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Sacred Journeys with Bruce Feiler Season 1 Episodes
Season 1 Episode Guide
6 Episodes 2014 - 2014
Episode 1
Lourdes
Tue, Dec 16, 201454 mins
In 1858, in an unassuming town in the southwest of France, a 14-year-old peasant girl named Bernadette Soubirous claimed she had 18 encounters with the Virgin Mary. Since then, Lourdes has become one of the holiest Catholic pilgrimage sites in the world, visited annually by more than five million people who come in search of healing from its sacred waters. Since the end of World War II, soldiers from around the world have journeyed to Lourdes seeking healing and unity with one another at a week-long gathering known as the International Military Pilgrimage.
Episode 2
Shikoku
Tue, Dec 16, 201455 mins
The Island of Shikoku in Japan is the birthplace of the most revered figure in Japanese Buddhism, the monk and teacher Kobo Daishi, who brought a populist form of Buddhism to Japan from China in the 9th Century. For hundreds of years, a 750-mile pilgrimage route has circled this mountainous island, connecting 88 separate temples and shrines that claim connection to the Great Master - Kobo Daishi. Host Bruce Feiler circles the island, following a pilgrim trail that's taken by hundreds of thousands of Japanese and international pilgrims every year; a Buddhist pilgrimage that welcomes pilgrims of all faiths. While the majority now drive or travel by train or bus - a two-week journey - many still set aside 60 or more days to walk the entire route, especially in the spring when the cherry blossoms are in bloom and pilgrimage season is at its height. Temple priests introduce Bruce to sacred ceremonies that date back thousands of years, revealing how the presence of Kobo Daishi is believed to accompany all who follow in his footsteps. Out on the pilgrim trail, Bruce meets with different American walkers - a hiking group from the Pacific Northwest, a retired soldier from California, and two recently-married doctors from Indiana - to learn why they've come to Shikoku and what they are hoping to find.
Episode 3
Jerusalem
Tue, Dec 23, 201454 mins
The Hebrew Bible instructs all Jews to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem three times a year: in spring for Passover, in summer for Shavuout, and in the fall for Sukkot. But the city is holy to more than just Jews: Christian pilgrims began coming to Jerusalem and the Holy Land within centuries of Jesus' death, and the Al Aksa Mosque, located inside the walls of the Old City, is considered the third holiest site in Islam after Mecca and Medina.
Episode 4
The Hajj
Tue, Dec 23, 201455 mins
"The Hajj is the iconic pilgrimage on Earth," says host Bruce Feiler, as millions of pilgrims gather in the valleys outside the city of Mecca in today's Saudi Arabia to take part in the annual five-day pilgrimage every Muslim hopes to complete at least once. Since non-Muslims aren't permitted in Mecca, Bruce's surrogate is Anisa Mehdi, a veteran reporter of the Hajj, with whom Bruce will Skype at regular intervals. Anisa joins a group of Muslim pilgrims from Boston who begin their journey in Medina, the second of Islam's holy cities. As the pilgrims visit sites in Medina associated with the life of the Prophet Muhammad, Bruce enlists the help of a historian and an eminent American Muslim scholar to explore the origins of the religion and its iconic pilgrimage. In 622CE Muhammad fled his birthplace of Mecca after persecution by its pagan rulers who objected to him preaching a new monotheism. Muhammad and a small group of followers settled in Medina. Within ten years Islam was the dominant religion of Arabia and Muhammad returned to Mecca in triumph to clear idols from the holy sites and teach his followers the different stages of the Hajj pilgrimage. The Boston pilgrims follow Muhammad's path from Medina to Mecca, beginning their Hajj by circling the Ka'aba, the ancient shrine at the center of Mecca's Great Mosque. Muslims believe the Ka'aba was first built by Abraham, patriarch of Islam, Judaism and Christianity. Stripping themselves of worldly possessions for the duration of the Hajj, the pilgrims enact the rituals laid out by Muhammad, experiencing exhaustion, injury and elation as they seek forgiveness and inner peace. They leave with a new sense of connection to humanity, and to the one-and-a-half billion people that make up the worldwide community of Muslims.
Episode 5
Kumbh Mela
Tue, Dec 30, 201454 mins
Every twelve years, tens of millions of men, women and children gather on the flood plain of the Ganges and Yamuna Rivers in Allahabad, India, for the Kumbh Mela, the largest gathering of humanity for religious purposes on the planet. Pilgrims come from across India and around the world to bathe in the water where the two sacred rivers meet. Such mass bathing in the Ganges has been recorded for more than 2,500 years.
Episode 6
Osun-Osogbo
Tue, Dec 30, 201455 mins
Host Bruce Feiler travels to Nigeria with a group of African American pilgrims who are attending an annual festival in honor of the Yoruba Goddess Osun as a way to reconnect with their cultural and spiritual roots. This indigenous African faith, sometimes called Orisa Devotion, was first carried to the Americas during the Transatlantic Slave Trade where it evolved and spread to become one of the ten largest religions in the world with upwards of 100 million practitioners. In its many forms it's most widely practised in the Caribbean and Brazil. In the US, after being forced underground during slavery, it is now growing in popularity across the country, especially in African American and Afro-Cuban neighborhoods. In company with pilgrims from Miami, New York and Boston, Bruce Feiler visits the last remaining Yoruba sacred grove in Nigeria, now a UNESCO World Heritage site, where the Osun Festival attracts tens of thousands of pilgrims and visitors from across Africa and around the world. As two young American pilgrims are initiated as priestesses to the goddess Osun, a Miami-based priest reveals that it's music and dance that brings most African Americans back to a faith where culture, art and spirituality are inextricably mixed. In Nigeria this indigenous African religion is under attack from Evangelical Christianity and fundamentalist Islam. But as the Osun Festival reaches its climax, Bruce sees that practitioners from the Yoruba Diaspora are reinvigorating the faith in its homeland while taking home a new sense of identity as African Americans. As a young priestesses tells Bruce: "There is no power in not knowing who you are, where you come from. Coming here, I'm taking back that power; I'm taking back that identity."