Clarification appended.
Brown Muslim Chaplain David Coolidge '01 was one of roughly 2.5 million people to take part in the largest annual gathering in the world last week — the Hajj.
Coolidge joined Muslims from around the world to spend five days in Mecca for a religious pilgrimage that all Muslims are required to complete at least once in their life, if they are physically and financially able to do so.
Coolidge, who had already completed the Hajj in 2005, decided to go again after his wife asked him to accompany her.
"I didn't want to just say, ‘Okay, I'll just do it.' I wanted it to be sincere," Coolidge said. "I came to the idea that although she was the initial reason, I'm starting to feel like I am being called back to the sacred place."
Coolidge and his wife visited Saudi Arabia for 15 days to pray and visit holy sites, including the five days of the Hajj ceremony.
"I've never had more of a global experience anywhere else in the world than on the Hajj," Coolidge said. Almost every country in the world is represented, he said, adding that he was impressed by the cultural and socioeconomic diversity of Hajj participants.
"I would be doing the rituals and be all stressed out, and then I'd look to my left, and there would be this skeleton of a man with a cane, hunched over and walking along, looking like he's probably worked in the fields his whole life," Coolidge said. "And I'm just like, ‘Man, I have nothing to complain about.'"
Though Coolidge was away from campus for more than two weeks, he did not take a break from his responsibilities as chaplain. He published updates on a Global Conversations blog and CNN iReport while he was abroad as a way to keep the Brown community informed about his trip.
"When I decided to go on this trip, I just felt a desire to share that with people so they could understand what I was doing and why I was doing it," Coolidge said. "It seemed like a no-brainer — if Brown is a global institution, and the Hajj is a global institution, they should be in conversation with each other."
Janet Cooper Nelson, University chaplain and director of the Office of the Chaplains and Religious Life, said she felt Coolidge was making his work useful to all students, a major part of a chaplain's role.
"Many of you come from particular religious identities — a very broad spectrum of identities — so whether you are my identity or not doesn't matter," Cooper Nelson said of the importance of learning about diverse religious practices.
Coolidge spoke at the Interfaith Supper series before leaving, where he gave a brief presentation and answered students' questions about his upcoming trip.
But the pilgrimage was more than just an educational opportunity — it was also a spiritual one. Since this was his third time in Mecca, he was not distracted from prayer and critical thinking by the novelty of a foreign culture.
"If you've gone there, and it's the third time, now you're kind of over that fascination with the outward elements of things and you have to get deeper," Coolidge said. "What I am thinking about is, ‘Why am I here? What am I really hoping to get out of this? Where is my heart in terms of my relationship with the global community that I'm seeing, and also with God, who is ideally the reason that I even come here in the first place?'"
Coolidge said his experience in Mecca reaffirmed his work at Brown. "I just want to do what I'm doing now but do it better."
A previous version of this article stated that the Hajj took place for five days at the sacred mosque in Mecca. Most of the Hajj takes place on the outskirts of Mecca, not in the mosque itself.
