A friend signed off an email with this prayer. I know he’s had a tough year, which somehow lends weight to this prayer in my eyes.
God, go with us on our journey of faith – revive us when we grow weary, direct us when we go astray, inspire us when we lose heart, reprove us when we turn back. Keep us travelling ever-onwards, a pilgrim people, looking to Jesus, who has run the race before us, and who waits to welcome us home.
It was tempting to look at the stage that corresponds to arrival in a geographical pilgrimage as “success”, but that would be to monstrously oversimplify this area of life-as-pilgrimage. I suppose you could also correlate this stage with death and whatever comes beyond, but that would be to miss out on the value of ending other things well in our lives.
The words “conclusion” and “closure” particularly come to mind. There are many times in life when if we fail to “arrive” in the sense of having reached a point of understanding, acceptance and celebration of what has been, we are unable to move on to what may be.
The end of a relationship, bereavement, moving from one geographical location to another, finishing a job…all are times of arrival at an ending, and time needs to be taken to mark that ending, to set aside what has gone before in a positive way whether it counts as success or failure.
In the fast-moving world in which we live it is important to give ourselves time to process this ending. We often understand this well in the area of bereavement, but this is only one of the areas of life where it takes real time to “come to terms” with what’s happened. Sometimes it helps to have some kind of ritual, some kind of event, alone or with a group to mark the ending.
Closure and conclusion do not mean that we are striving to forget or set aside what has gone before; they simply point us to the undeniable fact that every beginning must lead to an ending, and the way we deal with that ending will define our next steps…it will either consign us to the past, bitterness and to an ever decreasing sphere of life or it will open the way to new possibilities, another chapter…
I determine amidst all uncertainty
always to trust.
I choose to live beyond regret,
and let you recreate my life,
I believe you will make a way for me
and provide for me,
if only I trust you
and obey.
I will trust you in the darkness and know
that my times are in your hand.
I will believe you for my future,
chapter by chapter
until all the story is written.
From the Brendan liturgy of the Northumbria Community
I came across this interesting passage in Steve Hollinghurst’s 2010 book Mission Shaped Evangelism. It’s probably not new to some of you, but to me it is…
“In the 1980s a number of charismatic church leaders were prophesying a great revival in Britain. Conferences and prayer meetings attended by people from around the world occurred in anticipation. Beyond some notable spiritual experiences and renewal of faith, people were disappointed when nothing grand came to pass. But what if God was enabling a great spiritual awakening, not in the church but outside it? David Hay records a big rise in spiritual and supernatural experience among non=churchgoers, from 48 per cent of those he surveyed to 76 per cent between 1987 and 2000. It is easy to point to the sociological reasons why people are so much more open to the spiritual, but if people are as they say actually having more spiritual experiences, where are these coming from? If God is at work in the world, might these experiences be of God? In my work I have met people who have encountered forces that I believe were spiritually evil; indeed Hay records a big rise in such experiences. But they remain much lower than the positive encounters, and among these positive experiences I have come across many Pagans and New Agers who I think are encountering the God I know through Jesus Christ. We are used to people encountering God being among those raised in the Christian faith, using Christian language to describe their experiences. People raised in a culture that has forgotten the Christian language of faith will speak of their encounters with God in a different language; we must listen for what is going on underneath. In doing so we may also learn how to communicate the Christian faith in language those not raised in the church understand.” page 59-60.
I’ve only just started the book but it is provoking some disturbing and challenging thinking.
Pilgrim Traveller 