Colourful Dreamer

The first three weeks of this pilgrimage had been a time of preparation – letting go, learning to pay attention to divine calling, sacred time, place and people, and to saunter with purpose. It was now time for JFOC-IPTOC. Chris, Sue, and I put a lot of work into this time. It was as powerful for me as I hoped. I am so grateful for the time of lectio divina each morning around our principles and how that fed into the shape of those 9 days. Our time together was shaped around the three broad themes: 1. Listening to our Sources 2. Listening to the Cry of the World 3. Sharing our Good News. Thank you to Paula who reminded us that prayer is at the heart of being Franciscan, immersing us in the scriptures that we might hear the whispers of the Spirit and be shaped into a people living humility and love, offering peace. This was Francis’s way, and we are invited to follow in his footsteps. And I was struck that these earliest Franciscans were not to bear arms or to take oaths of loyalty...

Here my final reflections on that amazing time on sabbatical in 2023. They are in three parts because they were not brief. I want to start by again saying how much in need I was for this. Covid was hard on many people, and it was hard on clergy. We had to learn how use online technology, how to pivot, and how to care for people while not meeting them. There was a constant need to innovate, when really, we live for routine and predictability. And here in Aotearoa we had it pretty easy. We were much more open and without Covid than many other parts of the world. But the threat was there, the fear. And when we came back to in person church that had its own stresses, especially with vaccine passes and how to manage those. And our attendance patterns had changed, and it felt like we had taken a few steps backwards. It just felt harder. So many of us were exhausted at the end. It is sad that our church leadership paid so little attention to this. We were expected to keep on going. Along wi...

As I look back on our time in Palestine-Israel and Jordan with St Georges Colleges I am grateful. I am grateful it even happened. I had tried twice before and the Intifada and Covid-19 had prevented both courses from happening. This time Hamas nearly did. We left on Tuesday October 3, and the Hamas attack happened on Saturday October 7. It is hard to fathom the brutality of either side. I am grateful we were able to do the courses, spend time in this troubled land and to experience something of the anxiety, despair, frustration that even Palestinians in Israel feel. I am so grateful for Rodney, his care, his knowledge, his lectures at the College and his briefings as we bussed to our various pilgrimage sites, his wisdom, and his careful time keeping and leadership. He herded us cats really well, no mean task. And I am grateful for his book on pilgrimage. I listened to it as I waited for and sat on trains, and as I drove around Cornwall. it was my companion which invited me to reframe...

Day 4 was a return to pilgrimage mode which took us back to the Jordan to where we began on Day One of our Footsteps of Jesus Pilgrimage two weeks earlier. After a rough night I felt much better the next morning. Still a little fragile but well enough to eat some breakfast with no ill effects. And then we were off for our last day, heading back down to sea level, which is relatively quite high, and then on and on way down to the Jordan river.  We soon arrived at Bethany Beyond the Jordan which according to the early church, is the traditional site of John the Baptiser’s activity and of Jesus’ baptism. A hill nearby is the traditional site of where Elijah was taken into heaven on a fiery chariot, and before that where Aaron led the people of God across the Jordan into their promised land – which was not great news for the people already living there. All of which is why John chose to be here with his message of salvation through the forgiveness of sins. This holy place was an impo...

Sun City Campsite in the morning Day three began with me feeling a little off but those omelettes were still there. And then as I got ready the “a little off” became more serious, and my day of needing to know where the toilet was began. Sadly. We set off for the long drive back up to Amman. We stopped at the Hejaz Railway Train of Wadi Rum . This took us back to the Arab Revolt of WWI and Prince Faisal and Lawrence of Arabia. A significant part of their guerrilla campaign was the constant attacks of the railway line that seriously disrupted communication and Ottoman troop movements.   The refurbished locomotive and carriages are there to help tourists experience something of that story. It was very cool to see it. After a few hours we stopped for lunch at a place Michel described as offering the best food we would have in Jordan. I had pita bread and a tiny wee bit of meat. Not a lot of anything. At one stop we learnt about the Mosaic of Jordan. We first encountered this in ...