PBW: Pilgrimage, Part I

A little known fact about the Long Island Expressway is that the further East one goes, the further apart the exits get. It's been years since I last visited the Shrine of Our Lady of the Island, and I always traveled with family. On a road trip, while my dad drove and my mom pointed out all the interesting sights, I was almost always laying across the back seat of the car with my face buried in a comic book. “Someday you'll appreciate all this,” said my mom prophetically, and I tuned her out. Now each week finds a young loner on a crusade to champion the cause of the innocent, the helpless, the powerless, in a world of criminals who operate above the law. Truth be told, I'm really roaming the highways to find images for Photo Blog Wednesday. My latest bout of wanderlust had me on the road at high speeds for well over an hour before I found my destination. The shrine offers trails, stations of the cross, and fascinating statues and landscaping. If you're not Catholic, or even religious at all, hopefully the following images can still be appreciated in an aesthetic sense:







The sinister donkey in the Nativity scene, clearly up to no good, creeped me out a little. I moved on to the trails featuring Jesus praying in the garden followed by the various stations of the cross, some of which are depicted below.












Long steps led up to a depiction of the actual crucifixion. As a child, I couldn't always make it to the top and had to rest on the benches along the side.










The rocks before this scene were covered with various prayers, hopes and good thoughts from young and old alike.




I suspect that second one is authentic. I added a silent prayer of my own before facing the steps back down.



Hard to believe, but this only covers half of my journey. Tune in next week for the conclusion, and perhaps a surprise or two.