"If we are in fact strangers and pilgrims here on earth, then we have certain conclusions to draw which concern our daily lives. There is a counsel which is found in most spiritual religions, and indeed also in some philosophies, that we should cultivate detachment. This has not meant, in the minds of the best spiritual guides, that we should wrap ourselves in an inhuman aloofness...or that we should look on life as a spectacle in which we have no vital concern. But it does mean that we should live in this world as if we did not wholly belong to it...It is wise to remind ourselves that even our most cherished ambitions and interests are passing; the soul will grow out of them, or at least must leave them behind.
We look backward, perhaps, at the pleasant days we have known, and we linger in the past, reluctant to let it go; or the present may be so vivid and captivating that we would hold on to it and resent the law that compels us to move on to unknown scenes. But to the pilgrim, these passages should not be wholly sad. We may feel regret, but not desolation...These phases of life are incidents of the journey, but it is the way that matters, not the accidents along the road. Has the time come to move on? Then break up the camp with a good heart; it is only one more stage on the journey home.
One day we shall break camp for the last time in this world and face the final adventure of death. May we then have so passed the days of our pilgrimage, with the Lord of adventurers by our side, that we may reach in the end our eternal home." ~W.R. Matthews
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