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Pilgrimage: A Fool's Journey
A Journey of Singular Courage by a True Spiritual Master
When financial disaster forces Mark David Gerson out of his Portland home with everything he owns packed into the back of his car, he launches an open-ended road odyssey that will carry him from the Pacific to the Mississippi and back again, never knowing from one day to the next whether he can muster the faith to keep going.
When financial disaster forces Mark David Gerson out of his Portland home with everything he owns packed into the back of his car, he launches an open-ended road odyssey that will carry him from the Pacific to the Mississippi and back again, never knowing from one day to the next whether he can muster the faith to keep going.
320 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2021
About the author
Mark David Gerson
30 books60 followersMark David Gerson is the bestselling author of more than twenty books. His nonfiction includes popular titles for writers, inspiring personal growth books and compelling memoirs. As a novelist he is best known for The Legend of Q’ntana fantasy series, coming soon to movie theaters. When he’s not writing, Mark David coaches an international roster of both first-time and seasoned writers to help them get their stories onto the page and into the world with ease.
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October 18, 2021The intimate chronicle that is Pilgrimage: A Fool’s Journey begins in May 2019 when a personal financial collapse (one that foreshadows what COVID-19 would do to many less than a year later) pushes Mark David Gerson out of Portland. With eviction imminent and lacking the wherewithal for alternative accommodation, he hits the road with everything he owns jammed into his Prius.
Accompanied by his dog and letting his intuition and inner knowingness guide him, he embarks on an open-ended road odyssey that carries him across half a continent and through more than a dozen states, some multiple times.
It’s a long journey with ups and downs, twists and turns, keeping the reader hanging on to the edge of the seat to find out there it all takes him – physically and spiritually.
While some would see as foolish his taking off now knowing to where and to what, Gerson’s subtitle A Fool’s Journey, comes from it resembling the Fool archetype, pictured in most tarot decks as poised to step off a cliff in the ultimate leap of faith.
Though certainly fueled by faith, his journey is not light and easy. It is often a harrowing emotionally raw journey that Gerson relates with honesty.
Pilgrimage is more than the compelling story of one man’s spiritual odyssey. It’s a roadmap to the authenticity that is available to every one of us and to the faith that gets us there. And it’s a page-by-page reminder of the magic and miracles that are available to each of us, if we but open our eyes to see them and our minds to embrace them.
For fans of Gerson’s work, Pilgrimage will carry you deeper into the spiritual foundation that underlies all his books, fiction and nonfiction. For fans of his Acts of Surrender memoir, Pilgrimage picks up where that excellent book leaves off.
And for readers unfamiliar with Gerson’s work, Pilgrimage is a must-read journey of singular courage by a true spiritual master.
Accompanied by his dog and letting his intuition and inner knowingness guide him, he embarks on an open-ended road odyssey that carries him across half a continent and through more than a dozen states, some multiple times.
It’s a long journey with ups and downs, twists and turns, keeping the reader hanging on to the edge of the seat to find out there it all takes him – physically and spiritually.
While some would see as foolish his taking off now knowing to where and to what, Gerson’s subtitle A Fool’s Journey, comes from it resembling the Fool archetype, pictured in most tarot decks as poised to step off a cliff in the ultimate leap of faith.
Though certainly fueled by faith, his journey is not light and easy. It is often a harrowing emotionally raw journey that Gerson relates with honesty.
Pilgrimage is more than the compelling story of one man’s spiritual odyssey. It’s a roadmap to the authenticity that is available to every one of us and to the faith that gets us there. And it’s a page-by-page reminder of the magic and miracles that are available to each of us, if we but open our eyes to see them and our minds to embrace them.
For fans of Gerson’s work, Pilgrimage will carry you deeper into the spiritual foundation that underlies all his books, fiction and nonfiction. For fans of his Acts of Surrender memoir, Pilgrimage picks up where that excellent book leaves off.
And for readers unfamiliar with Gerson’s work, Pilgrimage is a must-read journey of singular courage by a true spiritual master.
October 16, 2021
The reckoning of a life, more often than not, leads to a profound and expansive shift. “Pilgrimage” offers us a glimpse at just that. What begins as a narrow road, opens into a wide unvarnished journey with the turn of each page. Mark David Gerson’s path forward, from desperation to determination, unfolds in a way that is both terrifyingly uncertain and profoundly liberating. The miles he travels to get to his here and now are filled with an angst that we can all relate to, and which we can all find faith in. Open the door. Take the trip. Don’t look back. Those are the pillars of life that Mark David shares throughout his latest, and greatest, book of self-exploration, growth, and creation — “Pilgrimage”.
October 3, 2021
"Pilgrimage chronicles the courage, crisis, and conviction of one man's quest to the core of his being. Living the Fool's Journey is not for the faint-of-heart but for those who follow their heart, the master's pathway to the soul. Mark David Gerson is not only a master of the word, but also a master of the heart." ~ Joan Cerio, author of Heartwired to Heaven: Unlocking the Power of the Creative Heart"
January 2, 2022
I have been following this author for several years and have read almost everything he has written to date, both fiction and non-fiction. Until now, my favourite book of his was always “Acts of Surrender” - the author’s first memoir about the physical and spiritual journey that took him from Canada to the US. I say ‘until now’ because “Pilgrimage - A Fool’s Journey” is, in some ways, even better.
Unlike its predecessor, “Pilgrimage” is raw. Where "Acts" offers a linear narrative of the author’s life as he moved from place to place, with every chapter roughly covering every different stage of the journey, Pilgrimage is - at least on the surface - all over the place. The story starts with the author’s imminent departure from Portland, but then skips backwards and forwards, with flashbacks from “Acts of Surrender” interspersed with present-day journal entries. This haphazard narrative structure makes for a jarring reading experience in parts, but you are so quickly drawn in and invested into the MDG’s peregrinations that you can’t help but turn to the next page to find out what happens next.
“Pilgrimage” is many things. It’s a memoirs, it’s a travelogue, it’s a road-trip that will make you google places as you read. There were times when I felt I was right there, feeling the author’s bliss, basking in the energy of the locations he stopped at along the way. But there were times when I questioned his judgement, wondering why this well-respected, professional writer was zig-zagging between places in an apparently senseless frenzy, depleting his already strained resources through constant course-readjustments. At such times, I would side with MDG’s Facebook friends who, like a Greek Chorus, ominously warned him that he was making a poor decision.
Without giving away too much of this real-life, constantly evolving story, it’s the afterword that really confirmed my gut feeling, i.e. that the author wanted us to experience the suffering and inner chaos that he experienced as he wrote these memoirs. It’s all there in the last few pages, laid bare, brutally raw and honest in a way rarely seen in memoirs. Where many writers would offer a prettier, more Instagram-friendly version of events to preserve their dignity, this author has the courage to share his journey fully unedited, even if, by his own admission, as he put the book together he often worried about looking ‘like an idiot’. But MDG is a Fool, not an idiot, and through “Pilgrimage: A Fool’s Journey” he turned his painful, tortuous journey into a compelling read that will leave you feeling inspired and humbled at a writer’s tale of courage and trust.
Unlike its predecessor, “Pilgrimage” is raw. Where "Acts" offers a linear narrative of the author’s life as he moved from place to place, with every chapter roughly covering every different stage of the journey, Pilgrimage is - at least on the surface - all over the place. The story starts with the author’s imminent departure from Portland, but then skips backwards and forwards, with flashbacks from “Acts of Surrender” interspersed with present-day journal entries. This haphazard narrative structure makes for a jarring reading experience in parts, but you are so quickly drawn in and invested into the MDG’s peregrinations that you can’t help but turn to the next page to find out what happens next.
“Pilgrimage” is many things. It’s a memoirs, it’s a travelogue, it’s a road-trip that will make you google places as you read. There were times when I felt I was right there, feeling the author’s bliss, basking in the energy of the locations he stopped at along the way. But there were times when I questioned his judgement, wondering why this well-respected, professional writer was zig-zagging between places in an apparently senseless frenzy, depleting his already strained resources through constant course-readjustments. At such times, I would side with MDG’s Facebook friends who, like a Greek Chorus, ominously warned him that he was making a poor decision.
Without giving away too much of this real-life, constantly evolving story, it’s the afterword that really confirmed my gut feeling, i.e. that the author wanted us to experience the suffering and inner chaos that he experienced as he wrote these memoirs. It’s all there in the last few pages, laid bare, brutally raw and honest in a way rarely seen in memoirs. Where many writers would offer a prettier, more Instagram-friendly version of events to preserve their dignity, this author has the courage to share his journey fully unedited, even if, by his own admission, as he put the book together he often worried about looking ‘like an idiot’. But MDG is a Fool, not an idiot, and through “Pilgrimage: A Fool’s Journey” he turned his painful, tortuous journey into a compelling read that will leave you feeling inspired and humbled at a writer’s tale of courage and trust.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews