We’ve been watching the series ‘Pilgrimage’ on BBC TV this week.
In previous years, the programme has followed a group of celebrities on a pilgrim route – one year it was Rome, another was Compostela, another was Istanbul.
This year, they are following the journey of the 6th century saint Columba as he set up Christian communities across Ireland and Scotland.
The group this comprises 7 people, with different stories, and differing degrees of faith from Agnostic to Committed. We hear about upbringing in Christianity, Sikhism, Judaism, Islam and how that has shaped their lives.
The moment I want to reflect on comes at the end of their third day of pilgrimage. It’s been a tough day, with challenging walking, and they have arrived at the hostel where they will stay the night.
It’s Friday, the days when Jews will mark the beginning of the Sabbath with an evening meal. Over the last three days, actress Louisa Clein has talked about her Jewish heritage, and her increasing confidence with talking about her faith. She is keen to share the experience of Shabbat and hosts the meal.
There’s a point where she takes the Sabbath bread and breaks off pieces and shares it around the table. A simple ritual that speaks of the importance of faith and community. It’s one of those moments where you sense that something important is happening. There’s a closeness in the group that is cemented in a way that goes beyond words.
We have really warmed to this group of pilgrims as they have laughed and cried together. Laurence Llewelyn Bowen is an unlikely leader of the group. We noticed the times when he opens up conversations about faith, and when something he does or says holds the group – like when he addresses them as family. Each person contributes in their own way, from encourager to questioner to faith defender. We love it. I would love to gather a similar group from my locality to do a pilgrim walk together and share our stories …. I wonder …
Going back to the Sabbath meal in Pilgrimage – it reminded me of one of the stories of Jesus. It takes place after the resurrection, when two people are walking home from Jerusalem and Jesus joins them as they are walking. They talk as they walk – much as the seven pilgrims have done in the BBC programme. They share the things that are deep in their hearts.
In the Bible account, the two reach their home and invite Jesus to stay with them. As they sit down to their meal, Jesus takes the bread and breaks it, and in this moment they realise that it is Jesus. A moment of profound realisation that happens in the everyday action of breaking bread.
Today I read this:
”The big thing is not to treat today as a step towards what you are hoping for some day in the future, but to accept that this day contains the seeds of all that you hope for. This is it ! Now this particular day might not feel special, in fact it might be important that it does not feel special. We need to allow ourselves to be drawn under the skin of the day and into its earthy mystery.”
(Running over rocks, by Ian Adams p. 106.)
I confess to finding this a challenge. I have a tendency to be always looking forward to the next thing. My mind is in the future. Future projects and possibilities. So I need something to earth me in the present moment. For me it’s a daily time of reading and prayer. But there are many other ways to include this ‘welcoming the day’ into our lives. It might be to create a simple ritual that we can repeat each morning to remind ourselves of the importance of living in the present.
It could be a song, or a prayer, or an action …
One of the prayers I have used and found helpful is the Morning Prayer by Padraig O Tuama.
You can find it in his book “Daily Prayer”
Morning Prayer
We begin our day alone,
Honouring this life, with all its potentials and possibilities.
We begin our day with trust,
Knowing we are created for loving encounter.
We begin our day with hope,
Knowing the day can hold love, kindness, forgiveness and justice.
A reading followed by a time of silence
We recall our day yesterday,
May we learn, may we love, may we live on.
We make room for the unexpected,
May we find wisdom and life in the unexpected.
Help us to embrace possibility, respond graciously to disappointment and hold tenderly those we encounter.
Help us to be fully present to the day.
A short silence
We pray for all those whose day will be difficult.
We name them in our hearts or out loud
May we support, may we listen, may we change.
We resolve to live life in its fullness:
We will welcome the people who’ll be a part of this day.
We will greet God in ordinary and hidden moments.
We will live the life we are living.
A short silence
May we find the wisdom we need,
God be with us.
May we hear the needs of those we meet,
God be with us.
May we love the life that we are given,
God be with us
Tag: pilgrimage
What are the temptations we need to avoid – as a church ?
There might be many temptations to avoid, so I’ll focus on the one that comes to mind, the one closest to my heart. My fear is that as lockdown eases, we will all breathe a sigh of relief and go back to the way we were.
Here’s a quote from Bishop Nick Baines blog, posted recently:
“Christian faith does not assume a life (or world)of continuous security and familiarity. It is fed by scriptures that speak of transience, mortality, provisionality, interruption and leavings. But, they also whisper that the endings are always beginnings – the leavings open a door to arrivals that could not have been experienced otherwise. In other words, the loss can be seen as a gift – what Walter Brueggemann calls ‘newness after loss’.
The temptation at the moment is to want to move on too quickly from our experience of loss, and so lose things of immense value that we can learn.
Back to Nick Baines again, who has a useful tool for helping us examine ourselves at this time:
He has suggested to clergy in the Diocese of Leeds, that it might be helpful to ask these four questions:
(a) what have I/we lost that we need to regain in the weeks and months ahead?
(b) what have we lost that needs to remain lost – left behind in another country?
(c) what have I/we gained that we need to retain in the future?
(d) what have we gained recently that was useful for this season but needs to be lost if we are to move forward?”
My last post was Song of the Day #4, home, by Foo Fighters. I chose it before I decided what to write here, but it does seem appropriate. What we all want is ‘to be home.’ To have a sense that we are exactly where we belong. To be in a place – maybe, but not necessarily geographically – where we can grow.
But to find the road home we will have experiences of what the Bible calls exile. Where we are far from home in order to learn what is really important.
This prayer, attributed to Sir Francis Drake, is one of my favourites.
DISTURB US, LORD,
When we are too well pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we have dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.
When we are too well pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we have dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.
Disturb us, Lord, when
With the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.
Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wider seas
Where storms will show your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.
We ask You to push back
The horizons of our hopes;
And to push into the future
In strength, courage, hope, and love.
The Road to Compostela
Yesterday, I met two women, both Methodist ministers, who have walked the road from St Jean Pied de Port to Compostela. It’s a pilgrim route, 500 miles long.
They walked it last May, taking everything except a tent with them, and it took them 5 weeks. They described the hardships of the walk: blisters, tiredness, the weather (torrential rain), lack of food. It wasn’t as if there were supermarkets to shop in. Sometimes they just went without food if there was no shop in the village where they slept. They stayed in hostels, in rickety bunk beds, surrounded by snoring travellers. (Germans and Koreans were the worst offenders). Hostels sometimes offered food, but you get fed up with steak and chips after a few days. On one occasion, tired at the end of the day, and with no food, a local family gave them some bread and a bottle of wine.
I get the feeling that walking the pilgrim route in this way would be incredibly challenging. You cannot book a bed ahead of time at these hostels, so you just have to hope that there is a bed when you get there. If someone passes you on the route, you ask yourself if they will get the last bed in the hostel, which is an encouragement not to slow down too much.
I said to them ‘After all these hardships, you must have had a great sense of satisfaction when you finally arrived at Compostela’
They answered that it was not the arriving, but the journey that was important. The first morning after they arrived at Compostela, they felt like they should be walking again. Having spent 5 weeks walking day after day, it didn’t seem right not to walk. They even described a feeling of bereavement having finished the pilgrimage.
Another reflection that they shared with me was this. For many Christians, faith is about arriving at our final destination (heaven) – We are saved for heaven. The Christian message is often explained in terms of having sins forgiven so that when we die we can go to heaven. For them, the pilgrimage made them realise that however important the destination is, it’s the journey that teaches us and shapes us. Being ‘saved’ is about life and living, here and now.
Thanks to Sue and Bev
