Alex Clark: Image and Pilgrimage

I have been astounded from the beginning of this course about the word commnitas. I have felt the feelings of communitas before in my life, but had no way to describe it. So what astounds me is that this term already existed, and I simply had to come across it to have a simple way of defining my experience. Communitas is defined as “A relational quality of full unmediated communication, even communion, between definite and determinate identities, which arises spontaneously in all kinds of groups, situations, and circumstances. It is a luminal phenomenon which combines the qualities of lowliness, sacredness, homogeneity, and comradeship…communitas is an essential and generic human bond” (Turner & Turner, p. 250). To me, communitas seems to be defined as a special community that occurs only in groups in the wilderness; individuals on pilgrimages who spontaneously join under a shared goal and become close to one another in a way that would be impossible in a usual, present day urban type area. The term seems to have been redefined to serve the purpose of the wilderness studies genre; a word that is only used and only defined in texts such as Landscapes of the Sacred and Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture. I would say this is a perfect way to go about it though. There is something that happens when you are in the wilderness with others that facilitates bonding like nothing else I have ever experienced. I personally went into the woods with ten strangers and felt closer to them than many of my best friends that I had known for years. I shared something with those people that cannot be expressed or recreated. It seems only right that a scholar would take this unique experience and give it it’s own word. I experienced spontaneous communitas.