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.