The Berkeley Art and Inter-religious Pilgrimage Project

 This review is of the Berkeley Art and Inter-religious Pilgrimage Project, BAIPP and offered by Michael Drell and Alison Fischer

The Labyrinth at All Souls Episcopal in Berkeley, CA. Photo by Michael Drell

I need to begin with a disclosure statement regarding my relationship with BAIPP in several other capacities aside from this review. Dr. Barush and other scholars involved in this project are my instructors, mentors, and pilgrim siblings. I created one of the pilgrimages included on the site. I am also on the Board of the BAIPP as a student advisor. I am openly biased towards its mission and passionate about our work. I also work alongside Rev Maggie Foote at All Souls Parish Berkeley with the youth group and we have taken up pilgrimage and labyrinth walking as ongoing themes with our young people (as well as the broader congregation). There have been a few activities centered around pilgrimage and labyrinths as well as a longer walk from our parish to Grace Cathedral via the ferry. Having missed that event myself, I am thrilled to learn of the interest at the Diocesan level and there are several youth group facilitators and others helping to organise a large event of pilgrimages from parishes into Grace Cathedral for a pilgrim service and fellowship amongst youth.
This Cathedral pilgrimage is being planned for May and part of the reason for choosing this website for the review is to ascertain the value of BAIPP for high school age youth both as a pedagogical tool and a religious artifact with which they can engage in several ways. I am very grateful for these many blessings of time, energy, and heart into a project, ministry, religious practise, and academic field which are the lifeblood of my vocation. 

Peace, Michael Drell

The Berkeley Art and Interreligious Pilgrimage Project is a dedicated center for the study and practice of pilgrimage across religious traditions and its cultural influences and is supported by the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, CA. 

We offer this review to the BAIPP and Vestry at All Souls, any adults interested in the mission of BAIPP and particularly the Christian formation of our youth in ecumenical and inter-religious relationship. 

The project was created through a vision of diversity, growth, and abundance in regards to the content it offers and who it serves. However, every effort requires a focus and the BAIPP designed their website and content to cater to a community of primarily adults, who have the time, access, resources, and desire to embark on spiritual journeys. Our analysis of the BAIPP resource is presented through the scope of how to foster  community with teens and offer experiences that serve their interests and access needs. 

The Berkeley Art and Interreligious Pilgrimage Project is offered through a website that serves as an comprehensive educational resource that offers the necessary tools, tours, and supplemental wisdom to facilitate pilgrimage journeys. The BAIPP website and the project itself represents art and encounters with sacred art through pilgrimage, but also understanding works of art as pilgrimage in themselves. The process of art making reflects a sacred journey.  Pilgrimage as pedagogy is a problem posing education that involves a constant unveiling of reality. 1

Pilgrimage requires presence, grounding, and movement to facilitate assimilation and accommodation of new knowledge, a relinquishment of control, the need for endurance, and the ebb and flow of a multitude of emotions. Peace and healing makes pilgrimage a learning artifact for Christian education and formation. 2

The Berkeley Art and Interreligious Project is unique because of the constructionist and liberatory intention and focus of the vision, the structure and organization of the project as a resource, and the actual pilgrimage guides to ensure that the resource is accessible, inclusive, and provocative. 3 

BAIPP seeks to foster unity, understanding, and respect for the many shared and sacred spaces locally and abroad, by serving as a comprehensive resource that offers the guidance and practical tools needed to ilitate meaningful interreligious and interdisciplinary exploration of pilgrimage. 

BAIPP facilitates accessible opportunities for exchange, connection, healing, and transformation that can be utilized by all ranges of skill and experience. The creative accommodation and intention towards the scope of who may utilize this extraordinary project is an all encompassing resource that can be accessed by anyone, anywhere, any ability, and in any context. The transformational experiences in the growing library of pilgrimage opportunities offer nine journeys within the Bay Area, guides to create pilgrimages within personal context, and journeys experienced through an entirely virtual capacity. 

The project was created through a vision of diversity, growth, and abundance in regards to the content it offers and who it serves. However, every effort requires a focus and the BAIPP designed their website and content to cater to a community of primarily adults, who have the time, access, resources, and desire to embark on spiritual journeys. 

Through the assessment of constructionism, the ability to develop artifacts, and youth focused communication and context, we identified three needs in the current BAIPP website and its resources that inhibit their ability to most effectively serve youth and their ability to experience pilgrimage:

- The lack of representation of youth in the project’s leadership

- The format and content utilized to communicate with youth and teens

- and the need for accommodation of the resources and pilgrimage opportunities that best serve youth and their access needs. 

People invest their interest and energy when they can trust their involvement is desired and supported. Explicit invitation, communication, and resources formed with contextual understanding are necessary to build community and engagement, especially with youth and teens. 4 We suggest that the BAIPP invite a teen to join the Board to offer the necessary insight of our youth to foster the desired relationship and better serve their pilgrimage needs. We recommend that the project website include a youth section devoted to the provision of age appropriate pilgrimage guides, skill building toolkits, and testimonials to provide more effective communication and provoke engagement.

Youth require creative accommodation with the scope of where and how they may experience pilgrimages due to their more limited contexts and transportation access. We recommend that the BAIPP curate a pilgrimage journey that offers a guide that consists of subjective pilgrimage milestones that enables youth to embark on a journey in their own context and also experience the transformative meditation of a pilgrimage. 5

Thank you for this opportunity to offer insight for how BAIPP and youth may create and come closer to God through art and pilgrimage.

References:

1. Paulo Freire. “Chapter 2”, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 30th Anniversary Edition, translated by Myra Bergman Ramos. New York: Continuum, 2000. (68).

2. Edith Ackerman, “Experiences of Artifacts: People’s/Objects’ Affordances.’” Key Works in Radical Constructivism, edited by E. Glaserfeld, 249-259. Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers, 2007. (258).

3. Papert, Seymour. The Children's Machine: Rethinking School in the Age of the Computer. New York :BasicBooks, 1993 (137-139).

4. Reality Pedagogy: Christopher Emdin at TEDxTeachersCollege, 2012

5. Brookfield, Stephen D. 2015. The Skillful Teacher : On Technique, Trust, and Responsiveness in the Classroom. 3rd ed. Jossey-Bass (19-26).