The Sophia Institute is proud to bring you a very special event with Phil Cousineau
“The Art of Pilgrimage: The Timeless Search for Meaning”
Wednesday, July 16, 2025
6:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. ET
Join us from the comfort of your own home VIA ZOOM. 😊 If you can’t make it live, don’t worry: all who register will receive a recording of the session to enjoy at their convenience.
“Pilgrims are poets who create by taking journeys.”
—Richard Niebuhr
For an estimated 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.
What is unique about Cousineau’s approach is that includes both traditionally sacred journeys to such sites as Jerusalem, Chartres, and Santiago de Compostela, and secular ones, such as Emily Dickinson’s home in Amherst, Massachusetts, Albert Einstein’s patent office in Switzerland, and the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. What these sites share in common is the opportunity to experience what the ancient Greeks called “the infinite moment, ” when time stops and meaning rushes in.
In our session we will offer practices based on contemplative music, poetry, journaling, and daily prompts so we might reflect upon the soul-stirring pleasures of meaningful travel.
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, we can return home after our travels and, as the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh suggested, recognize our own backyard as sacred ground.
Recommended Reading: The Art of Pilgrimage, Phil Cousineau, Conari Press, 1998, revised 2022, and The Book of Roads, Phil Cousineau, Sisyphus Press, 2015.
MEET PHIL COUSINEAU
Phil Cousineau is a freelance writer, filmmaker, independent scholar, and creativity consultant. Cousineau lectures around the world on a wide range of topics from mythology, film, and writing, to beauty, travel, sports, and creativity.
He has published over forty books, including the international best-seller The Art of Pilgrimage, Once and Future Myths, The Blue Museum, The Lost Notebooks of Sisyphus, andWho Stole the Arms of the Venus de Milo? His latest work is Moonlight Over the Parthenon: Poems In and Out of Greece. Cousineau has written more than thirty documentary films, including The Hero’s Journey: The Life and Work of Joseph Campbell, and the Oscar-nominated Forever Activists: Stories from the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.
Since 1984 Cousineau has led dozens of Art, Literature and Mythology tours all over the world, plus Writing Retreats to Greece, Ireland, and Paris. He was the host and co-writer of the much-acclaimed series “Global Spirit” on PBS and Link TV for over ten years, and a commentator on myth in the movies for Warner Brothers, Pixar, and Lucas Films. He lives with his family on Telegraph Hill, in San Francisco.