Norfolk Pilgrim

 Sometimes, doing pilgrimage professionally gets one's nose too close to the grindstone. Paying close attention to routes, history, accessibility and a host of other things it is easy to lose focus. Busy! Busy! I was in danger of losing it last month.  Then Wasingham. A welcome. Cups of tea and pieces of cake.  "Pilgrimage is all about connecting ." said Mgr. John Armitage  to delegates visiting as  part of last month's Interreg Green Pilgrimage Conference. He had it in a nutshell! Good to connect with you Fr. John! Green Pilgrimage has to be as much about connecting with landscapes and the natural world; as with making contact with to the past  on well trodden paths to pilgrim places.  For a pilgrim, making such  connections can never be ends in themselves, they are ways to connect with  deeper reality.  Describe  deeper reality as you will  - the spiritual, one's higher power, God, or gods.  Deeper reality ...

Come to the shrine “Walk towards splendour Your God walks with you” Prepare your heart and leave with trust and joy, Alone, or with your brothers, but Come. Walk in the footsteps of your ancestors Whoever you may be, In God’s house there is a place for you, You have brothers to meet, Saints to follow, Mary to listen to And the mysteries of the Church to live. If you thirst for joy, peace and justice, If you thirst for love and forgiveness, Come and drink the Living water From the fountain of salvation, You who are young and full of enthusiasm You who are ill and wretchedly suffering, You who are feeling marginalised, As well as you who are blessed With a pleasant family life, Come and be illuminated by the light of the Gospel. Go And come back reconciled   Comforted, Renewed. Proclaim the Good News to your brothers: God loves us And awaits us. “Walk towards splendour: Your God walks with you.”...

Love it or loath it, there’s more to Walsingham than the shrine! Never mind summer’s  high church high jinks! I recommend Walsingham’s wet winter woods in February. The Presentation of Christ in the Temple, some call it the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary or Candlemas falls on 2nd. Forty days after Jesus’ birth Mary, Joseph had taken their new baby on pilgrimage. At the temple in Jerusalem the infant Christ was recognised by the elderly Simeon and Anna who spoke to his parents about their child and his destiny. One misty February morning found me on pilgrimage in Walsingham.  I had parked at the Slipper Chapel,  then walked the Holy Mile to the Abbey - avoiding the traffic on the main road by following the new path along the old railway line. Paying my entrance fee, I passed into the Abbey grounds and made straight to the pack-horse bridge.  Wow! Snowdrops, Candlemas Bells some call them, bejewelled with dew, bowed their heads beneath the skeletal spind...

Remembering how they “ went with the throng, * and led them in procession to the house of God, with glad shouts and songs of thanksgiving.” (Psalm 42) A great and holy place I know! But when I’ve been there on my own, I find it too restless with pilgrims to settle to prayer. Scilla Landale introduced me to a quieter, calmer Walsingham. Here are some highlights:- 1) On a raised section of lawn in the Abbey grounds is a six inch wooden square. It marks the site of the original place of pilgrimage. I stood on the spot, took in the very English country scene and reflected about the vision that had led the Lady Richeldis to build the replica of Jesus’ and Mary’s Nazareth home. 2)Crossing the grass to where the Priory’s high altar once stood, I tried to imagine the generations of Christians, from 1061 to the present day who had come here to pay homage to the human Jesus and the mother who had nurtured him. I marvelled anew at the mystery of the inca...