The Way: A Lenten Pilgrimage Together

 

This Lent, we invite you to lace up your spiritual walking shoes—though mercifully, you can do most of this pilgrimage in comfortable seating and sensible footwear. Calvin will travel together through Lent this year in a series called “The Way,” a shared journey of reflection, repentance, and renewal that leads us through the wilderness of Lent and into the bright dawn of Easter.

 

We begin (as all good journeys should) with food, fellowship, and a film. Join us on Tuesday, February 17 at 6:00 p.m. in Fellowship Hall for Fat Taco Tuesday: Potluck and a Movie. We’ll celebrate our neighbors with delicious tacos from Los Mayas—because if you’re going to “make a way,” you might as well make it a taco way. Bring your favorite potluck dish to share, and then settle in as we watch Emilio Estevez’s The Way, starring his real-life father, Martin Sheen. This poignant story of the Camino will accompany us throughout Lent and shape our Easter celebration.

 

More than ten years ago, I stumbled upon the movie, The Way and found myself unexpectedly mesmerized. The film reframed life itself as a pilgrimage—sometimes beautiful, often uncomfortable, always revealing. It is the very Camino that Connie Frierson and Peter Donovan walked, and their witness reminds us that the blessings of the Camino often emerge not from ease, but from the stretch of the journey. As the movie wisely says, “You don’t choose a life, you live a life.”

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Lent is a time of reflection, and there is nothing like a pilgrimage to conjure that up. Across cultures and centuries, human beings have marked sacred journeys with intention and prayer. Inspired by the many biblical images of roads, paths, and wilderness wanderings, we will make our way together this season—trusting the promise of God: “I am about to do a new thing… I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert” (Isaiah 43:19).

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Historically, Christians have long understood pilgrimage as a spiritual practice. When travel to the Holy Land became dangerous in the Middle Ages, labyrinths emerged as a symbolic “stand-in” for the sacred journey. In recent decades, labyrinths—like Calvin’s—have reemerged as places of prayerful walking. Throughout Lent, we will offer invitations to walk, reflect, and listen for God along your own “way.”

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Our worship series will follow the contours of this journey:

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•    Ash Wednesday – “The Way Back”

•    Lent One – “The Wandering Way”

•    Lent Two – “The High Way” (a reminder that God’s thoughts are higher than ours)

•    Lent Three – “The Way Around” (when Jesus refuses Herod’s detours)

•    Lent Four – “The Way Home” (the beloved parable of the prodigal)

•    Lent Five – “The Free Way” (God’s liberating path through the sea)

•    Lent Six/Palm Sunday – “The Other Way” (Jesus enters Jerusalem on his own terms)

•    Holy Week – “The Loving Way” (including a Taizé-style Maundy Thursday in Fellowship Hall both similar and different from last year [we need to find more seats for one]; Good Friday will take shape as we journey together)

•    Easter Sunday – “Make Your Way” (the women meet the risen Christ on the road)

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You don’t need a passport to walk this pilgrimage although rumor has it the kids may get a Camino passport (they actually exist). Even an ordinary stroll can become holy ground when we walk with open hearts. The Way is also a story of grief, reconciliation, and reawakening—a reminder that the road to resurrection often runs through loss.

Friends, I am grateful for Connie and Peter’s witness, and I look forward to traveling The Way with you this Lent. May you find comfort, challenge, and a deepening trust in the God who always walks beside us—through desert, wilderness, and, at last, into new life.

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So bring a dish, grab a taco, and come see the movie. The table is set, the road awaits, and—thanks be to God—God is already making a way.