What is Prayers of a Pilgrim?

Prayers of a Pilgrim is my newest blog iteration after many years of writing as Ang Peregrino.

“Ang Peregrino” (the Peregrine) is the Filipino term for The Pilgrim (one who goes on pilgrimage). They say that there is a stark difference between those who go on pilgrimage and those who go on tour: tourists sight-see, pilgrims heart-see. Pilgrims go into a place and something is stirred within and they’re never the same again. For pilgrims, the journey is as important as the destination. For pilgrims, life is holy ground: burning bushes abound. And every moment is potentially a moment of sandal-taking and bowing in reverence before the holy.

In January 2020, I started a marathon of sorts — I planned to write on my instagram page a reflection for every single day of 2020. I call it #PrayersWrappedInQuotes. At that time, I made it a personal journey. Who would have thought that 2020 will become the year of the pandemic and that deeper reflection has become the hallmark of our rebirth this year! I will be posting all . For now, I’ve decided to put both together in one site — so you will read my writing in the blog and you will read prayer prompts in prayers; and later on, you will see all 365 PrayersWrappedInQuotes here as well.

This blog is my (and others’) pilgrim thoughts on society (the things that happen outside us), spirituality (what happens inside us) and intimacy (the things that happen between us). With what happened this 2020, I am also being drawn to a reflection on the power and value of silence in the interspaces of society, spirituality and intimacy. We need some silence in spirituality — in order to contemplate and see things better, deeper, and in order to have a wider, longer view of things. We also need a collective silence in society — to be able to put up a mirror to the world and say, “Hey, this is what’s happening! We’re all doing it the wrong way!” Or to realize that we are on the right track. Or that we are on the way to something good, something better. We also need silence in our relationships, because it is in silence where our deepest desires unfold.

It is interesting to note that the best leaders this world has known are the ones who have found silence in themselves, and in turn have spread this silence in their leadership: leaders who are self-reflecting, self-effacing, who has not been afraid to face themselves, and have led not with the force of their arms but the strength of their spirit: men and women like Nelson Mandela, Confucius, Martin Luther King, Abraham Lincoln, John Paul the Great, Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama, Mikhail Gorbachev, Marcus Aurelius, Zarathustra, Mohamed the Prophet, Jesus Christ.

Let this blog be a way for this silence to spread.

This is also a blog of well-curated prayers: mine and others, and ultimately yours. So use it as a prayer book or daily devotional. Use it as a way to start your day (because it is always a good idea to start your day with prayer). Bookmark this, along with other prayer sites.

Click on the prayer of the day. Or you can jump dates the way you would cut text of scriptures and read whatever the message is for you that day. The text itself takes about 2 minutes or less to read. But it comes with a short call to reflection and it might be good to spend some more time on this part. It’s time well spent–10 minutes or so that can actually change the trajectory of your day.

If you are moved, I would like to encourage you to share the fruit of your meditation right below the post, so other people can benefit from your prayer; because while prayer can be intensely personal, it is also communal. We are graced today because of people who have prayed before us and shared their prayers to us.

This is a blog of prayers and poems, of joys and pains, of desires and dreams. The prayers of the pilgrim are real and truthful, nothing held back, nothing edited. Because ultimately, that is what prayer is all about: the truth about ourselves, our relationships, our world, our God.

If you have your own pilgrim thoughts and you want to add to the conversation, please send these to me via email (to hello@prayersofapilgrim.com) in doc/pdf format or as email inline text.

Thank you for visiting Prayers of a Pilgrim! Let our pilgrimage begin!