Education and the Modest Miracle

The psalms that speak the most to me are those about pilgrimage: thy word is a rod unto my hand and a path unto my feet. I reflect about the strange facet of Pilgrim's path to Zion, how no point towards Zion is necessarily more easy or more perfect than those before; that the strange characteristic of nearing Zion is that the Pilgrim himself has only his own experience of the road to convince him that he has left the City of Destruction, only his own experience of travel and conviction of being rescued from disaster to convince him that something better lies ahead. It is barely a proof of success; it is the barest of promises of paradise.

The educator-God I am left with, failing evolution towards perfection, is proved only through my own experience of avoiding despair time and again as I encounter new and fresh temptations to give up. The accumulation of experience, wisdom, and courage, may indeed act in an esoteric way towards the perfection of my soul, but it in no way secures me from even greater acts of hubris and even more terrible betrayals of my purpose.

Jung and Blake on pilgrimages