MEANDERINGS OF A PILGRIM (part 1 of 3)

As I spend time in silence and time pushing my body to an extreme (heavy load, tall grass/corn)

I find more and more the need to write; to put some reflections on paper. I am doing this daily (if I can) in my blog – but I still want to write more – so here goes – this form the pen of a man who couldn’t, and still struggles with, see the point of essay writing when he started theological  education.

I think I have something refreshing to say – perhaps in a more liberated form than an essay. (At my boarding school an essay given by a prefect was a form of punishment.

So to pilgrimage, silence and poustinia/ik.

I am very impressed by the opening pages of a book entitled Poustinia  by Catherine de Hueck Doherty

(Collins/Fountain books 1977(75)) which include these words:

“Silence, solitude – in a word the desert -

are not necessarily places, but states of mind and heart” (p21).

The authoress, Doherty, tells of how we can come to God in prayer anywhere – even in solitude in the middle of a traffic jam – it’s a state of mind. And yet hardships – my slog in the wheatfields – can make us more dependent upon God. The other day I was reading of Gerard Hughes dragging his wheeled trolley on a pilgrimage to Jerusalemthrough heavy snow – he didn’t even have the energy to pray. I empathise. I try to pray and to picture situations, read scriptures; but sometimes we just have to concentrate on putting one foot in front of another; and perhaps this can be just as much a prayer as our more formalised headbound intercessions. Perhaps it helps us focus on the God who is

‘both close and distant’ (p19).

We don’t need a mountain-top experience or a pilgrimage to discover this (it could be the traffic jam) – but it helps. Often my walking prayers are reduced to a sense of amazement at God’s creation, wishing I could identify the birdsong, or the tiny flowers I tread underfoot- whilst enjoying the deep silence of the forest or the canal bank or the ridgeway. Different locations, yet similar feelings.

A sense of enjoyment at being at one with creation – and yet so different from the hard slog through the edge of wet cornfields.

I feel the need to write about my loaded rucksack (yet without a proper waterproof) – my ‘tombstone’, to borrow a term from Simon Armitage. This was written before my walking experience of it (though copied up later, after I had carried it). My sense of what was to come was justified, but over- exaggerated –you get used to your loads.

Despite the lack of a mack, or perhaps because of it, there is something special about trying to carry all your needs on your back. Of course, there can never be everything, I am not carrying a tent or a sleeping bag, but we can try. In one of wet cornfields I had the satisfaction of putting on waterproof trousers  - in this case I had the right gear. But I’m not trying to talk about survival or good hiking techniques, I’m the last to do that, but about our relationship with God

The true poustinik (one who lives in a poustinia) would leave everything behind with provisions for just one day (p39) as Christ taught his disciples to.

I have more than enough provisions for one day, but that’s not the point – the point is to survive on one’s own, but also at the hands of others’ hospitality (as I am just experiencing). Doherty doesn’t develop the point here, but it is a lesson I am already learning.

Some (including my wife, Daff) might think that I am too quick to depend on others, but there is something quite humbling about receiving others’ hospitality; some incredible thoughtfulness – particularly in dealing with my awkward diet. A wise host, Rachma, said that it must be quite difficult being a pilgrim, moving on from one place to another and never being at “home” (though of course that was before the journey’s interruption), and having to continually receive. For too many of us it can be as difficult to receive as to give.