Sunday was a gift of a day. I trained back into London, and had planned to stay with the sisters at St Alphege's. But they had COVID, so I booked a fairly cheap place on Hotel.com. The Euro Hotel is one of quite a few guest houses/hotels on Cartwright Gardens in a pretty central part of London. They are on a curve, and each one has a slice of the what looks like one building around one edge of the garden. I had a private bathroom, which meant my bathroom was at the other end of the passageway and I was the only one with the key. Not what a older male who has to get up during the night wants. Hei aha! But is was quaint, old and lovely. The staff were super helpful. I enjoyed my stay.
Initially I was going to spend the day with Rebekah, but she had a work trial, which was awesome for her, so I ended up with this quiet gift of an afternoon to rest, do some work on the computer, stroll about and enjoy some coffee. I did some of the things I had not finished for IPTOC. I sorted some photos. and I began to let go
One of the gifts of the train journeys was the time it gave me to do the reading required for our course in Palestine/Israel. We were asked to read "Jerusalem Bound: How to Be a Pilgrim in the Holy Land" by Rev Dr Rodney Aist, who is the course director at St. Georges. As I read this on my train journeys I wondered what he was offering me, not just for our time in Palestine/Israel, but for all my time away. I'll keep coming back to this, but some of the themes he invited me to pay attention to were divine calling, sacred time, place and people, and re-enacting the sacred stories. Part of entering sacred time is to slow down and letting go. I came to realise that my whole time away was a time of sacred pilgrimage and that I needed to approach it in this way. So part of my afternoon in London was spent going through my digital dairy and deleting all my recurring events so that I would no longer be notified of events, meetings etc happening back in Aotearoa, I needed to let go of my concern for each of those and the people involved. I was invited instead to learn to breathe and to be with the people I was with, to open myself to the places I was in and what I was experiencing, and to shake off all that called me back to the stress I had left behind, and the stress of what lay ahead. Some of that stress was real. I had a plan for one more day. I was picking up a car and going to Stonehenge, Salisbury and then Cornwall. I had no idea what I was doing in Cornwall or where I might stay. This was the most unorganized thing I had done for along time. Which is why my blogging suddenly stopped. I was too busy trying to work out what next and to book accommodation each night. I had no time or energy for blogging. The best I could do was put up some photos on Facebook.And yet Rodney invited me to let go of the stress and to embrace all that might be: to saunter with: purpose and perseverance, a sense of adventure, imagination and thoughtful deliberation. This was a time to be open and to use this time to slow down and take the moments as they were offered.
That night I met Rebekah at 7 Dials - I had never been there before - for dinner in the food hall - my shout of course. Then I headed back to my room and got ready for the next day, and for the adventure to come. What a great say to start this pilgrim
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