The end of a pilgrimage?

A pilgrimage never really ends.

When you stop walking the pilgrimage...

...the pilgrimage walks with you.

Beautiful (Mothering Sunday)

In 2018 I bought a Panasonic Lumix compact digital camera and began a journey into the world of photography. I guess you could call it a kind of pilgrimage in its own right, and it's a journey that's done me so much good over these past seven years (we'll focus on how much its given me and gloss over how much its cost me, after all, you can't put a price on happiness!). Looking back over the past three months of blogging, I'm slightly surprised that I haven't written more about all that I've learnt from my camera. The need to pay attention to sources of light, to think carefully about how you frame something, to realise how significantly the background/context shapes the image; these aren't just important factors in the creation of a photograph, they're essential to living well too.

At the start of this Sabbatical I'd rather fallen out of love with photography. I wasn't looking at photo books or websites all that often. I'd more or less dropped out of the photography club that I'm a member of. Now and again I'd pick up my camera, but without much enthusiasm and with very little vision or inspiration. I missed taking photos, but not enough to really do much about it. I was dull-eyed.

Realising that conditions for photography might be a bit challenging on a February walk across Ireland and Scotland, I treated myself to a waterproof camera. Heaven only knows how many photos I took over the course of the walk (and how many I subsequently deleted!), but it's been good looking at life through a camera lens again.

And as I've been re-connecting with photography, I think I've discovered how I fell out of love with my camera. It's a theory anyway, and it has to do with the pilgrimage theme of thanksgiving.

I stopped taking photos because I'd stopped taking photos. Profound, eh? 

Anyone who enjoys photography will know that the hobby creates a certain kind of vision; without particularly trying to, you simply find yourself being more attentive to light and shadow, to form and texture, you notice colour and you notice the absence of colour. Every day brings new opportunities to take photographs, and you can choose to take out your camera and capture those moments, or you can choose to walk on by. Over the course of the past year I'd repeatedly chosen to walk past those photo-making moments; and it seems to me that every time I chose to walk past those moments of beauty, I made it less likely that I'd notice such moments in the future. In the language of the Bible you might say that I was 'hardening my heart'.

To take a photograph is an act of thanksgiving for a moment in time and space; for me, it's a kind of prayer. Every time I failed to give thanks for those moments, my eye darkened and my vision grew smaller. I think something very similar happens with living thankfully. The more we forget to be thankful for all that we have and neglect to take the time for thanksgiving, the less conscious we become of all that we have to be thankful for. However, the more we take the time to give thanks for all that we are gifted with every day of our lives, the more we will see to be thankful for.

Look! Beautiful.

We were walking through a forest in Suffolk. I was in my early twenties and was looking at the ground beneath my feet as we walked along. We were talking, I know, but I can't remember what we were talking about. Suddenly Mum stopped and said, 'Stuart! Lift up your head and look around you, it's a beautiful world.'

Just a few days before she died, the boys and I took Mum for a short walk. Dementia had largely bound her in silence, but she recognised us with her smile. It was October: Mum loved the colours of Autumn. As we turned into the driveway of her care home and the end of our walk together,  she noticed some flowers blossoming. Mum reached out her hand to touch them and said, 'Look! Beautiful.' It's the last thing I remember her saying.

I am thankful.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Taylor Swift and Jesus

A couple of days ago a friend got in touch to ask me what the experience of having my head shaved had been like. (A Pilgrim's Cairn: Bruce Springsteen and Barbershops)

The jumping out of my skin bit is no exaggeration. I remember walking into the loos at Heathrow Airport before my flight to Derry, and of course the place was full of mirrors. Looking up I found a stranger standing in the place where I should have been and there really was a palpable jump in my heart to discover myself replaced. That feeling of estrangement remained for several days. The other thing I discovered was that I clearly run my fingers through my hair (which has never exactly been long and lustrous) a lot more than I was aware of; in the absence of hair I'd find myself wincing as I repeatedly scratched my poor bare scalp.

Anyway, my friend was right to call it a ritual. I was shaving my head as a symbol of penitence for mistakes I've made, and it was very much the right thing to do at the start of the pilgrimage; it had an important role in making the journey into something other than just a long walk. I did become strange to myself and week by week as my hair has been growing back I've been returning to the person I was.

Except, that's not actually what's happening, because it can't. 

Almost as soon as I'd written about 'returning' I knew that I was mischaracterising what is happening. There's no question of returning to the person who once I was, because it's simply not possible. What's more, to 'return' would require a massively unhelpful attempt at amnesia; an erasure of the things I've done wrong would also be an erasure of the ways in which I've grown and the ways in which growth lies before me. The person I was might not have the failures I have, but the person I was hasn't learnt the things I've learnt either.

As I've been thinking about the mysterious Celts I've been reminded of how compelling a good story can be; how much we can be drawn to believing something not because it's factually true, but because it resonates, inspires and moves us (A Pilgrim's Cairn: Fighting and drinking their way across Europe. Or not.). One such story that resonates with many of us is the story of the Return to Eden/Return to Innocence; the idea that we can 'go back' to a time when life was better, when we were better. It's such a pervasive vision, from the Enlightenment story of 'the noble savage' through to Taylor Swift singing, 'Time won't fly, it's like I'm paralyzed by it. I'd like to be my old self again, but I'm still trying to find it'.

There's another well-known story which provides a counterpoint to the dream of returning to a perfect past. I'm always struck by the stories of the Resurrected Jesus still carrying the wounds which He suffered at the Crucifixion. Surely if God could raise Jesus from the dead, then God could have healed His wounds too? But that's not the story. The story is that the Risen Jesus was still the wounded Jesus, still the scarred Jesus.

There were no wounds in Eden, but then there wasn't much wisdom in Eden either.