Just graduated from Seminary, but without a job, Jim decides to beef up his resume by visiting people in a hospice. There he meets Ida, a woman without faith in the last hours of her life. Ida, who had been a professor of religion, offers Jim a Faustian bargain-her soul for one moment of true happiness. Even though he knows he can make no such bargain, Jim proceeds to try to bring her peace. Jim is green and Ida is jaded. She knows more theology than he does and proceeds to undermine his own faith with the experience of fencing with generations of college students. Jim, however, has a friend who encourages him and urges him onward. Together, they race against time to find Ida's moment of happiness. "Pilgrim" is a one act play intended to be both read and produced as drama. It explores the unanswerable and the unknowable from the perspectives of faith and of no faith. In the end, both Jim and Ida are transformed.
