregrinations, as a process of seeking their place of “resurrection” – they were searching for their path of new beginnings.*

I wander through old and new texts because new words and old words in new combinations are important for hope and for beauty.

Staying where I am is not a good place, as Erich Fromm reflects:

Our social pattern is such that the successful man is not supposed to be afraid or bored or lonely. He must find this world the best of all our worlds; in order to have the best chance for promotion he must repress fear as well as doubt, depression, boredom, or hopelessness.**

Jan Steward writes of a better way:

Play is a way of working and work is a way of playing. Our best times are when working and playing are the same.^

Yet, beneath the surface of a life that has separated play from work, or, as Johan Huizinga had exposed, separated play from seriousness, there lies one or more of Fromm’s ailments.

We need to wander as an expression of hope, becoming perigrini, for then we shall

see and cherish all signs of new life and [will be] ready at every moment to help the birth of that which is ready to be born**.

*From Philip Newell’s Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul;
**From Erich Fromm’s The Revolution of Hope;
^Jan Steward from Corita Kent and Jan Steward’s Learning by Heart.