Should I stay or should I go…

Posted by David Ward on 05/10/2012
Posted in: Community, Personal thoughts, Pilgrimage, Relationships. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Someone asked Abba Anthony, “What must one do in order to please God?” The old man replied, “Pay attention to what I tell you: whoever you may be, always have God before your eyes; whatever you do, do it according to the testimony of the holy Scriptures; in whatever place you live, do not easily leave it. Keep these three precepts and you will be saved.

from ‘The Sayings of the Desert Fathers’ collected by Benedicta Ward.

A while ago I wrote a post called “A mobile sort of stability” (https://pilgrimtraveller.wordpress.com/2010/03/), where I praised the virtues of the monastic rule of stability…to remain and to grow in the place that God has put you.

Just recently, however, I’ve struggled with the temptation to be on the move again. A searching, hungry mobility seems to be one of the features of our age…we always seem to believe that whatever it is that we seek will be found there, rather than here, and thus we need to be constantly seeking new faces, fresh spaces and new experiences…and I am not immune to its attraction, especially as I struggle to make sense of a changing stage of life.

Since moving to the place I now live I’ve struggled with so many things…a sense that “they’re not like me”, a more reserved and conservative culture, failing to make an impact…but above all an all pervading sense of loneliness as long term friendships become more distant or end and as family become more and more dispersed. A conversation I had with a friend the other day about just beginning to have deep friendships after 20 years living here didn’t help much. It takes tremendous resilience to stay put against such odds.

The Desert Fathers and Mothers have much wisdom to share about the constant draw to mobility but the longing and discipline for a life of stability.

An anonymous desert monk said: “If a trial comes upon you in the place where you live, do not leave that place when the trial comes. Wherever you go, you will find that what you are running from is there ahead of you.” Sometimes standing still and staying put can be life changing as we are finally forced to face our monsters.

And again, Amma Syncletica said, “If you are living in a monastic community, do not go to another place: it will do you a great deal of harm. If a bird abandons the egg she has been sitting on, she prevents them hatching; and in the same way, the monk or nun will grow cold and their faith will perish if they go around from one place to another.” This has implications for changing church as much as to do with monastic living,

I am also discovering something that I overlooked in my re-prioritising of my life to give pilgrimage first place over community…the pilgrim always returns to the place from which they begun, to the community of which they are part; but the returning pilgrim is a changed person, different somehow to the person who undertook the journey. Community on the road is very real, but can always only be a life in transition. True community is rooted in a particular place and time.

The two…community and pilgrimage…are inextricably linked by the need for a place of homecoming, a place where one can put down roots and say, “This is my home, and these are the friends I love”.

I am finding Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove’s book “The Wisdom of Stability” really helpful (and painfully challenging and encouraging!). He writes with the wisdom of someone who has faced the same challenges and, because of his commitment to be rooted in a particular place long-term, faces those challenges every day.

Sitting uncomfortably…

Posted by David Ward on 24/08/2012
Posted in: Pilgrimage. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

The third chapter of Maggi Dawn’s “Accidental Pilgrim” is entitled “Armchair Pilgrim”. She begins by looking at the way that pilgrimage has developed to the point where “place” has become as important as the “person” who is remembered. Pilgrimage has also become popular with ‘non-believers’ who are looking for space, challenge and change.

Possibly the most renowned pilgrimage route is the Camino, which converges on northern Spain and the city of Santiago de Compostela. It is a gruelling challenge, and Maggi decides that she will tackle it. However, just before she is due to leave she is struck down by what turns out to be a form of auto-immune arthritis, which makes walking any distance painful.

She has to give up the idea of the walk, and instead is forced to consider, from her armchair, the whole idea of pilgrimage as an inner journey, where by reading and paying attention to life’s small details it is possible to make a journey of the imagination.

She particularly cites the example of the Desert Fathers and Mothers as those who went to a desert place in order to be better able to make the inward journey. This leads her to the practice of going on a retreat as a way of going to our own ‘desert’, where we can practice rhythm and be free from distraction to hear God’s voice. She discovers the importance of rest and slowing down as spiritual disciplines, and encourages us to discover our own pace for our own pilgrimage.

Quotable:

“Ignatius, de Maistre and Coleridge all seemed to be offering me the same piece of advice: I could read to distract and entertain myself until I was up and about again, or I could, through reading and paying attention to the minutiae of life, embark on a real journey of the imagination.” p113

“I can’t be a tourist by staying at home, but I might make a better pilgrimage in my own kitchen than by walking hundreds of miles, if this is where I learn to watch and listen to my own soul.” p114

“‘Oh, and by the way,’ he added, ‘don’t even think about praying for hours on end. There’s really no need for you to pray much at all while you’re here. We are praying for you, so you can relax. That’s why you are here.’ This was nothing like the punishing religion I’d been expecting. I had never in my life before been told not to pray!” p121

 “My armchair pilgrimage, it was clear, was not a matter of running away, denial, disappointment or any other escape mechanism. I wanted an interior journey that would not only keep me occupied while I was laid up, but would also give me a means of coming to terms with life as it was for me at that point, in the discomfort of the present moment and the uncertainty about the future.” p134

“Of course our personal history matters, and extreme minimalism isn’t good for everyone. Nevertheless, being weighed down with too much paraphernalia that we no longer use or need is not a good place to be either. Choosing those things that matter and letting the rest go is a liberation; it makes a house easier to clean and cheaper to insure, and frees up time to get on with life.” p142

I can’t sum up the book any better than the author herself does – “In the end, whether by accident or on purpose, it’s not where you go but who you become that makes you a pilgrim.” – I found this book a helpful guide to use on the way to either destination

Less than ideal…

Posted by David Ward on 19/08/2012
Posted in: Pilgrimage, Theology. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

The remainder of Maggi Dawn’s book, “Accidental Pilgrim”, looks at times when everything seems to dictate that pilgrimage is foolish or impractical. The two chapters, “Pushchair Pilgrim” and “Armchair Pilgrim” look at times when the circumstances of our lives make pilgrimage more difficult or even, apparently, impossible. At times like theses, though, we have an opportunity to both adjust our lives and our preconceptions of pilgrimage in ways that make us realise that both are so much bigger than we previously believed.

“Pushchair Pilgrimage” looks at the times when our dreams and plans are threatened by unexpected changes in our lives, whose ‘timing’ seem to be awful and inconvenient; times when we feel tied down and restricted, particularly by our family circumstances.

With many stories and illustrations from her own experience of the adjustments to life necessary with the unexpected, though not unwelcome, birth of a son, the author leads us through themes like “life as pilgrimage”, the idea that Christians are “pilgrims and strangers” in the world and how the early Church developed this way of viewing life in a time when life was constantly threatened by persecution and where they lived in expectation of the imminent return of Jesus. She asks, “do pilgrimage and spirituality have to always be somber affairs or is their a place for joy and even fun on pilgrimage?”.

She examines the way that pilgrimage is often more about the journey than the destination, and considers the stresses and life-changing opportunities and challenges of travelling in the company of others not always of our own choosing.
Once again the personal stories are inter-twined with a trip through church history and helpful theological reflection.

Quotable:

“Perhaps, like motherhood, pilgrimage occurs despite imperfect circumstances and inconvenient timing. Perhaps, like motherhood, there is really no set of rules that qualifies you to be a pilgrim.” p70

“From what we know of the earliest Christian communities, there is little to indicate that they made pilgrimages in the same way that later generations did, and rather than travelling to specific holy places to carry out votive rituals or healing prayers, there seems to have been more emphasis on the idea of life itself as a journey.” p70

“But although this may have meant that the kind of journeys we associate with pilgrimage were unfamiliar to them, by constantly treating their homeland as a temporary camping space, they maintained a mobile, nomadic view of their life on earth. Christianity, in the early centuries, was not for those who wanted to settle down or make their home their castle.” p73

“But I was less sure whether a pilgrimage should be fun. Does it always have to be a serious endeavour, marked by penance and sober reflection, or is there room for joy in a pilgrimage? p75

“Christianity really doesn’t do itself any favours by turning virtue into the equivalent of a pinched, joyless existence, and there is really no basis for doing so either in Christian doctrine or in the biblical record – the opposite in fact.” p75

“I simply needed to admit to myself that there are forms of church that prove more of a hindrance than a help to me. I am not much at home in the strictures and rigid rules of reformed evangelicalism which seems to demand a spirituality without beauty and a life with no spontaneity, and neither does my heart lift to the excessively theatrical, ritualised liturgies of Anglo-Catholicism. The smoky patina, musty fabrics and chaotic clutter make me restless, and the underlying objections to women’s participation in church life leave me feeling desperate for some fresh air. It would be easy to conclude that I am not cut out for Christian spirituality at all, except for the fact that there are thousands of others like me…” p83.

“The Celtic peregrini  seemed to speak volumes to my pushchair pilgrimages, not because my little voyages were particularly dangerous, but because rethinking one’s life in the new set of circumstances that motherhood brings is, in some respects, a journey of unpredictability  that involves the loss of control over one’s own life and destiny.” p89

“In today’s language, when we speak of pilgrimage either literally as a physical journey or metaphorically as a description of a life of faith, the emphasis has shifted to the journey itself, rather than the destination. p94