Weekend of Welcome – Bus Tour

From Tourist to Pilgrim: Reflections from the Wow Bus Tour 2026 

Perhaps we began as tourists. We signed up to learn or to cross something off our bucket list. One gurdwara:  tick. One mosque: tick. One temple: tick. As we traveled from place to place, something else happened. We were changed from tourists to pilgrims.  How did that happen?

We began our 2026 Weekend of Welcome bus tour in the parking lot of the SW Masjid.  The group was small; there was lots of room in the cheese wagon (yellow school bus). As we began, we discovered that our group included Hindus, Christians, Unitarians and people who would not identify with any faith. Our bus driver, Tony, was enthusiastic and a fan of Indian food. Our first stop was the Sikh Society Gurdwara, the first gurdwara built in Calgary 50 years ago on the outskirts of the city, in a farmer’s field.  Now it is surrounded by houses, apartments, condos and roads.

We were welcomed at the door by someone who showed us where to remove our shoes, wash our hands and put on a head covering. Before we could enter the main worship space of the gurdwara,  we had to wait for about 300 people to exit the room. It was a celebration of a couple’s 25th wedding anniversary. I don’t know as many people as I saw stepping out of that room. 

As we entered the room, we were invited to participate in a ceremony of kneeling and touching our heads to the floor in front of the Guru. We learned that the Sikh religion began with the leadership of 6 teachers whose words and wisdom were recorded over time. At some point, it was determined that there would be no more human gurus but that the cumulative writings were considered to be the Guru for the Sikh people. We were invited to ask questions and were delighted to experience three young women playing the harmonium and singing. 

We were welcomed into the Lungar Hall for food. It is central to the Sikh tradition to provide food to anyone and everyone at any time. The belief is that people must be fed before they can consider spiritual teachings. We were glad to share this experience with our bus driver, who was especially thankful and appreciative.

The movement from tourist to pilgrim involves letting other faith traditions or cosmovisions nudge and trouble personal ideas or conceptions in gentle ways.  Being open to wondering about God, the divine, the meaning of life in ways that we haven’t before. The radical generosity of the Sikh tradition challenges the self-focused, consumerist  energy of our Western individualistic culture, which has shaped many of us regardless of our religious affiliation.

Our second stop was a Buddhist destination, the Avatamsaka Monastery, a landmark in Calgary for several reasons.Not only does its  architecture, with an ornate roof and red tiles, attract attention, but  many of us remember it fondly as the former Mountain Equipment Co-op, a much plainer building that was renovated for its current purpose. 

The timing of our visit was in some ways out of sync and in other ways perfectly timed. The leaders of the monastery were in the Buddha Hall chanting. The community was engaged in day 6 of a 7-day chanting ceremony, so when we arrived, we were greeted by a volunteer who gently and graciously toured us around the space on the 4th floor. The Buddha Hall is a high-ceilinged space with 10,000 plaster Buddhas set into the upper walls and three large statues of the Buddha at the front.

 As we walked up the stairs into the foyer of the hall, we were greeted with the murmur of gently moving water of a fountain surrounded with plants. Rippling along with the water was the sound of chanting that rose and fell, ebbed and flowed. We quietly listened and wondered, letting the constant flow of sound move into us. There was stillness and there was movement. It reminded  me of T.S. Eliot: “So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.” 

A particularly poignant and lovely thing happened in this space.

As I was moving slowly around, I noticed Linda, one of the women on the tour, tearing up. Her face was soft and wet. As I looked at her with concern, she indicated she was okay. Later, on the bus, she shared that she was born deaf in one ear. Three years ago, she received cochlear implants. Linda still has occasions when she hears things she has never heard before. When this happens, it just takes her over. Being in the space of the Buddha Hall, hearing the water and listening to the chanting and seeing all the pervasive strong visual images was an immersive experience for her.

It is hard to imagine what that must be like. I am reminded of Christian stories of deaf people hearing or blind people seeing – how do our faith traditions expand our capacity to know reality in colours we have never noticed before or sounds we have never heard, to see others, human and more than human, with fresh eyes and delight? 

Our tour returned to the SW Masjid, where we were greeted by Imam Osama, who welcomed us into the busy Saturday afternoon flow of congregants. We were invited to ask questions of all kinds, which ranged from inquiries about the hijab to the process of arranged marriages. One of the imams chanted the Quran for us. We experienced another beautiful gift of timing as we were in the mosque during the call for prayer and afternoon prayers. 

All of the women on the bus tour joined the Muslim women in their part of the mosque. It was powerful to be with the women as they were shoulder to shoulder – praying, kneeling and touching the ground. 

Each of the three communities we visited included kneeling and touching the ground as part of their spiritual practice, as expressions of submission, reverence, humility.  Again as pilgrims, we were invited to consider: When might I bow? When might I kneel and touch my head to the ground? What would that mean about me? About all that is beyond me? Why do I do that? Why don’t I do that? 

We are so grateful to our hosts. Their generous hospitality allowed us to go on a pilgrimage, to pause our predictable patterns of faith or meaning making.  We were able to make space for something new, something different. Perhaps something lively and surprising, perhaps to be changed a little from the inside.  

And we did it together. The thing about pilgrims is that they rarely travel alone. By the end of the tour we felt connected to each other because of what we had shared, because of how we had been transformed from tourists into pilgrims.