SECONDARY RESOURCES
ACTIVITY 4.1 - WHY DO WE GO ON JOURNEYS? AND WHAT DO WE BRING BACK?
AIM
- To help children think about travel - why do we go on journeys?
- To introduce the idea of pilgrimage to children who otherwise might be unfamiliar with the concept.
THE ACTIVITY
- Begin with a class discussion about journeys. In its broadest sense a journey is any movement by a person away from their home, almost always followed by a return, and in which the person who has journeyed generally gains something. Look at examples, e.g.
- a walk round the park (the "gain" is pleasure/exercise/meeting friends etc.)
- a shopping expedition (the "gain" is food/clothes/looking round town etc.)
Some journeys might not fit into this pattern so easily - e.g. visiting an aged
aunt in hospital - and some journeys are forced - e.g. having to go with your
parents to visit an aged aunt in hospital - but there is usually some kind of
gain for someone in any journey and this provides one of the links between this
issue and religion/ethics.
- Ask the pupils about the number of times they have left their house over the
last couple of days. What was the purpose of each journey? What did they gain
from each journey? After talking about a few examples, use the
worksheet
to help the children recall all the different kind of journeys they and their
family make and to reflect on the purpose of these journeys. The first few
examples have been suggested to help them get started.
- When the children have finished this worksheet, gather them together to
discuss the results. Clearly journeys are an inevitable aspect of life - even
recluses have to have some mechanism for getting food! In the final row the idea
of pilgrimage has been introduced. Did anyone claim to have been on a
pilgrimage? What about going on a weekly journey to church/mosque/synagogue
etc.? How many people were able (and remembered) to include this journey? What
do people "gain" by making these kinds of journeys?
- Introduce the
concept of pilgrimage across world religions and its function. Hopefully people
return from pilgrimage a changed person - either physically (e.g. after a visit
to Lourdes) or their inner-person has changed. They have made their journey to
be in a special place, and in the presence of God, and that action changes the
person within.
To reinforce this introduction to the concept of pilgrimage, the pupils can then
do their own research by using the
world
map. Using atlases and encyclopaedias, the pupils should mark
each place of pilgrimage on the map and research which religion thinks of the
site as sacred. Lhasa is the Dalai Lama's headquarters. And Nashville is where
Elvis is buried - not a site recognized by any major religion, but visited
yearly by thousands of "pilgrims"!
- Supplementary activity: divide the class into groups and give each
group a particular place of pilgrimage to research. Why is each place special -
what stories are connected with it? What kind of ceremonies/rituals go on there?
Do they happen all the year round or only at special times? Jerusalem is special
to three of the major religions and researching it could be divided among three
groups, each group looking at the city from the perspective of a different
religion.
© REEP, Graeme Watson, Lazenby Education |
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