On Glory Roads: A Pilgrim's Book about Pilgrimage

Convinced that going on pilgrimage is a universally shared ritual almost as old as humankind, art critic Munro herself goes on pilgrimages to India, Indonesia, Jerusalem and Santiago de Compostella in northwestern Spain, the centers of four of the world's major religions, describing the myths on which they were founded and the rites, arts and monuments they have generated. Writing for a small, highly educated audience, she shows thatbased as they are on our earliest observations of the heavensmany subsequent beliefs, ideas, symbols, ceremonies and buildings are a consequence of the need of humans to view themselves in relation to the stars, to the cosmos, to eternity. Asking ""Does our sense of things reflect their nature or only the nature of our need?'' she concludes that ``people need to feel they are on a journey that rises out of the past while preserving its connections with it, in order to rise out of the way of hopeless death.'' (June 1)