Encountering God: personal reflections on 'geographer as pilgrim'

The geography of religion can be explored from a number of different perspectives. This paper takes an autobiographical approach to explore the numinous experience of God from the point of view of a practising Christian geographer. Such geographical aspects of faith experience remain an under-researched area. The context for the exploration is an academic conference in the city of Bologna, which became, in turn, an experience of religious tourism, a pilgrimage and an unexpected encounter with God. It is contextualized in terms of debates on identity, the nature of pilgrimage, memorials of death, and time–space continuums and fractures.