“My mind is free to cartwheel through the sky!”

What I love about pilgrimage is its simplicity. On any particular day there is no question about what I should do or even what I should wear. Come rain or shine I will walk, to the next place on the map, wearing the least dirty of the two sets of clothing I have with me.

In a world where so many people experience multiple overwhelm, this can be welcome relief. The mental energy released from the need to make multiple decisions can be invested towards relationship with God, with self and with the environment.

And with my physical body occupied in perpetual motion, my mind is free to cartwheel through the sky!

I love to travel alone. However, travelling in company provides a different but very enriching experience. One of the joys of recent years has been the creation of a group pilgrimage which usually takes place each Easter week.

This had very small beginnings. We struggled to get up to five people for the first one in 2019, two of whom were the leaders. But last Easter eleven pilgrims made our way through the South Shropshire hills from Monday to Saturday, staying at Methodist Churches overnight.

When people come along, they tend to come back the next year!

We are fortunate in this part of the world to have some glorious countryside to travel through. But we have learned that it is not the number of miles we have walked nor the physical routes we have chosen that make the pilgrimage the rich experience that it is.

Our joint commitment is to become an “occasional community”, sharing a common way of life along the way. This is expressed through a daily rhythm of prayer, the preparation of meals and the bedding down together in the same building overnight.

All this requires a care for each person and consideration of our different needs. I think it is from this wellspring that the “holy moments” have come, just as much as those arising when we stand together at the top of a hill up which we have just toiled, with the skylark singing overhead.