Direct from Chartres : The Art of Pilgrimage
with Phil Cousineau and Hosted by Lauren Artress
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Journey to Chartres from the comfort of home with video recordings from the daily program from our 2023 Summer Pilgrimage hosted by Lauren Artress with Phil Cousineau. Includes guided meditations, talks, conversations and village vignettes. Watch at your own time and pace to inspire a pilgrimage of your own.
For at least 60,000 years people from around the world, in every age and culture, have dealt with personal or historical crises by setting off on pilgrimages—spiritually transformative journeys to sacred sites—in order to revitalize and reorient themselves. Our time is marked by a series of such crises, including a crisis of meaning, and the precipitous rise in pilgrimages in every faith reflects an ardent search for meaning— personal answers to ultimate questions—in modern times. In our workshop we will use animated discussion, photography and film clips from the presenter’s own work, contemplative music, poetry, journaling, walking the labyrinth, as well as daily prompts so we might reflect upon the soul-stirring pleasures of pilgrimage.
The ultimate goal of our time together will be to learn a few simple but poetic daily practices that have the power to transform virtually any kind of travel into a sacred journey. In this way, as the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh suggested, we might recognize our own backyard as sacred ground.
Questions? Email [email protected]
Your Instructor
Phil Cousineau is a freelance writer, documentary filmmaker, independent scholar, creativity consultant, and travel leader to sacred sites all over the globe. He has published over 40 books, including several best-sellers such as The Hero’s Journey: The Life and Work of Joseph Campbell, The Art of Pilgrimage, and Burning the Midnight Oil. His most recent works include The Book of Roads, And Live Rejoicing: The Life and Times of Huston Smith, The Accidental Aphorist, and The Lost Notebooks of Sisyphus. As a filmmaker, Cousineau has written or co-written over twenty-five award-winning documentary features, including the Oscar-nominated "Forever Activists: Stories from the Abraham Lincoln Brigade," and the landmark “The Peyote Road: Ancient Religion in Contemporary Crisis.” Since 2009 he has served as host and cowriter of "Global Spirit," airing on PBS and LINK-TV.
For the last thirty years, Cousineau has worked as an expert on myth in the movies at Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox, MLB.com, NFL Films, Smithsonian Channel, Lucasfilm, and Pixar Animation Studios.
Currently, he lives with his family on Telegraph Hill, in North Beach, San Francisco. To learn more about Phil Cousineau, please visit his website: https://www.philcousineau.net/