Pilgrims or Saunterers?

I gave this as a talk for a Zoom service called The Big Sing on Friday 24th July 2020 organised by a friend, Jayne.

On 22nd July 2016 I went on an enjoyable 12 mile walk with a friend called Jayne. It was part of the Imber Perimeter Walk on Salisbury Plain. Jayne was about to celebrate a significant birthday and she'd set herself a challenge of walking the whole Imber Walk by her birthday. She invited friends to join in for various sections. Originally my wife was going to take part too but Unfortunately she couldn’t get the day off work. So Jayne and I spent an enjoyable afternoon tramping along chatting about all manner of things. Some silly, some serious. Some involving railways.

It proved to be the last significant walk I ever did, as in early September 2016 my life changed when I was suddenly taken ill. I don’t need to tell the whole history. But the illness left me with a significant level of paralysis in my right leg. My long-distance walking days are over.

I spent 3 months in hospital and over a year recuperating.

During this time of recuperation, I remember being visited by a fellow minister. We had a chat as you do and then out of the blue, he said to me “So David. How are things between you and God?”

The question threw me at first. But I was able to answer it easily and truthfully “Things between me and God are fine.” They were and they are.

I think my minister friend expected to me to be angry at God for what had happened. But anger at God is not something I ever experienced. In fact, more than anything during my illness I came to walk closer to God than ever before. And in part that was because God sent people to accompany me on that dark time in my life. Fellow pilgrims on the journey. People to shine the Christ light. People to bring hope.

There was Michael the West Indian health care assistant who would come into my room singing hymns such as “Shine Jesus shine” even if he didn’t know at first, I was a Christian. There was Joe a friend and former colleague who called in at 7pm on my birthday on his way back to London from a walking weekend in the Brecon Beacons. There was my good friend Helen who called in several times and prayed with me, and on one occasion gave me a holding cross “because I felt you needed this David” (She was right.) There was my friend Lenny who would leave work on a Friday afternoon in Swindon, battle with the traffic to get to see me in Bristol (on one occasion turning up as I was being wheeled out of my room for yet another CT scan.) And of course, there was the aforementioned Jayne who was such a friend to us both and who visited many times and always made me laugh but also had wise words.

As I say, I feel sure that God sent these people (and others) to accompany me and my family during our time of need. To be pilgrims with me on my journey.
One of the stories of Jesus in the Bible takes place on a road between Jerusalem and a village of Emmaus a few miles outside the city. The story has two of Jesus disciples trudging along the road on the first Easter Sunday evening. The two disciples are downcast because they have seen a story end badly a couple of days ago. They had seen Jesus die on a cross and be laid in a grave.

They are joined by a stranger. The stranger is in fact Jesus, but they do not recognise him. The stranger encourages them to talk and they tell him all that has happened. Having heard their story Jesus takes it up from where they left off. And he shows them how his death, far from being the end of the story was only the end of a chapter and a whole new story has now started with his resurrection. A whole new story of eternal life. Of hope.

Many of us walk along our own Emmaus road from time to time, dejected, downcast, rejected. But during those times we are not alone. Jesus is with us. We might not recognise him, but he is there. Often, he is there through the presence of someone else. Someone we might know well; someone who might come as a surprise to us. Jesus is there through them.

And when we walk alongside someone who is glad of our company or in need of our company, we are being Jesus to them.

The photo at the top of this blog is of my wife and our friend Jayne on another occasion walking along chatting. I love this photo.

If the thought of being on a pilgrimage, or being a pilgrim, is not something you can relate to, I want to leave you with a thought written by a man called John Muir. A Scottish born American conservationist who was responsible for founding the Yosemite National Park in California. Mr Muir felt that people should spend time sauntering through the majestic beauty of Yosemite not hiking. But I think you could substitute Pilgrimage as sometimes we can see Pilgrimage as an objective in itself when it's not. I feel it is about being alongside someone.

"Hiking - I don't like either the word or the thing. People ought to saunter in the mountains - not hike! Do you know the origin of that word 'saunter?' It's a beautiful word. Way back in the Middle Ages people used to go on pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and when people in the villages through which they passed asked where they were going, they would reply in French, "A la sainte terre,' which means 'To the Holy Land.' And so, they became known as sainte-terre-ers or saunterers. Now these mountains are our Holy Land, and we ought to saunter through them reverently, not 'hike' through them."

We are saunterers on a journey
and companions on the road;
we are here to help each other
walk the mile and bear the load.