homeward bound.

so most of us are belted and buckled aboard a plane about to take-off.  Martin is driving south in Agnes.  Mackenzie is through security and waiting for her flight to Belfast and I’m waiting for my car in the airport ready to head to Grandmas.  

and so the adventures begin again.   and the pilgrimage begins a new leg.  

Martin, Mackenzie and I sat and had a coffee after we sent everyone else through security.   This is always the strangest part.  The ending of one journey and the beginning of another. 

I imagine it will be a hard adjustment for all of us over the next few days regardless of where we are.  We were indeed given the sweet gift of community in the last 14 days.   Community doesn’t always happen on pilgrimage.   Being traveling compansions doesn’t always equate to being community.   

Sometimes its hard enough to transition back into life after pilgrimage without the gift of community.  So I sit here and pray for grace to carry us home.    And grace to lead us on this pilgrim’s way.  

So go easy on us — it will be hard to articulate this journey.  We can tell you what we did.  We can tell you what we saw.   But to describe the experience of God and of community would be like trying to describe the experience of riding a roller coaster.  

Martin has to drive 4 hours or more in the mini-bus by himself.    Mackenzie is back on the 6th.  I’m back on the 7th.   So it will be a while still until we are all home.  

but then again I think it would be fair to say that at some point in the last 14 days we each found home to be a place that holds no geographical boundaries but is held somewhere between the realms of Heaven and Earth.   

So I pray that perhaps now we are actually headed in the right direction to  make it home - our real home – a home that is more than the comforts of our own bed and shower.  

“After all our exploring and journeying we will return home to know it as if for the first time.” – TS Eliot

on the way home…

I can’t believe it. It is almost time to go home.

This past 12 days have been absolutely amazing. We saw many different cathedrals, churches, and even ruins of old abbeys and churches. But what I think we really got out of this, more so than the experience of all these fantastic sights and cities, was what we got spiritually.

We all learned a new way to pray, to be with God and his Son, Jesus Christ. We learned that in no way possible can we mess up prayer. It is “all about the intention.” We all must learn how to use our different talents to be closer to Christ. And that is what I am going to remember most about this trip, more so than how to be active within your community (which is what I had the most trouble with), more so than all the sights, sounds, smells, and tastes of this amazing and astounding country of England. How. To. Be. Closer. To. Christ.

see ya’ll tomorrow!

–alex carroll

York

York is a great bustling city full of tourists and pilgrims traveling to York Minster. Yesterday was a day of finding ourselves in a bustling tourist attraction. Being introduced into the general population and all the shops which is akin to letting lose a kid into a candy shop but that is the real test to see if we can practice it in daily life. In these closing days we are becoming tighter and tighter as a community.

go your own way.

So I suggested to each of my pilgrims dear as we sat in Shepherds Dene on our first night in England that they each would have to find their own way on this journey – and their way would probably not be the same as mine or Cindy’s or Kristi’s or each others? Though we make this journey together, we each have our own Pilgrim’s Way. Little did I know what I was suggesting.

So here is a teaser at some of the ways that have been forged:

Trevor, Ben, Alex and Jack sitting in the North Sea below the cliffs of Whitby Abbey like Cuthbert (in whose footprints we walk). Submersing themselves three times while saying the Gloria.

Bryn and her animals – no joke she finds and prays with animals where ever we are.

Alex and his poems and his calligraphy and his ipod.

Ben and the ruins: climbing is his way. Usually finding a place where he was far enough away to wave at me but not be told to get down.

Cindy and her knitting — she sits and knits.

Jack sketches.

Christina rests.

Mackenzie writes.

Ian eats — well all the boys eat very well — but Ian in particular seems to find the sweetest of treats.

Kristi took her second level of vows to become a novice tertiary of the OHP at St Hilda’s Priory.

Trevor has found Cuthbert’s Way.

Martin draws others further into the journey through humor.

and together as a merry band of pilgrims, they carried me across part of the Pilgrim’s Way to Holy Island — literally, emotionally and Trevor, Jack and Ben: physically carried me. I suppose though that is how it’s supposed to work — Sam I think, said it best to Frodo in LOR — “Mr. Frodo, I can’t carry the ring but I can carry you.”

12 pilgrims and 12 ways. but 1 community and 1 pilgrimage.

Sally

veils of fog and Spirit

Most of the places we have traveled to are described as “thin.” That is, the veil between heaven and earth has been worn down by the number of prayers and pilgrims passing by over the centuries.

However, the thinnest place in my experience was not a destination, per se. It was simply the whole of the Yorkshire Moors that we drove through. The wild beauty left me exposed to God long before I had the chance to realize it. I drank in the increasingly-foggy landscape to the point of my spirit’s intoxication. Hills, heather, weather, the environment I had read about in stories for so long: all God.

I did what I have been struggling to do this whole pilgrimage, what is essential to pilgrimage: I rested in God’s presence. Wholly.

I steeped myself in the Spirit.

~Bryn

new communiity

The Northumbria community is a new monastic community who’s rule of life focuses on question’s rather than the answer’s. I am a person who’s faith centered on questions that people might not necessarily have the answers to, but have a take on them and i gain knowledge through the exchange of ideas. This is one of the times i have felt among people who go through life living similarly to the way i do. I had a sense of revelation when we sat around listening to members of the community go into detail about their way of life and how the two of them came to companion with the community. Anyway the pilgrimage is almost at a close and there is we have the strongest sense of community and only 3 days left! – Ian

A Case of Symmetry

A Case of Symmetry

Continuing along the journey, we finished our time at Durham Cathedral and continued on our Pilgrim’s Way to Whitby Abbey and the monastery of Rievaulx, which at one time was the largest church in England.

One of the things that struck me about the difference between all of them was a case of symmetry.

Durham Cathedral was not built at one time. It was slowly built up in sections, due to funding and labor problems and construction was delayed. The original Norman builders yielded the project to the later English, and following generations completed the original cathedral. Several events such as fires and storms necessitated reconstruction projects in the eleventh and seventeenth centuries in a variety of architectural styles.

For this reason, if you sit exactly in the center of the crossing in the nave at Durham and look in the four directions down the rows of the cathedral, no two sides of the building match. Observing this with an artist’s eye is annoying. Such a massive, beautiful building, with windows and columns soaring upwards, I just wanted it to be perfect in every way, and accepting its flaws and imperfections was a difficult thing for me to do.

On the other hand, both the abbeys at Whitby and Rievaulx were built as single buildings, by single builders, in a single process. Even though both of these grandiose monasteries are now crumbling, the remaining facades are perfectly symmetrical, complementing the levels and arches around them by design and not by accident.

This struck me as important and surprising, as well as astounding that I would find crumbling ruins more glorious than a soaring cathedral, and reminded me that God sees perfection in all things, sees symmetry in all places, even those cast aside by man, and loves them all.

-Jack Wesson

“I’m going to Hogwarts!” aka, It’s All About the Journey

Yesterday, Sally was continually reminding us to “Read your Pilgrim’s Way book.” Since we were SUPPOSED to read this book before the course of every day, it seemed odd to me that she was impressing this need so often. Then, the repetition became “Read your Pilgrim’s Way book or be left behind on our journey tomorrow.” The book gave us a vague overview of what our plans were to be, but no concrete experiences were listed for the time of day before lunch. So, I’ve got to say that we were showing great faith in both Martin and Sally by boarding Agnes, the minibus, without any idea where we might be going. We set off down the skinny country roads of the North Yorkshire Moors. Many steep hills and many many sheep later, we arrived at our destination. It was a train station!!!!!!!!Now I’ve only been on one train in my lifetime, and I would hardly count it as a particularly exciting experience. But I had this feeling this time would be different. The old fasioned steam engine sat on the tracks at the Grosmont train station. It was a blue train, and it was wonderful.  This surprise got me to thinking, maybe it really IS all about the journey, like Sally always says. We bought our tickets and we bought refreshments for the journey. We crossed the tracks and got into one of the very last cars of the train. We spit into two compartments-Sally, Bryn, Jack, Ian, Christina, Alex, and me into one; Ben, Trevor, Kristi, and Cindy into the other. We broke out our endless supply of chocolate that makes an appearance at almost every event and waited for this particular leg of our journey to commence. Suddenly, I was overcome with excitement. Wanna know why? I’ll tell ya. I realized that this particular train, this particular compartment, and the fact that we were in Englad all bore uncanny resemblances to Harry Potter and his journey on the Hogwarts Express. I started bouncing on my red velvet seat and squealing “I’m going to Hogwarts! I’m going to Hogwarts!”Jack and I hummed the opening music to the Harry Potter movies as the train began to move.  The steam began to fly past the windows, and we entered a deep, dark tunnel. The excitement started!  We joked about the treats cart coming down the thin aisle, and dementors entering the car.  We stared out the windows at the passing English countryside, stuck our heads out the windows, and did other such rambunctious things. We finally arrived at our surprise destination, Goathland. This may seem like an insignificantt train stop in the middle of the English counryside of the North Yorkshire Moors, but it was so much more than that!! It was the station the filmmakers used as Hogsmeade station in the Harry Potter movies!!! So  it was like I was going to Hogwarts after all! This completely unexcpected journey in the midst of our pilgrimage was a really special experience. I was overcome with new thoughts and musings about “the journey” we were on, and the word “journey” took on an entire new meaning.

you see it really is all about the journey.

Blessings and Prayers from all the Pilgrims, Mackenzie

Durham

Earlier this evening we traveled to Durham Cathedral a second time to complete our visit. We saw the original Lindisfarne Gospels, a book of incredible detail and calligraphy, surrounded on all sides by volumes and tomes of equal detail and intricacy. We wee given a chance to climb the tower, presenting us with an extensive view of surrounding Durham. The immediate areas around the cathedral, including the colleges, were all medieval stone buildings that perfectly matched the cathedral and the treasures held inside. After celebrating Alex’s birthday in a local pub, we returned to the cathedral for a private pilgrimage and prayer time led by one of the members of the clergy, who succeeded in explaining the meaning and relevance of the building in a different light than our historical tour yesterday. After the conclusion of that, we have reembarked on our bus and our on route to Whitby, where we will stay tonight and continue our journey tomorrow.

Jack Wesson

My Journey

This evening we went back to Durham Cathedral for a prayer pilgrimage. When we arrived they closed the Cathedral to the public and it was only our group left in the whole building. We received pamphlets and then met our guide Cannon Rosalind Brown. In keeping in mind that this was for pilgrims, we began our journey through the church from the out side. As all the pilgrims before us we followed their footsteps into the cathedral. We then were guided from the back of the church to the front (beginning of the Christian faith through the end of it). We learned a lot all the way from the baptismal font to the high altar. Now, as some of you might know…before we left on our journey we got to pick a friend. However for me this friend was assigned by Sally and my peers. It turned out that all our friends are Saints, and they all played a significant part in the creation of the church. My friend is St. Cuthbert. Before I left I researched him some but most of what i found was all biographical information. Once I arrived I began to learn the stories of his ways and the impact he had. I have followed his story from the monasteries to the Farne Islands. As I learned, he died on his island and was moved several times before finally being buried in Durham. It was his wishes to be taken to Durham and the cathedral was built in his memory. With that being said I was beginning to feel a connection with the place. We were then lead to thef many small alters behind the high altar. Finally, we reached the end of Christian faith on earth, “Death”. Behind the high alter is the shrine of St. Cuthbert. We were led into the shrine for group prayer followed by individual prayer. At that point I began to think… Why was I given Saint Cuthbert? The answer that came to me was that God is trying to teach me something, something about myself. St. Cuthbert was known to be quiet yet inspirational and I find myself the same. In the words of the Saint, I also “rather have friends not compete but co-operate to reach a common goal. I have found guidance through Cuthbert with his wisdom and knowledge. He is telling me to use my talents for the good works of God. I found myself questioning what I will find next along this pilgrimage. That brought me full circle and put everything into perspective. We are following the footsteps, the footsteps of everybody in front of us, thus I find myself starting my own “way”. I understand that I too have a mission for god just like Cuthbert. His journey finished in Durham but that is where mine has begun!

By: Trevor Hyssong