by Catherine Bridgewood
It’s around day 3 of the pilgrimage and we’ve stopped after a very rainy, bleak stretch of walking across The Fens. We settle into the rhythm of bags off and snacks out, the sharing of many different versions of Percy Pig sweets begins – I trade a Percy Piglet for a FizzyTtail which feels like a pretty good deal to me. Being a few days into this experience I’m beginning to reflect on what it means to me, especially why I have such a profound feeling of home in being here.
During Holy Week this year I participated in the Pilgrim Cross walking pilgrimage to Walsingham. Pilgrim Cross is made up of 13 legs all journeying different lengths and routes to end up in Walsingham on Good Friday. I was part of Northern Leg, where we walked from Keyworth just south of Nottingham, beginning on the Saturday before Palm Sunday. We slept on church hall floors along the way. Sore feet and tired legs meant this was certainly not an experience of comfort, but I wouldn’t have wanted to change that.
I didn’t enter the week feeling joyful. After a winter of feeling generally low, alongside the loss of my wonderful Godfather, Damien, meant I did not enter the pilgrimage with a joy-filled energy that I would ordinarily like to take into meeting a new group of people. I had some apprehension about how I would cope with the intensity of the time together with so many new people. Aware of my tendency to present a persona of ‘happy vibes’ – but recognising the energy that this takes, I settled on a ‘go with the flow’ mentality.
I left the week with a profound sense of home. I had experienced moments of great joy but also held in tension with deep sadness. In a sense, this demonstrated to me a greater understanding of what the cross calls us to reflect upon during Holy Week and beyond. The pain and sorrow of death held in tension with the joy and hope of the resurrection. Both ever present in our lives.
A good friend asked me not long after my return what I want to take into ‘normal’ life from my experience in Holy Week. I’m not sure I’ve totally figured it out, but I wonder if it has something to do with a sense of home and a learning that seeking joy is not the ultimate aim. Joy and pain can coexist in a meaningful sense and there is beauty in that.
It may be cross-generational, but I certainly feel a sense among my peers that there is a pressure to strive for ultimate happiness. Constantly needing to be working towards the next career step or big life event. I have spent much of my 20s considering myself in a state of limbo, rather than acknowledging the wonderfulness of the pilgrimage. So perhaps that is what pilgrimage teaches us so clearly – not the kind marked by walking boots and waterproofs, the lifelong one we seek to travel in faith. That we do not have to wait until life feels joyful, or tidy, or certain, to find meaning and belonging. That community can hold us when we have no energy left to hold ourselves. That even the bleakest stretches of The Fens have their own quiet beauty. This Jubilee year ‘Pilgrims of Hope’ calls us to seek to be agents of hope in the midst of a world of brokenness. My experience of pilgrimage this Holy Week challenged me to find the sacred in the ordinary, to be vulnerable with strangers who soon became friends and ultimately to recognise that even when the road is rainy, joy and hope are still with us – carried, often quietly, in each other.
Northern Pilgrim 