Setting aside the embarrassment I feel from the fact that I created this blog as a result of having a crush on a boy, I hope to make use of this space to write freely and unabashedly.

There are some decisions I've made in recent months that make me cringe and/or doubt myself, but there is one decision I've felt right about since the very beginning. And that was the decision to go to France.

It all began with a simple desire to make a pilgrimage. I wanted to journey as early pilgirms would when they traveled to faraway lands in order to visit sacred sites. The pilgrims would travel for months on foot, buggy, or boat just to behold a holy landmark; they would be tried since travel was dangerous and costly. Nevertheless, they were persistent on making the journey because they knew they would discover God at their destination and along each step of the way.

Although nowadays traveling is much less dangerous and time-consuming, I intend on journeying with the same purpose - to discover God afresh in a sacred place and to depend on him for the uncertainties of the travel.

Going to Taize, France, has been my dream. The Taize community is an ecumenical and monastic community founded by Brother Roger in 1940. Today, hundreds and thousands of international visitors from every Christian tradition come together to experience prayer and silence to commune with God and one another.

What is amazing is that since the 1950's, Taize has become a place of pilgrimage for young adults all over the world. Young adults. French monastery. Silence and solitude. It is absolutely peculiar to me how those three phrases can actually be intimately intertwined. It is with great anticipation that I soon will be able to see this phenomenon for myself and partake of this movement.

Thanks to an elderly man at the Quaker service I attend who stood up and recited the words of Mahatma Ghandi, "There is no way to peace. Peace is the way", I now dub the journey:

The Pilgrimage of Peace.

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Deep within us all there is an amazing inner sanctuary of the soul, a holy place, a Divine Center, a speaking Voice, to which we may continuously return.

--Thomas Kelly