Did you watch the last series of Pilgrimage? It followed a very mixed group of people, with different faith backgrounds, walking a variety of pilgrim paths in the North of England, ending up on Holy Island. Among them were Ashley Banjo, Hermione Norris and Patsy Kensit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There was a real sense as they walked together that the pilgrims were learning and growing – partly by being with each other, partly from the places they went to, partly just by being away from their normal lives and being outdoors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Next Tuesday is St Columba\u2019s Day. Columba was a Christian leader in Ireland in the 6th<\/sup> century. The story is that he was forced to leave Ireland because of an argument, which then became a fight. So he set out into exile with 12 monks and eventually came to the tiny island of Iona, off the coast of the Island of Mull. There they set up a monastery and lived a life of prayer and study.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Columba was a changed man. Iona is only a very small island, but there is something about it which often affects those who come. In the 1930s another spiritual leader came to do something new. George Macleod had been a minister in a very poor part of Glasgow. He realised that the church was out of touch with the people there. He wanted to make a new connection between the church and the life of ordinary people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So he took groups of ministers and workmen to Iona to rebuild the ruins of the medieval abbey there – and to learn from each other. They went back to their communities different people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But with pilgrimage, they say, it\u2019s not just the arriving – it\u2019s the travelling. And it\u2019s not even just the travelling – it\u2019s the turning our mind and heart in this new direction – opening up to our desire to connect our life with God and our life in the world more deeply.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And that intention can be true of other things as well as pilgrimage. I remember, when I went on my first silent retreat, the leader talking about the way that God had already been leading us and preparing us, long before we arrived, as we first began to open up to this possibility, and the challenge and gift it could bring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In a smaller but still significant way, this can be true whenever we set aside a time that is different, a time to draw close to God. Whenever we head for that special place – which might be a particular chair, or a bench in the garden, or even a Chapel – God is already drawing us gently, as John O Donohue says:<\/p>\n\n\n\n As we begin to sense and notice the way that God is leading us into these little moments of pilgrimage, we may find that we can relax and open up to where this inner journey will take us, and what might be changing or forming within us, and how we might be led back to live out that change in our lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Did you watch the last series of Pilgrimage? It followed a very mixed group of people, with different faith backgrounds, walking a variety of pilgrim paths in the North of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":519,"featured_media":1718,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reflections"],"blocksy_meta":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/chaplaincy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/chaplaincy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/chaplaincy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/chaplaincy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/519"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/chaplaincy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1717"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/chaplaincy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1717\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1719,"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/chaplaincy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1717\/revisions\/1719"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/chaplaincy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/chaplaincy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/chaplaincy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/chaplaincy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}In out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming.<\/pre>\n\n\n\nSo let us allow ourselves even now to be led into this deeper space with God.
Noticing the way that God is always there, in our heart, quietly drawing us.
And so God invites us to open ourselves more fully to his gentle loving presence.
We bring ourselves, with all that is going on in our lives, in our minds, in our bodies, in our hearts.
God meets us here, as we are, offering us the love and grace that we long for, the growth and transformation that we are seeking.
Here we can rest in God\u2019s love\u2026.
A prayer of St Columba:
Be O Lord, a guiding star above me,
a smooth path below me,
a kindly shepherd behind me
and a bright flame before me;
today, tonight and forever. Amen.
<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"