"The pilgrimage is not concluded upon the arrival at home but continues for weeks, months, even years through reflection. This third stage, one of reintegration into everyday familiarity and routine, is of vital importance in sacred travel. When I return from a trip abroad, I am always a different person. I have a different eye with which to see my world, and I am sometimes astonished by what I was seemingly blind to before the journey began. A trip to the grocery store or the gas station provides evidence of my affluence in a world where many go without food and shelter; a walk through my neighborhood reminds me of how insular and isolated neighbors can be from one another; everyday conversations may seem to lack depth and sincerity. Upon my return home, my perceptions are always more acute — the mindless chatter of the talk radio host is more irritating, the music from a concert in the park more sublime, a simple joke from a family member funnier. My life seems less governed by the clock when I return home — I have more time available for family and friends, more time to sleep, more time to play. Frustrations I had over this or that project at work now seem trivial; disputes with colleagues seem inconsequential and petty. I see things in my neighborhood and workplace that I had been missing — the face of the sanitation worker who picks up my trash, the family photos on my colleague's office desk, the shrine of a saint in a neighbor's yard. The complexities and intercomplexities of my world seem much more apparent. While travel of any kind may engender this kind of awareness for the returning traveler, a pilgrim's intentional reflection on the journey holds potential that the wisdom obtained from the journey may become a permanent feature of the pilgrim's life. Recalling the images of the journey through journaling, conversation, worship, painting, poetry, prayer, silence, and meditation allows the impressions of the journey to find footholds in the psyche's landscape. Although the singular focus of sacred travel is replaced by the scattered multitasking demanded by our everyday responsibilities, and the heightened sensitivity developed in liminal spaces is curbed by the all-too-familiar, reflection provides the opportunity for the pilgrim to expand and maintain the spiritual field to which the pilgrimage pointed."