Am I being presumptuous to call myself a pilgrim?

I am 70 years old, with a variety of body parts that don’t work so well, although I cannot blame age for all of this.  Since I fell down a drain in Huonville, Tasmania at the age of 20, life has been a series of appointments with physios and familiarity with several hydrotherapy pools and rehabilitation centres. So, it is pretty obvious that I am not going to be walking the 791 km of the Camino de Santiago and not even the 43 miles (70 kilometers) of the more modest St. Hilda’s Way in Northumbria.

Mostly I will be travelling by car and train and staying in places where the saints and mystics of Ireland, Scotland, England, and Kentucky in the United States lived, worked, prayed, and loved.  Most of these places have Pilgrimage Trails and Prayer Walks as well as opportunities to participate in prayer and worship with those who keep the spirit of the founders and those who have gone before us.

The Irish part of my pilgrimage has been inspired by the late John O’Donohue, poet, philosopher, scholar, and native Gaelic speaker whose wonderful books Anam Cara, Four Landscapes, Eternal Echoes, and his book of blessings for every circumstance, To Bless the Space Between Us have inspired and sustained me. The DVD Celtic Pilgrimage exposed me to the breathtaking landscape of western Ireland that gave rise to the spiritual wisdom of the Celts and inspired John O’Donohue.

O’Donohue observed that “A pilgrim always travels differently, always in a pilgrimage, there is a change of mind and a change of heart.”

I will be travelling at a propitious time according to Chaucer who wrote, “When April brings its buds and showers, thanne longen folk to goon pilgrimages.”  Chaucer’s pilgrims to Canterbury were a cross section of the 14th century middle class and as they walked each one told their story.  Perhaps today they would be seen as a little more like a tour group following the man with the red umbrella (Chaucer perhaps).

As in Chaucer’s time in the late 14th century, Spring is still considered a good time to set out on a pilgrimage in Ireland and England as it is one of the driest months with “only 80 mm of rain, mostly in spring showers.”  So yes, I will be carrying an umbrella and rain jacket.

Pilgrimage is a feature of religious commitment in many faiths, including the Ganges for Hindus, Mecca for Muslims, Jerusalem for Jews and Christians and Amritsar for Sikhs.  While few Reformation Christians took pilgrimages after the 16th century, Roman Catholics continued the practice, adding new destinations including Lourdes in 1864 and Fatima in 1917.

Pilgrimages have increased in popularity with 350,000 people a year walking or cycling the Caminos to Santiago.  In Britain there has been a revival in the twentieth century pilgrims with the restoration of Iona in Scotland and renewed interest in places like Walsingham, Canterbury, and the Holy Island of Lindisfarne. In 2014 the British Pilgrimage Trust was founded to support people setting out to a destination or travelling between places with a a ‘journey intention’ declared only to themselves.  Britain’s Pilgrim Places published in 2021 describes 19 pilgrimage routes in England, 6 in Wales and 9 in Scotland. I plan to visit sites on the Pilgrims Ways to Canterbury, Holy Island, Hartlepool to Durham and Whitby (Saints Hild and Cuthbert), and Pilgrimage routes the Forth to Farne Way and part of Saint Columba’s way from Iona to Oban.

Simon Jenkins [1] in the introduction to this guidebook declares himself non-religious, however he writes “pilgrimage thus mutates into a metaphor for life” and he writes that he doesn’t care if his friends accuse him of slipping into religious faith. “For me,” he writes, “pilgrimage is an act of homage to history, it is the past bringing its balm, its memories of healing and joy to those who need it.  That is why the ancient pilgrimage routes are so precious, why every field, tree, stream, and stile convey meaning.”

For me, it is this and more as I stand in the places that those who built the Christian Church in these small far-flung island nations – the Irish, Scottish and British (Anglo-Saxons)- and I remember their stories and give thanks for their gifts and legacies which enrich our lives today. It is not only the past that can bring healing and joy but these present times and our ability to be fully present.

[1]  Mayhew-Smith and Hayward, Britain’s Pilgrim Places, the British Pilgrimage Trust, 2021