Sore feet and twisted mirrors

'there is a crack in everything,
that's how the light gets in'
Leonard Cohen

Day 2: Letterkenny to Buncrana.

Distance: 27.9 miles (47.1 total).

Total ascent: 1771ft (3723ft total)

Time: 10 hrs 9 mins

Where to begin? I could begin with all the bits of me that are hurting, but still chastened by my friend's parody of 'A Pilgrim's Cairn' (A Pilgrim's Cairn: The Pilgrim Parodied) I'm not going to do that... except to say that my feet have taken a pasting. Two days in, one of the frustrations of walking in Ireland is the lack of good old public footpaths. Today has been almost entirely road walking, which is good for my legs and good for the pace I can maintain, but it batters my feet.

Right now what I'm most aware of though is not my aching feet, but that I got through this leg in a reasonable time and in reasonable shape. This will be the third longest leg of the whole walk, and the second longest in terms of walking that I have to do with my full backpack on and I was a bit anxious about how it would go. I know I'm in good shape because I've just got up from my table to order a Guinness and not felt anything crack or pop, and not muttered even the mildest of expletives. The weather has been ideal; in fact, a little after Midday Prayer I had to stop to take a layer off because I was getting too hot. I say a mighty 'Ha!' to all the people who questioned why I was making this walk in January/February (I'm going to come to regret that mighty 'Ha!' before the pilgrimage is completed, I have no doubt).

The focus of this stage of the journey is Strove Beach, the place where Columba went into exile from his homeland of Ireland and began his journey to Scotland. Exile can take many forms.

We all need our truth-tellers, human mirrors. We need those people who can tell us that no, those clothes really don't suit us; tell us that we've got a stray eyebrow hair that really should be clipped; tell us that perhaps we should buy a packet of mints on the way to work, because we're still absolutely reeking from the garlic-heavy supper we enjoyed the night before. It's not always easy to hear what they have to say. Sometimes it can be downright painful to hear what they have to say. However, through years of experience and the belief that we're loved, we come to trust them even when we're slow to acknowledge that yes, they might have a point. 

But what if our truth-tellers, our human mirrors, become like carnival mirrors which show us exaggerated, distorted reflections of ourselves? What if our truth-tellers become story-tellers, telling stories about who we are and who we were, which are fundamentally untrue? It can be so hard to reclaim the truth of yourself, because you have loved and believed the reflection that they have shown you for so very long. It can be so hard not to keep looking into that mirror, both compelled and repelled by the grotesque image it shows you.  It can be so hard to face the truth that your truth-teller no longer is. It is a kind of exile.

It's an exile which reaches its nadir when you clothe yourself in that distorted image and become a stranger even to yourself.

What our heart needs is to be able to see ourselves through the eyes of God, the Truest Truth-teller. We need to look into the mirror that God holds up to us; to see ourselves for the loved, valued, children of God that we are. But how do we actually do that in practice? Religious texts, religious institutions, religious leaders, all have a long track record of holding up distorting mirrors to all sorts of people.

Where then do we find the true vision of who we are in the eyes of God?

I have my answers. What are yours? Use the comments section below to let people know. I hope that some of your answers are different from mine... our uniqueness is one of God's greatest gifts of all!

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Thanksgiving: 

Usually at this time on a Friday night I'd be having a couple of pints with my good friends Charlie and John. I give thanks for both of them tonight. Especially I give thanks that Charlie was on the side of the angels, when I needed some angels on my side.

The Pilgrimage Begins: of Celts and their jewellery

From this bank of Gartan Lough

Day 1: Letterkenny to Gartan Lough and back.

Distance: 19.2 miles (19.2 total)

Total ascent: 1952 ft

Time: 7 hrs 4 minutes

The pilgrimage began this morning at Gartan Lough when I threw my wedding ring into the winter-dark water. It was a very hard thing to do. If it had been an easy thing to do, then I probably wouldn't have needed to do it at all.

It has been painful enough trying to come to terms with us having no shared future. In recent months that pain has been compounded by the increasing awareness that we no longer seem to have much of a shared past either. That ring was no longer a token of future hope nor a memento of past happiness, it had been emptied.

I had known for some time that this action (this ritual?) needed to be a part of this pilgrimage, or it would be a journey that took me nowhere. There's a tradition that pilgrims to Iona go to the beach where Columba first landed and throw a stone into the sea to symbolise things that they want to leave behind, but I knew that by the time I reached Iona I absolutely needed to be looking forwards not looking back. Stroove Beach was the next candidate; only four days into the walk, it was the place where Columba left the people and land he loved and went into exile. Last night however, I just knew with sudden and absolute clarity that it had to be done today or it would always be something for tomorrow.

I'd like to think that my Celtic ancestors are proud of me; they were forever chucking their precious metal possessions into seas and lochs and rivers.

The plan when I'd set out this morning had been to spend a little time at Gartan Lough, birthplace of St Columba. Just as I'm hoping to spend at least a few hours on Iona, it seemed right to linger in that place; I'd made good time on the way there so there was no need to hurry away. However, I found myself itching to return to the road. I footered about for a bit, said some prayers, took some photos, but I just wanted to be walking again.

Climbing away from Gartan Lough in bright sunshine it felt like the journey had finally, properly begun. Each step now was a step forwards, a step towards Iona and all that it represents; a step towards Iona and all that I hope to find on the way. There was a wholly unexpected sense of elation and renewed purpose.

That sense of elation did dissipate considerably when I got lost in a housing estate on the outskirts of Letterkenny. Bad words were muttered.

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Thanksgiving:

So thankful for enjoying the most perfect walking weather in a very beautiful landscape. 

But above all I give thanks for the joy I experienced when I came across this shop front...

Pilgrimage: the eyes of all who see me.

On pilgrimage with Rabbi Neil

Friendship is a kind of pilgrimage and in recent years it's a pilgrimage I've been privileged to begin with Rabbi Neil Janes from South Bucks Jewish Community. I asked Neil if he would share some thoughts on pilgrimage. While you're reading that I'll start putting on various layers of Lycra and Gore-tex and get ready for the first day of this pilgrimage to Iona.

Rabbi Neil writes:

There is a phrase in one of the preparatory morning prayers recited by Jews which reads:

“Let me find grace, kindness, and compassion in Your eyes and in the eyes of all who see me”

The prayer is almost the last of the preparatory prayers before a person might leave home for the morning and join a community in prayer. It is one of my favourite prayers in the litany of prayers at the start of a morning service because it speaks powerfully of a desire to stay clear of evil ideas and people and to cleave to good deeds for the day. There have been times in my life when I’ve felt scared or anxious about what or who I might meet in the day and this prayer always steadied my resolve to meet all of the days challenges.

Until writing for my friend Father Stuart, as he embarks on his pilgrimage, I had not made the connection that the phrase I quote above is also found in the prayer recited by a Jew whenever embarking on a journey.

Every morning, the moment we step outside our house is a journey full of trepidation and opportunity. And let’s face it, Jews are all too familiar with leaving home under duress for journeys not of their own making. It’s no wonder then that we pray to be bestowed with grace, kindness and compassion in God’s eyes and in the eyes of all who see us.

I do think that prayer is best when it is subversive, challenging, suggesting a world that is not only made different through the hand of God but in our actions. I wonder what kind of a world we would live in if it were indeed filled only with people seeking grace, kindness and compassion from others and, because of this desire, they bestowed it on those around them?

A stanza in the poetry collection by Yehuda Amichai entitled ‘Open Closed Open’ reads:

I want a God who is seen and not who sees, who I am able to lead

And to tell him what he does not see. I want

A God who is seen and who sees. I want to see

How he covers his eyes, like a child playing blindman’s bluff.

 

It was the idea of being in the “eyes of God and those who see me” that really struck me in this prayer for a journey. It reminded me of the verse in the book of Exodus which describes the purpose of a pilgrimage:

“Three times a year all your males shall appear before the Sovereign, Eternal One.” (Exodus 23:17)

This is the foundation of what the rabbis of antiquity called ‘Re’iyah’ – appearing. ‘Re’iyah’ is the commandment at the heart of the ancient pilgrimage to the Temple in Jerusalem - to appear before God on the Jewish festivals of Passover (Pesach), Pentecost (Shavuot) and Tabernacles (Sukkot). The heart of a pilgrimage was to be seen by God. What a marvellously challenging idea – to go to a place to be seen by God. God is without beginning and without end, with no form and beyond our comprehension, yet here we are hoping to be seen…and isn’t God omnipotent and omnipresent? Can we not be seen by God anywhere, at any time, not just in the Temple in Jerusalem on the three pilgrimage festivals?

From this point, the rabbinic sages of the Talmud reflect on a painful theological question – a question at the heart of exile: since the Temple was destroyed in 70 CE by Rome, could it be that God’s face is hidden from us and we might never be ‘seen’? This is, after all, what Deuteronomy 31:17 suggests, “I will hide my face from them.” We have many sophisticated answers for the difficulties in life but nothing really fully explains the unspeakable pain and distress from which so many people suffer and their anguish in trying to understand ‘why’ life is as it is. And the agony of absence is the heart of God’s hidden face.

I personally find the pilgrimage through the partially navigated world of texts offers me a spiritual encounter, if not answers. This is the classical response to the dilemma of find a place to encounter God. The Jewish pilgrimage begins to take place in texts not in places. Indeed, the journey into the Torah, learning together as a community, even for one day is considered by the sages of the Talmud to be equivalent to the one day of ‘appearing’ before God in the Temple. But there’s something upturned in this encounter – for where I might think I am ‘seeing’ the traces of the Divine in our texts, the original pilgrimage was for God to see me. What must it have felt like to sense the spotlight of scrutiny in appearing before God?

Remarkably, there is quite a radical story described in the Talmud of Rabbi Judah Hanasi and Rabbi Hiyya who go to visit a blind sage. In their visit, the sages are told they receive a blessing, “You who have received the face of one who is seen and who does not see, may you be worthy to receive the face of the one who sees and is not seen.” (Babylonian Talmud, Chagigah, 5b) This complicated moment suggests something about human relationships and paying a visit to a friend or scholar can also become a pilgrimage of sorts.

The most profound experience at prayer for me was when a dear congregant whose wife had just died and wanted to sit next to me in a Sabbath morning service. In the stillness of space and in the timeless quiet of a synagogue service, I felt the presence of God’s grace and compassion envelop us.

Perhaps unsatisfied with the pilgrimage into text or to visit a sage or friend, yet another story by the rabbis some 1900 years ago tells how we must interpret signs in the world of the hidden presence of God. Rabbi Joshua ben Hananya is described as reading the hand gestures of a disputant in the court of Caesar. God may be hidden from us but, Rabbi Joshua understands, the Divine ‘hand is str
etched out over us’. In the absence of direct revelation or speech, we must become quite literally the ‘diviners’ of God’s presence. I love this story because it suggests the possibility of being seen is always present, we just have to notice and learn the vocabulary, the ‘code’ if you like. It’s almost as if we’re looking at shadow puppets and have to work out that God’s hand is stretched out over us, cradling us in the protective shelter of God’s care.

Perhaps we cannot be seen, for Jews maybe that is the meaning of the exile in which we find ourselves. Which makes me think: in the grace, kindness and compassion we encounter along the way and the acts of the same which we do to others – perhaps that is the closest we can get to being cradled in the hand of God. And then, maybe we go on a pilgrimage to help sharpen our senses to God’s presence or at least the intimation of God peeking out from behind the clouds.

So we pray, we study and even in our trepidation at the coming day we seek to treat each other with grace, kindness and compassion because after all, isn’t that what we seek for ourselves?

The Walled City

In the taxi from Derry Airport yesterday the driver was keen to let me know all about his home city, including the fact that Derry is known as The Walled City. Built at the beginning of the seventeenth century, the city's deep dark walls are celebrated for withstanding attacks by besieging armies in 1649 and 1689. This morning I grabbed an early breakfast and headed out with my camera to enjoy the mile-long circuit of the walls as the sun rose over Derry. Beginning at St Columb's Cathedral it was a really lovely walk, so quiet; no dramatic sunrise, but a lazy gentle blushing of the hazy sky as dawn unfolded. Information boards told the story of the walls and their city and of how the besieging armies had sought to starve the population into submission; I was reminded of my visits to Sarajevo and the suffering of that beautiful city.

My circuit concluded at The Bishop's Gate which is where I came across 'the peace wall'; tall double-fences acting like a kind of wire moat around The Fountains Estate, separating the Protestant community within from their Catholic neighbours. They felt like an ugly interruption; it came as a bit of a shock to the system to see these stark reminders of divisions which persist and I felt like a bit of a naive tourist.

As well as walls and fences there are other marks of the city's historic divisions; the kerbstones painted red, white and blue, the INLA graffiti, the murals telling two stories about Derry and its people. Some of these demarcation lines are worn and faded, but many are recent, fresh.

Walls, fences, barriers. We have so many ways of articulating who belongs where, of who may come in and who should keep out.

Walls, fences, barriers, we build them in our hearts and minds too. From the extremes of prejudice which seek to exclude whole groups of people from our lives, through to the daily fallings out which end up with someone muttering, 'I'm never speaking to that person again'.

The saddest truth is that when we build those divisions in our hearts, we are the ones who become besieged, who become cut off and isolated. When we build those divisions in our hearts, what begins to starve is our own humanity.

Fighting and drinking their way across Europe. Or not.

When I was preparing for my 2010 pilgrimage from Iona to Lindisfarne, most of my reading centred around Celtic Christianity. If you're interested in this subject then get yourself a copy of Donald Meek's 'The Quest for Celtic Christianity'. Read it, read it again, and then keep it handy to hit anyone with when they invite you to their Celtic Christian Messy Matins or whatever.

This year my reading has been much more focused on the Celts in general. Heavens to Betsy it's a minefield. Up until January I'd believed what's apparently called the 'standard model' of the history of the Celts. This was a rather marvellous story of a people from Central Europe who over the course of many centuries fought and drank their way across Europe until they reached the continent's westernmost shore and there was nowhere else for them to go. It stirs images of this great Warrior People staring out across the Atlantic bereft; rather like the story of Alexander the Great weeping because there were no more worlds to conquer. There's something darkly romantic about this 'standard model'.

Unfortunately the 'standard model' is not very popular anymore, with one author writing that 'the persistence of the standard model is puzzling...' ('The Celts: Search for a Civilization', by Alice Roberts). Some go further still and reject the very idea of a Celtic people. In his book 'The Atlantic Celts', Simon James writes that 'the 'canonical' story of the island Celts is much more an invention than a discovery'. Broadly speaking the new narrative is that in this country the idea of a Celtic people was an eighteenth-century reaction to the expanding power of England and the corresponding draining of power from Scotland, Ireland and Wales. The story of the Celts was a defiant story of a people who had lived on these islands much longer than the English interlopers, who were just the Johnny-come-lately offspring of French invaders. Or something like that.

I've also read that the Celts originated in Portugal and then moved up and down the Atlantic seaboard all the way to the Hebrides and beyond, largely as a result of trade. Oh, and then there are other historians who are claiming that new DNA evidence suggests that the 'standard model' might have had something to it after all.

Exactly.

What I've found most thought-provoking about all this is the idea that sometimes the stories we tell of our histories are more about the needs of the present moment, than about the verifiable truths of the past. 

Iona, 2010

I wrote in an earlier post that part of my sense of 'exile' is born of a sense that I have lost hold of my own 'history'. Some of that history has been lost, some of it has been wilfully distorted, some of it I think I chose to let go of. Across these weeks ahead I pray I rediscover and reclaim my history as a way of coming 'home' to myself.

St Columba's history is contested too. Some people claim that he was sent into exile and excommunicated for a while as a punishment for a battle he instigated, others claim that he left voluntarily as a missionary. Some believe that he went to Scotland to convert the Picts, some that he went to Scotland as a kind of ambassador to the Picts. Although I largely accept the story of Columba's fall and exile because I think the weight of the evidence supports it, I realize that I am also drawn to it because it resonates with a story I need to hear, the story of my faith; the story of sin and redemption, of failure and new beginnings, the story of a light that shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.

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When the walking proper starts tomorrow, I'll head up each blog with a summary of how far I've walked, how long for, the weather etc, just as I did fifteen years ago. However, as part of my fostering a sense of thanksgiving on this pilgrimage I'm going to conclude each blog with something that I'm particularly thankful for that day. So to begin:

Thanksgiving: for James and Barnaby's mum for agreeing to look after them over these four weeks so that I could go for a walk. Thanks too to her parents and anyone else who's helping out with those amazing boys of mine.

The Pilgrim Parodied

'A Pilgrim's Cairn' was born of my 2010 pilgrimage from Iona to Lindisfarne. To be honest, I was rather pleased with my writing. At least, I was rather pleased with my writing until a friend sent me the following parody of my beloved 'Pilgrim's Cairn'.

Day: Who Knows?!

Walking from: *insert place here* to *insert place here*

The day began with me in several shades of a bad mood, again. I’ll continue to describe the odd and specific reasons for my bad mood for the next few paragraphs. My foot/knee/leg/heel hurts again, surprised that this is such an issue when I decided to go on a 350-mile walk, but here we are. Still in a bad mood for anyone that’s interested. Something happened to me earlier in the day (or earlier in life), I reacted in a certain way that seemed insignificant at the time. Then whilst walking, something else happened to me and I realised, the thing that had happened earlier had in fact prepared me for the thing that was going to happen later! Funny old life. The countryside is so beautiful and far better than the horrible city where the monsters live. 

Here’s some abuse for the poor soul that’s currently accompanying me on this leg of the walk. Although this is a religious pilgrimage, I’m going to spend an incredibly large chunk of time talking about drink, drinking establishments and the time that drinking establishments open and close. Here are some words of wisdom from my Mum who seems to be the only one talking any sense in this whole book. 

The final and most important takeaway: I was right all along and everyone else was wrong.

As much as it pains me to say it... they weren't far off the mark. You have been warned.

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So, I promise I won't complain about any hurt ankles/knees etc. As it happens, I haven't abused any poor soul accompanying me either, although that's largely because I haven't had anyone to fall out with since I saw my boys off to school this morning.

I arrived in Derry around 6ish and went for a walk around the city centre. Sadly the walk was cut short by a downpour that was as heavy as it was sudden. I took refuge in 'The River Inn', Derry's oldest bar, dating back to 1684 (fact of the day). The bar was empty except for two guys cursing Arsenal and their fans with a vigour that left me speechless with admiration.

Lots of mixed feelings at the moment. Most of the day has been alive with a great sense of exhilaration at finally starting this adventure. However, I'm also growing increasingly aware that I'm going to be spending a lot of time on my own. Right now I'm sitting in a hotel bar. The TVs which are dotted around the place are showing really interesting looking cookery programmes, but I can't hear a word of them as the sound system plays decades of middle of the road music just a little bit more loudly than this largely empty space really warrants.

Although in 2010 I walked the first half of the pilgrimage on my own, my dad was driving 'back up' and was always there at the beginning and end of each day. I think it's fair to say that we sometimes had quite a turbulent father-son relationship; but I'd love to see him walk into this bar right now and order a large glass of Rioja. Within minutes he'd have made friends with people he'd only just met. Then we'd sit at this table together and I'd be so glad to be with him, even if it was just so that we could have a bloody good argument about something, anything, everything.

Bruce Springsteen and Barbershops

Sometimes words alone aren't enough.

Exploring this theme of penitence, I wanted to find some way of giving outward expression to what I've been feeling. 

The Bible has three main forms of expressing penitence. The first is wearing sackcloth and ashes. Maybe if I'd been walking in May or June that could have been an option, but in February I'm sticking to Gore-tex and lots of layers. The second is fasting. Again, on a pilgrimage which should see me averaging around twenty miles a day for nearly a month, foregoing a cooked breakfast and a hearty dinner would seem to be setting myself up for failure. And then there's shaving your head.

I'm going to the barber's in an hour or so.

Over the past couple of weeks I've been reflecting on the connection between penitence and shaving your head. What follows is not a scholarly treatise on the practice but simply how I feel about it at this moment in time.

Firstly, there is some sense of humiliation, of self-humbling. In truth, I'm not feeling all that worried about my hair going; that's been happening for years! In fact, I'm curious to see how I'll look. What I'm not looking forward to is it gradually re-growing; how odd I'll look as I go through various stages of skinheadedness. I'm worried about what strangers will think of me when they see me for the first time. There's an anticipatory sense of embarrassment about how people will look at me at the end of a day's walking, when I walk into a bar or hotel and take my hat off. I don't think I'm going to enjoy that at all; certainly not to begin with.

Stuart, 18 - by Rosemary Holmes

Secondly, there's something about becoming strange to ourselves. I've got no idea how I'm going to be looking by lunchtime. There's a great line in Bruce Springsteen's 'Streets of Philadelphia', where he sings, 'I was bruised and battered, I didn't know how I felt, I was unrecognizable to myself. Saw my reflection in a window and didn't know my own face...' That resonates with part of how I feel about doing this. Have you ever done something you shouldn't have done, something you're ashamed of, and found yourself saying something like, "I don't know what came over me. I've never done anything like that before. That's just not me." Sometimes our failures make us unrecognizable to ourselves. Having my head shaved is a making manifest of that feeling. But it's also about going through that experience of self-estrangement so that you might come to know yourself again, know yourself more truly.

Yesterday, I was having coffee with a friend who suggested a third dimension to this ritual. In some traditions having your head shaved is about stepping away from the past and making a new beginning. There's something very beautiful in that idea. When my friend shared that with me, I found myself thinking again of that same Springsteen song, which combines that sense of new beginning with the idea of pilgrimage, of journey.

'I walked a thousand miles just to slip this skin.' 

Benedicite

Bless the Lord all that grows in the ground

Those of you who have been keeping up on Instagram will already know that (with great reluctance), I've added a fourth theme to this pilgrimage. Alongside exile, penitence and pilgrimage, it's going to be an opportunity to think about thanksgiving. Here's the why...

First there was the question, then there was the litany and finally came the benedicite.

The question was simple and always the same: I would ask, "How are you this morning?"

The litany varied, but could be something along the lines of, "My husband's been rushed back into hospital. The doctors just don't know what's wrong with him, but he's in a lot of pain and he's just not eating. My daughter's finally left her partner, you know the one I told you about; she's with us just now but she needs to find somewhere, and it looks like she might lose her job; they say they're 'downsizing'. And my eldest grandson, he helped at the last Quiz Night, remember? He's a good boy you know, but he's in with the wrong crowd, bad boys, and it looks like he might get suspended from school. Maybe next week we'll find out, I don't know, he doesn't say much."

Then came the benedicite: "But it's Sunday morning and I'm in my church, so thank God."

For sixteen years I was privileged to serve churches in Edmonton, North London. It was a world away from the world I'd grown up in or am serving in now. The Church Urban Fund provides a great tool for looking up demographic information on parishes (https://cuf.org.uk/shinealight). In Edmonton, working age poverty is 22%, child poverty 26% and pensioner poverty 31%. In my current parish those figures are 4%, 5% and 6% respectively.

For sixteen years I had a lot of learning to do, and I had some of the kindest, hardest-working, most generous teachers I could ever wish for. One of the most important lessons they taught me was about thankfulness. Those who know me well might observe that, perhaps from time to time, I can be a little bit 'glass half-empty'. To find myself serving a community where people daily faced struggles the likes of which I'd never known, and yet never lost sight of all that they had to give thanks for, was something that always inspired me. This wasn't a shallow, 'Don't worry, be happy' view of life. My friends there knew very well the reality of how tough life could be. What I was being taught (and I was a terrible learner!), was that the night never got so dark that some light could not be seen; and if some light could be seen, then give thanks to God for the light.

Living thankfully is not an easy thing to do, because in large part our culture is devoted to fostering dissatisfaction. How many times a day do we see/hear/watch an advert telling us how much better our lives could be if only we had a more nutritious breakfast cereal, clearer skin, a more exotic holiday, a better car, or phone, or anything, or everything. It's hard to be thankful for what you have in life if you're being bombarded with the not so subtle message that life could be that much better if you would only get out your credit card.

One of the great hymns of the Church which was much treasured and celebrated by Celtic Christians was the Benedicite; it's a great outpouring of praise to God and I pray it every morning:

Bless the Lord all you works of the Lord: sing his praise and exalt him for ever... Bless the Lord sun and moon: bless the Lord you stars of heaven; bless the Lord all rain and dew: sing his praise and exalt him for ever... Bless the Lord all birds of the air: bless the Lord you beasts and cattle; bless the Lord all people on earth: sing his praise and exalt him for ever.

It's almost breathless in its exuberance and its celebration of life and its gifts. Tellingly, this great hymn of thanksgiving is taken from a story of persecution and suffering, the story of the faithful Jews, Shadrach, Mesach and Abednego being thrown into the fiery furnace by the tyrannical King Nebuchadnezzar.

Perhaps it's when we have little or nothing, in times of hardship or struggle, that we are most acutely aware of what we do have and can give thanks.

I am so sorry that I was not a lot more thankful for all that I had.

(Really boring) Footwear News, with a nice photograph to make it a little bit more interesting.

A quick update on the footwear front.

My first 'trial walk' at the beginning of the month revealed that my seventeen year-old Meindl walking boots were no longer waterproof.

Two days later I popped into London to get a new pair.

I hadn't walked that many miles in them before I began to feel some pain in my Lateral Malleolus. There was nothing to see on the surface; no bruising or blistering. It was like an invisible bruise and it kept getting worse. I blamed the new boots and decided that I could manage by wearing my old boots and a pair of waterproof socks.

So, from the end of last week I took a four day break from hiking to give my ankle a chance to get a bit better and then on Monday morning I popped my trusty old boots back on. I didn't even get a hundred yards before the bone became so painful that I had to give up.

At that point I had just ten days left before setting out on my pilgrimage. This was not ideal. I made a quick trip into Hemel Hempstead and got myself a pair of Merrell walking shoes. They feel great. I'd still much rather be walking in boots, not shoes, and I'd still much rather have my feet encased in leather not fabric (in spite of the fact that I'm trusting good old Gore-Tex to protect the rest of me from the elements!), but frankly it was shoes or not making the walk at all.

Unfortunately this prolonged shoe drama means that I haven't got anything like the miles under my belt that I'd like. I'm going to try and make up for that over the next three days.

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Listening to the wind outside this morning I'm very aware that a lot of the places that I'm going to be visiting over the next few weeks are getting absolutely battered by a storm right now. Keeping all those affected in my prayers.

Pilgrimage

Last August my two boys and I made a pilgrimage from the Premier Inn in West Derby (it's in Liverpool, not Derby - I was as surprised as you are) to Anfield, where we were going to see Liverpool play Sevilla in a pre-season friendly. 

Up until the age of eight I lived in Kidderminster, in Worcestershire. Three doors down the road from us lived my 'Aunty' Jean and 'Uncle' Arthur. I think they were already retired and I suppose they were a bit like an extra set of grandparents to me. My mum used to tell me that sometimes I'd sneak out of the house to visit them. I don't remember the sneaking out but I do remember that they used to make me the most glorious chip butties, and I can remember very clearly the butter dripping off my little fingers. Aunty Jean and Uncle Arthur came from Liverpool and I thought the world of them. It was largely because of them that Liverpool was the first football team I ever supported. No doubt the fact that then, as now, they were a tremendously successful team also helped to influence my footballing loyalty. In the last three years or so my youngest son, Barnaby, has also become a Liverpool fan. However, given that he doesn't have any Liverpudlian neighbours treating him to chip butties, it's clearly glory-hunting all the way in his case!

Why do I call both that walk to Anfield and my walk to Iona, pilgrimages? What transforms a journey into a pilgrimage? I'm going to suggest three factors, and if you'd like to share your thoughts, please do use the comment section below; I'd really value your insights.

Story: A pilgrimage can be a journey which tells a story that's important to us. Walking through a Sunday afternoon to a pre-season friendly at Anfield was an interweaving of so many precious stories for me. It told me a beautifully happy story of my childhood and I could feel the boy that I had once been delighting in every step as I finally took him to a place that he had only ever dreamed of. The fact that Barnaby was supporting the team that I supported when I was exactly the same age as him, told me a story about the ways in which our lives can resonate with the lives of those we love. That afternoon I was a child again, and we walked not as father and sons but as three boys out on an adventure.

Destination: Traditionally, a pilgrimage is a journey whose purpose is drawn from what the destination means to the pilgrim. It's this that leads believers to Jerusalem and Mecca, to Varanasi and Rome, to Lumbini, to Amritsar, to Iona. It's because we attach importance to the stories that we tell about these places, that the journeys we make to them become pilgrimages.

Belonging: However we're using the word, pilgrimages are about locating our individual journeys, our lives, in something that's much bigger than ourselves. Whether I'm going to Lord's for a day's Test cricket, or to Hyde Park to see Bruce Springsteen, or whatever else, I always love that feeling of being part of a growing crowd. The closer you get to your destination the more people you see wearing their MCC bacon and egg ties or their Springsteen t-shirts, and for me that creates a sense of belonging. More traditional pilgrimages do the same. As I look ahead to my pilgrimage to Iona I find that sense of belonging being stirred in multiple ways. Going to Scotland always roots me in a sense of home and family. Iona roots me in the story of Celtic Christianity with its creativity, its compassion, its sense of wildness. Iona also roots me in the Christian story itself, a story of what the grace and love of God can do with people like Columba, people like us, even in our foolishness and sometimes our woundedness.

A pilgrim knows that the journeys they make are part of a much greater journey. A pilgrimage invites us to write our own short line in a much longer story. 

You might say that a pilgrim never walks alone.

Penitence

What could be more appropriate than to reflect on penitence the day after Donald Trump's inauguration as President? Trump's mentor, Roy Cohn, taught him, 'Attack, counter-attack, never apologize'. It's a mantra which Mr Trump has become the living embodiment of. On the campaign trail in 2015 he told an audience at a Christian conference, 'Why do I have to repent or ask for forgiveness if I am not making mistakes?' Why indeed.

Penitence, true sorrow for the things we do wrong, isn't easy; I know it isn't easy. Sir Elton John wrote: 'What do I say when it's all over? Sorry seems to be the hardest word.' Much as I hate to disagree with a fellow Watford FC fan, actually sorry isn't a very hard word to say at all. But being sorry, true penitence, that can be tough.

One of the things that can make it so tough is that just as exile presupposes a sense of home, so too penitence presupposes a sense of shame or regret. However, we've become people whose regrets are few, too few to mention. And shame? Well shame itself has become shameful, something to be rejected. I know that there are good reasons why we've reached this place. Shame has been horribly misused for generations, not least by the Church, but I'm not sure that tossing it out altogether is a very clever thing to attempt. We have no shame, but we're very into shaming and 'cancelling' others; ideally from the comfortable distance of our social media accounts. But if we don't feel a sense of regret, shame even, when we do things wrong and hurt others or ourselves, then we're unlikely to feel penitent. If we don't feel a sense of penitence, then we're unlikely to feel the need to repent. Without repentance we become trapped in our weaknesses and failings.

The other thing that makes penitence hard is anger. To truly face and acknowledge our failures can be at best uncomfortable and at worst deeply painful. None of us likes to feel pain, so it's all too easy for us to turn those feelings outwards; the step from shame to blame can be a small one. So many times I've heard people take five minutes to tell me about something they regret doing, and then twenty-five minutes telling me how it's someone else's fault. In case I appear to be staking a claim to the moral high ground, I'd have to acknowledge that that's something I've found myself doing. I start to explore my own sense of failure and so easily that exploration mutates into ugly blame and sometimes anger. Anger at the time I'm apart from my boys. Anger at the petty spitefulness of some people. Anger at the loss of friendship. Anger at being treated as worth very little; indifference. Anger at my need for forgiveness and anger at being unforgiven. Anger at myself, which brings me full circle to that sense of penitence. 

I hope this resonates with some of you: I hope it's not just me! I've got a lot of work to do on this pilgrimage.

It was two years before Columba was exiled from his homeland for inciting the Battle of Cúl Dreimhe. To me, that suggests that he continued to believe that he had been in the right in his dispute with St Finnian of Moville. He was angry when the High King of Ireland ruled against him and in favour of St Finnian, and his anger set conflict ablaze. He must surely have felt anger when he was excommunicated and sent into exile. However, he clearly came to feel penitence for what he'd done. The tradition that he made it his life's mission to 'win as many souls for Christ' as had been lost in the battle, speaks of someone who recognizes that he's done wrong and wants a new beginning.

Exile

A moment passed in silence and then the Bishop said to me, "Stuart, how did you get so lost?" It was just a couple of weeks before Christmas. The previous day I'd phoned to let him know that my marriage was ending. He could not have listened more carefully, he could not have been kinder, he could not have been any wiser.

The word 'lost' really struck me. I hadn't felt lost. There had been times when life had felt like a maelstrom, a bewildering vortex of fear, bereavement, anger and pain; I can see now that it had felt like that for far too long a time. Like someone being carried down violent rapids just clinging on to a life-belt, I'd been too focused on trying to keep my head above water to even begin to notice that I was being carried so far from all that I knew, from all that I was.

I was very close to my mum. I'd love to be telling her now about the pilgrimage I'm going to be making. Moments of odd behaviour were at first laughed away; don't we all become just a little more forgetful, a little more eccentric as we grow older? We were on holiday in Scotland when my brother phoned to confirm what we all suspected, all feared. Mum had dementia; mixed dementia it's called, Alzheimer's and vascular dementia all wrapped up in one. We would bring her to stay with us at weekends, not every weekend but as often as we could. Every time we thought we'd got all the strategies we needed in place to care for her we would discover that she had deteriorated again, new challenges would arise. As these things go it was all fairly swift in the end.

When the phone call came in the middle of the night I was in Sarajevo. I was on a week-long course about reconciliation. That day we'd visited the Body Identification Centre in Tuzla; remains of victims of the Srebrenica massacre continue to be ploughed up in fields across the region and the team there work to identify them so that they can be returned home to their loved ones; after that we had gone to Srebrenica itself. I got the first flight out of Sarajevo and by the middle of the afternoon I was standing by Mum's hospital bed; she'd fallen and looked so bruised. Less than twenty-four hours later she died. I got home to see her at least.

After that, loss seemed to follow loss and there was never quite the time to get back on your feet before the next one descended.

Our identities are organic and complex. We are interwoven with one another; our stories, histories, identities are never entirely our own. For the overwhelming majority of people we are identified by our relationships from the moment of birth; we are someone's daughter or son, we are grandchildren and siblings, we become friends, lovers, partners, spouses (which means we get in-laws!), we become parents and grandparents. Each relationship changes us and so does each loss of a relationship. A silly example, maybe, but there are times when I'm trying to remember some event from my childhood and I want to pick up the phone and ask Mum or Dad if they can remember the details; because they're not there anymore that part of my own history has become less clear to me, my story of who I am has to be told a little more hesitantly. I lost a lot of stories about myself in a fairly short space of time and the cumulative effect has been like losing a clear sense of where I belong, going into exile.

Columba didn't choose exile, didn't choose to lose the places and people that were 'home' to him, and neither did I. However he did choose to offend his mentor, St Finnian, by illicitly copying parts of his precious Bible. He did choose not to be reconciled. He did choose to ignore the judgement of Ireland's High King. He did choose to rouse his clan to battle. And the fact that he wasn't exiled until two years after the battle would seem to suggest that he continued to fight his corner, continued to refuse to accept that he was at fault. Perhaps there were ongoing attempts by the other clan leaders to find a peaceful resolution and he refused all those too. Columba made a lot of bad choices, each one leading to the next, and he ended up in exile. 

So did I. This pilgrimage is not about finding a way back to the 'home' that I had; I understand that that won't happen. I pray instead that this pilgrimage might be about learning to find a new sense of where and who 'home' is, about learning to 'sing the Lord's song in a strange land'.

Boot News (spoiler alert: it's not good)

Happy Feet

So, yesterday I went for a short walk with a friend; three miles or so. We walked at a very leisurely pace and then went for a coffee. My brand new boots have been giving me an increasing amount of pain in my right ankle - that bony bit that sticks out. Ever the optimist (?) I was quite convinced that sooner or later we'd reach that blessed moment when the boots were 'broken in'. It hasn't happened. As my friend and I were sitting with our coffees my ankle became more and more painful and when I got up to walk again I was hobbling horribly. Something was getting broken but it wasn't my boots.

Limping home I felt fairly despondent. If I carried on wearing these boots there was a good chance that I'd properly hurt my ankle and then instead of spending February striding manfully across Ireland and Scotland (no sniggering at the back please), I'd spend the month on the sofa watching daytime TV.

That was when I had my epiphany. My old boots felt fine to walk in and I wouldn't like to guess how many miles I've done in them over the past sixteen years or more. They're a second skin. The only slight problem with them was that they were rather more porous than you'd like walking boots to be, but surely that wasn't an insurmountable flaw?

Waterproof socks!!! Ordered them yesterday. They're arriving today. I feel like singing. What could go wrong?

Over the next few days I'm going to post a few reflections on the themes I want to explore on this journey I'm going to make, inspired by the life of St Columba: exile, penitence and pilgrimage. I could write them in a detached way and pretend that they're just elements of Columba's life that seem interesting. That would be dishonest. They're themes I want to reflect on and pray about because I feel that they can give me some helpful frameworks to look at what my life has been like over the past few years, what I have learnt and how I can grow. Some of what I write is likely to be quite personal. If that's something you'd feel uncomfortable with then it might be best to skip them and wait until the pilgrimage starts two weeks today; then all the blogs will be about the beautiful landscape, the horrible weather, which bits of me are hurting, and just how much I enjoyed my evening in whatever pub I happened to be staying in the night before.

Two weeks today!

St Columba: exile, penitence and pilgrimage

In 2009 I walked the Kintyre Way with my Uncle Jimmy. The walk ends near the village of Southend and nearby there's rock that appears to bear the imprint of a foot. By tradition this is St Columba’s footprint and marks the place where he first set foot in Scotland. 

St Columba, like most of the Celtic saints, is often viewed through a rose-tinted mist; devoted to prayer, the quintessence of kindness, and proto-environmentalists with a deep love of the natural world. In truth these were warrior-saints deeply rooted in and shaped by the Celtic warrior culture. They viewed themselves as being in a battle with the devil and his hordes of demons and that sense of being engaged in a very real conflict shaped everything about them. You can see some reflection of that in The Rule of St Columba: ‘Take not of food till thou are hungry. Sleep not till thou feelest desire… Thy measure of prayer shall be until thy tears come; or thy measure of work of labour till thy tears come…’ Clearly a world away from contemporary versions of ‘Celtic spirituality’.

According to the Venerable Bede, Columba ‘came to Britain to preach the word of God to the kingdoms of the northern Picts.’ However, St Columba came to Britain as an exile not as a missionary and preaching the word of God to the northern Picts was almost certainly not one of his chief aims.        

Around 560AD a battle was fought between the army of King Diarmait, High King of Ireland, and St Columba’s clan, the Northern Uí Néill; by birth St Columba was a prince of the Northern Uí Néill and could well have gone on to become king had he not entered the religious life. Exactly what part Columba played in inciting the Battle of Cúl Dreimhe is uncertain but one of the best-known stories involves a Bible. It’s said that during a visit to Rome, Pope Pelagius had given one of Columba’s teachers, St Finnian of Moville, a copy of St Jerome’s translation of the Bible. On a visit to his teacher, Columba secretly set about making himself a copy of this rare and precious translation. When Finnian discovered what his former pupil was up to a huge dispute erupted, which they both agreed to take to King Diarmait to be resolved. The High King’s judgement went against Columba, and angrily determined that justice had not been done he stirred his clan to battle. It’s possible that Columba himself took part in the conflict as he was marked with a livid scar throughout his life.

Although St Columba’s clan won the battle, the clans and clergy of Ireland were outraged at the huge loss of life and felt that the Northern Uí Néill were responsible for the suffering that had been caused. A synod was called at which Columba was excommunicated but the judgement was overturned on the understanding that he would leave Ireland and go into exile.

Some traditions have it that a penitent St Columba set out to save as many souls for Christ as had been killed in the battle. Perhaps that’s true, but it’s more likely that in the first instance his mission was a diplomatic one. Scotland at that time was divided between the kingdom of Dál Riata, which was an expanding Irish colony, and the territories of the northern Picts. Just a couple of years before Columba was exiled from Ireland the Pictish King Bruide fought and killed King Gabhran of Dál Riata and reclaimed much of the territory that had been lost to the colonists.

Iona, where Columba and his followers founded their monastery, was more or less on the border between the territories of Dál Riata and the Northern Picts. Furthermore, as a member of the Northern Uí Néill ‘royal family’, St Columba was related to the Kings of Dál Riata. It’s likely that St Columba’s relationship with the Picts was more akin to that of an ambassador seeking to bring reconciliation where there were conflicts and at the same time trying to protect the interests of his kinsfolk. Given that he himself had been exiled for his violent refusal to be reconciled with St Finnian and King Diarmait, it seems fitting that he was to give so much of his life striving to reconcile others and foster peace.

Reconciliation was also a significant part of the spiritual service that St Columba and the monks of Iona sought to offer. Many of those who came to the island came as penitents seeking absolution, and the path to absolution could be hard one on Iona. Some of the penitents were sent to the Columban monastery on the island of Tiree as a penance for their sins, and sometimes they were sent there for many years. Yet however ‘tough’ the remedy with which St Columba treated sick souls, there is also something of the ‘gentle Columba’ to be seen in many of his encounters with those who sought his counsel; we see someone with a real insight into the sufferings of the human heart, and with a deep compassion for those sufferings.

The pilgrimage I’ll be starting in just over a fortnight is shaped by the legacy of a man who was sent into exile as a penitent, and those will be three of the themes I want to try to explore on this journey: exile, penitence and pilgrimage.

Hauntings

More expenditure coming up. Having discovered last Sunday that my walking boots were no longer fit for purpose (don't ask me what a new pair of Meindl boots costs), yesterday I discovered that there was a rip in my waterproof trousers. Off to Hemel Hempstead today to get a new pair. It would have been cheaper to make this Sabbatical a two week all-inclusive jaunt to Rio on some spurious pretext like 'exploring the intersection between traditional animistic religious practices and the Anglican celebration of the Eucharist in a contemporary urban context.' That would have done it. 'Intersection,' 'contemporary' and 'urban' are winners every time; just like adding the word 'artisan' to a product is good for an extra 20% on the price.

Anyway, I've gradually been digging out bits of walking kit from the bottom of the wardrobe in the spare room, some of which have lain largely undisturbed for the past fifteen years. Hauntings.

I'm trying on different bits of old kit each time I go out for a walk, working out what still fits (a surprising amount to be honest), what doesn't, and what's just perished with the passing of the years. This morning when I put on a recently retrieved base layer I noticed a slightly odd smell. No, it's not what you think. After half an hour or so I realised that it was carrying the fragrance of the washing powder that my mum used to use: I must have been visiting her the last time I wore it. I was making myself a coffee when I made the connection. I stopped. She was close again, and once again I was reminded of how much I miss her.

Just a few minutes later I was flicking through my waterproof prayer book; everybody should have a waterproof prayer book! I found a letter in the back from someone I used to know. I shouldn't have read it but I did.

5460 days ago

'I know I have said this to you before, and will doubtless say it again, but I am so proud of you for doing this pilgrimage. Proud feels like the wrong word to say as if I had some role in 'creating' it, but I think you know what I mean. I have absolute confidence that whatever this walk throws at you, you will be able to overcome it and not let it overcome you. Although I do also think that 'not letting things overcome you' will be one of the hardest challenges for you personally.

The walk will be tough, and it will hurt and you will be lonely at times. I think you are expecting those things. It's when other things go wrong that you will need to dig even deeper...

I'm very jealous of you doing this sabbatical. Not because I have any desire to walk 350 miles across Scotland in 21 days, especially in February, but because you are actually doing what started out as a half baked idea two and a half years ago. You've been able to do it partly because you've had the opportunity, but more importantly because you have had the drive to make it happen. And that's what I know will get you to Lindisfarne. This was your dream that you have made reality and you will see it through. And if you are ever feeling like you won't, or just need some words of encouragement you know that I am only ever a phone call away. And if the phone doesn't work just talk to me in your head.'

Fifteen years ago. Indeed.

My ideas are never 'half-baked'.

New Boots, Prayer Books and Polaroids

On Sunday morning I was delighted to wake up to the sight of snow on the ground and a forecast of heavy rain to come. An important part of these next three weeks is about checking that my waterproofs keep the water out, and my thermals keep the heat in. If anything's not working quite as it should I'd rather find out now than when I arrive in Ireland.

Sure enough, I discovered that my waterproof coat needed re-proofing, which wasn't the biggest deal ever. The biggest deal ever was discovering that my hiking boots no longer repel water, they let it in, a lot. On further inspection I found a few cracks in the leather and around the seams which meant that new boots were going to be needed. Before making the sort of journey I'm going to be making in February I'd want to make sure that my boots were well and truly walked in, not head off with a more or less brand new pair. So, my 'training walks' are now less about getting as fit as I'd like to and more about introducing feet to boots and boots to feet and making sure that they can play nicely together.

On Wednesday and today I took my new boots out for a walk. There's a little bit of chafing on my right ankle but nothing especially out of the ordinary. Walking the boots in means walking a lot more slowly than I normally would and even stopping now and then. I posted a Reel on Instagram as I walked, reflecting on the times when maybe slowing down or even stopping is something that all of us need to do.

I don't like stopping when I'm on a long walk; I get myself into a bit of a 'slow and steady wins the race' kind of a mindset. You don't have to go fast, but you do have to keep going. There are however two things I carry with me which slow me down in helpful and health-ful ways.

When I made my pilgrimage in 2010 I put together a little prayer book, with sets of readings and prayers to be offered in the morning, at midday, afternoon, evening and night. It's a set of prayers that I still often use privately today (and semi-publicly when I'm walking with my son, Barnaby). One of the things I'm very strict about is stopping at noon for Midday Prayer and three o'clock for Afternoon Prayer. So it is that I've found myself saying my prayers in the torrential rain on an exposed hillside, under a motorway flyover coming out of Glasgow, pressing myself as far back into a hedgerow as I can as endless tourist buses career along the rather narrow A83 towards Inveraray (if you're on a tourist bus, all roads lead to Inveraray). It's important to me that on these pilgrimages life fits around prayer and not the other way around, as can so often be the case.

The other thing I carry which prevents me from just putting my head down and stepping smartly through my surroundings, is my camera. I might write about photography in a later blog. In fact, I'm sure I will. Apart from the births of my two children the arrival of photography in my life is probably the best thing that's happened since 2010; indeed, there are probably days when those two children feel that in fact I'd rank my camera ahead of them in my affections! Having that camera in my hand keeps me connected to my surroundings and attentive to all that I can see. Each time I take a photograph it's an act of thanksgiving for God's good gifts in Creation, in it's own way a kind of prayer.

What keeps you connected? What helps you to keep going when the going isn't good? It's always good to stop sometimes, remember and give thanks.

 

(Re)Introducing A Pilgrim's Cairn

Dad climbing Conic Hill

Where to begin? There are several beginnings.

The beginning that's at the forefront of my mind this morning is that only three weeks from today I'll step out of The Station House Hotel in Letterkenny and make a nineteen mile round trip to Gartan Lough in County Donegal, the birthplace of Saint Columba. Those nineteen miles will, hopefully, be followed by around four hundred and sixty more miles as over the course of twenty-four days I make my way around the Irish coast to Belfast, then up the Scottish coast to Glasgow, along part of the West Highland Way to the tip of Loch Lomond and west to Oban, before crossing Mull to Iona where Saint Columba founded his famous monastery. I need to get a lot fitter. I've lost about a stone since Christmas, which is a start, but there's plenty of work to do. How fit can you get in three weeks?

This journey has many beginnings. In 2010 I made a pilgrimage from Iona to Lindisfarne, inspired by Saint Aidan who was sent from that Scottish monastery to try to educate the English. My dad drove 'back up' for the first half of the walk, and joined me on foot from Balmaha to Drymen. In Glasgow I was joined by my friend The Venerable Paul and my wife Susie. Paul was to walk with me, intermittently, for the rest of the journey, but only once we'd convinced him that he didn't need to carry the tent that he'd brought with him and which was really weighing him down too much. Susie spent a cold and wet Valentine's Day walking along the River Clyde from Glasgow to Bothwell. Along the way I was also joined by her brother Tom and by my Uncle Jimmy. When I was offered the opportunity to make a second such pilgrimage in 2020 I revealed the poverty of my imagination by planning to walk... from Lindisfarne to Iona. Dad was all set to drive back up again. No doubt Susie would have come and joined me at some point along the way. And then Covid happened and the walk didn't.

Arrival. Lindisfarne 2010.

Which brings us to 2025 and another beginning. Offered the chance to make a pilgrimage again, my first thought was to resurrect my plan to walk from Lindisfarne to Iona; I literally had every mile of the walk mapped out, everything was ready to go. However, a lot has changed since 2020. My marriage has failed, my dad has died, so much that was precious has faded or gone; there's been a lot of loss in a short space of time. To revisit so much of the walk that I made in 2010 would be to walk too many miles with ghosts of the past, unhappy ghosts. However, I'd long wanted to spend some time in Ireland, so I decided to map out a walk inspired by St Columba's journey from there to Iona, beginning with that visit to Gartan Lough. It's a bit further than I intended. Actually, it's a lot further than I intended. Have I mentioned that I really need to get fitter, quickly?

Not everything has been about loss since that 2010 pilgrimage! In 2011 my son James was born, and two years later he was joined by Barnaby. The privilege of being their father has been one of the greatest pilgrimages of all; a journey of discovery, of challenge, of delight. More often than not, the significant changes that happen in our lives happen over time, gradually. However, when I became a parent, everything changed all at once and it was awesome and beautiful. So, I'm delighted to say that The Venerable Paul is going to bring my two boys up to Scotland for the February half-term, and together we'll continue our journey.

And lastly, this blog. I felt a lot of guilt about taking a three month Sabbatical when I left my North London parish in 2010. It was an area with a lot of deprivation, plenty of people couldn't afford to take a holiday at all, and here was the Vicar sloping off for three months. I decided that if I at least shared my experience through some words and pictures, that would be something. Also, I knew that I wanted to write up my journey, and a blog seemed like a good way of producing a first draft. So A Pilgrim's Cairn was begun.

In truth, I can't wait to begin this latest beginning. It will be a journey of miles. It will be a journey of many kinds. I know I will arrive in Iona. I hope there will be other senses of arrival too.