The best stories of pilgrimage are those that end in a flood of cathartic tears as the sojourner finally approaches the sanctuary and a monk meets him at the threshold to wash his festering feet. There is, in this mythic moment, a transcendental communion in which the lowly searcher and the divine goal become one. But how many pilgrims reach the sanctuary and collapse, how many cry tears of despair in discovering that the sanctuary is, in fact, a grave? We typically don’t hear about these pilgrims, but perhaps we should.
