Those who go through the desolate valley will find it a place of springs.

These words connect two things: the promise of strength and joy for those who set their heart on God as they move through the world as pilgrims, and the way God can move even through suffering and despair.

Sometimes we separate these things. We say that to go on a pilgrimage is a spiritual practice, a time of reflection and interiority, a time to grow close to God in prayer and in peace. Then, we say, we must come 'down from the mountaintop' and get to the work in the world. This psalm suggests that these are not two things but one. The pilgrim's way is the way of going through the desolate valley. The pilgrim's way is to move through and in the troubled world, committed to a way of walking, a way of seeing, a way of being. The pilgrim's work, in this text, is to go through the desolate valley and see signs of God there. To find power and strength and even happiness in the face of evil and hurt.

In our time, the desolate valley is made of racism and economic and social oppression, of violence, of loss of dignity, of loss of life. The killing of 18 year old, unarmed Michael Brown, whose body lay in the street for four hours in Ferguson, MO on August 9, 2014, has become a symbol of a great disease that we suffer from as Americans. And the fact that these kinds of unjust killings have been going on before Michael Brown, and have continued at a steady pace since his death, has become a challenge to people of God: how shall we approach this desolate valley?

We should approach it as pilgrims, go to it on the pilgrims' way, seeking springs of the water of the living God.

This is why the Taizé community model of a Pilgrimage of Trust is such a powerful catalyst for bringing people together. For over a year, brothers from Taizé and church leaders from the greater St. Louis area have been moving together on the pilgrim's way. We who are from outside of the area were privileged to be invited into their pilgrimage, to spend the weekend in St. Louis, with Catholic and Baptist, Congregational, and evangelical leaders. To walk, to sing, to listen, to pray. To move in and near and around the tragedy of Ferguson and discover it as a site of powerful springs.

What we did was simple: a group of of six Trinity youth from the choir and from TEEP's Leadership Program, along with youth mentors, staff members, and friends, spent the weekend together in the Pilgrimage of Trust. We sang, we walked through neighborhoods, and we listened to speakers leading the movement for social change in the churches and community of Ferguson and St. Louis. It was not an act of "work," there are no "outcomes." It was an offering of pilgrimage, a seeking together for God in the time of our trouble.

We return to our beloved Boston knowing that in its own way it too is a desolate valley: a fractured place bearing the great disease of racism. But we return nourished by the springs of water we found in St. Louis, and strengthened to walk the pilgrim's way in our own communities. Our eyes are opened to seek the living water of God.