When was the last time you intentionally put yourself somewhere that might change what you see?
"The final movement of pilgrimage is to 'return with renewed sight.'"
– Rev. Dr. Blair Thompson
Most of us don't see the world exactly as it is. We see it from where we stand.
Our experiences shape what we notice. So do our assumptions, relationships, histories, successes, disappointments, and fears. Over time, some ways of seeing become so familiar that we stop recognizing them as a particular perspective at all. They simply become the way things are.
That's one reason I've long been drawn to the spiritual practice of pilgrimage.
Pilgrimage takes us somewhere else.
We leave behind familiar surroundings and routines. We walk unfamiliar streets. We encounter people whose experiences are different from our own. We become guests instead of hosts. And in that displacement, something can happen.
Years ago, when I studied pilgrimage and its impact on spiritual leadership, I came to describe the final movement of pilgrimage as “return with renewed sight.” The pilgrim comes home to the same place, the same people, the same challenges — but doesn't necessarily see them in quite the same way.
Standing somewhere else can help us see home differently.
I thought about that recently as our leadership cohort of United Methodist bishops from the Classes of 2022 and 2024 traveled through England, bringing their two-year journey together to a close.
We built the journey with partners from Goodmakers Society around a theme: Ways of Seeing.
Throughout the week, we invited the bishops to pay attention not only to what they were seeing, but to how they were seeing. What lenses did they bring with them? What did those lenses bring into focus? What might they obscure?
For Bishop Cedrick Bridgeforth, something shifted while visiting churches in Oxford.
He noticed their size. They were tall, but they weren't wide. They weren't sprawling. The spaces were intimate.
“The movement was not about swell or numbers,” he reflected. “With that perspective, I have to rethink what growth means and how it is measured within a true movement.”
A building had unsettled an assumption.
"In many cases, I think, one must be unsettled in some way to see."
– Bishop Dan Schwerin
For Bishop Dan Schwerin, it was an assumption he carried with him to England.
Bishop Schwerin had been thinking about the Methodist circuit system. He leads in a context where smaller churches are navigating significant change, and he wondered whether the British Methodist experience might offer a model for his own context.
Then he saw it up close.
He listened as people spoke honestly about resistance, anger, pain, and leadership challenges within the circuit structure. What he encountered didn't confirm what he had been wondering. It complicated it. Bishop Schwerin came away convinced that simply adopting the model in his own context would be a mistake.
We sometimes enter learning experiences expecting to discover The Answer — the program or idea we can take home and implement.
But pilgrimage isn't really about finding answers somewhere else. Sometimes we need to stand somewhere else long enough to see our own assumptions more clearly.
Reflecting on the experience, Bishop Schwerin said something that has stayed with me:
“In many cases, I think, one must be unsettled in some way to see.”
I think he's right. And you don't have to travel across an ocean to put yourself somewhere that might unsettle the way you see.
There are opportunities all around us to step outside the familiar.
Here are a few invitations to consider closer to home:
Visit a faith community unlike your own. Be a curious guest, not a challenging critic. What might you learn?
Walk your neighborhood with someone who experiences it differently. What questions does their perspective raise for you?
Put yourself somewhere that feeds your imagination — an art gallery, a theater, a trail, a part of town you rarely visit. Notice what stirs in you.
Have a conversation with someone whose experience is very different from yours. Hold space for their story without judgment.
Whatever you do, go open. Resist the instinct to evaluate or compare. Pay attention to what you notice, what you feel, what questions arise, and what unsettles you.
The goal isn't to come home with someone else's answer.
The goal is to return with renewed sight. To see the place you already know, the people you already serve, and perhaps even the possibilities in front of you a little differently.
So, when was the last time you intentionally put yourself somewhere that might change what you see?
And where might you go next?