No Easy Answers with Mike Bellanti
Jul 1, 2026 · 36 min · 10 segments
Do Christians need pilgrimage? What does pilgrimage look like? Is there a place for pilgrimage in your own life? In this episode, host Mike Bellanti is joined by Nicole Smith and Taylor Klopatek to…
I think as I spent a lot of time reflecting on all that we experienced, because it was hard to summarize what that experience was like.
I know coming back, talking with Seneca, trying to explain what that was like was difficult.
If I'm being honest in my daily life back home, I spend a whole lot less time praying and thinking about things that really matter than I originally would think that I do.
So much of my day is just onto the next task, my schedule, my responsibilities, keeping up with the busyness of life, the outside noise that my intentional time of just reflection, prayer, thought, silence.
And I don't say that as like, now I'm being harsh on myself, but just of a...
That's something that I really desire after experiencing it of just how do I slow down, spend time reflecting on all that God has to offer throughout my day and not just in my intentional time in the morning or in the evening before I go to bed.
So that was something that God was, I would say, inviting me into a deeper experience.
I think for me, the first few days, because we live in such a noisy society and because we are task-oriented, I think it took a few days for me to even get to a point where I felt like I could be intentional with that time.
But the prayer didn't come as easy to me as I thought it would in the beginning.
But then once I was able to spend more time thinking and praying, just being in nature, being with other people, the expectations that I had for what that would look like actually looked very different for me.
But I could hear and sense God inviting me in to listen to other people's stories.
And so for me, I felt like even though my job was to walk and pray, that prayer time looked different than what I expected he was going to be inviting me into.
But it definitely helped me to grow and to see people differently and just to experience the whole thing in a different way than I had anticipated.
Yeah, to pull on that thread, I recognize that when groups of people are on a similar mission, there is this openness to each other.
So there's hundreds and hundreds of people on this trail, and everyone was very friendly and willing to talk, people from all over the world, quite frankly.
I think as I spent a lot of time reflecting on all that we experienced, because it was hard to summarize what that experience was like.
I know coming back, talking with Seneca, trying to explain what that was like was difficult.
If I'm being honest in my daily life back home, I spend a whole lot less time praying and thinking about things that really matter than I originally would think that I do.
So much of my day is just onto the next task, my schedule, my responsibilities, keeping up with the busyness of life, the outside noise that my intentional time of just reflection, prayer, thought, silence.
And I don't say that as like, now I'm being harsh on myself, but just of a...
That's something that I really desire after experiencing it of just how do I slow down, spend time reflecting on all that God has to offer throughout my day and not just in my intentional time in the morning or in the evening before I go to bed.
So that was something that God was, I would say, inviting me into a deeper experience.
I think for me, the first few days, because we live in such a noisy society and because we are task-oriented, I think it took a few days for me to even get to a point where I felt like I could be intentional with that time.
But the prayer didn't come as easy to me as I thought it would in the beginning.
But then once I was able to spend more time thinking and praying, just being in nature, being with other people, the expectations that I had for what that would look like actually looked very different for me.
But I could hear and sense God inviting me in to listen to other people's stories.
And so for me, I felt like even though my job was to walk and pray, that prayer time looked different than what I expected he was going to be inviting me into.
But it definitely helped me to grow and to see people differently and just to experience the whole thing in a different way than I had anticipated.
Yeah, to pull on that thread, I recognize that when groups of people are on a similar mission, there is this openness to each other.
So there's hundreds and hundreds of people on this trail, and everyone was very friendly and willing to talk, people from all over the world, quite frankly.
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