Returning Home . . .

The pilgrimage is complete in the return.

Completion is not closure, in the words of John O’Donohue * who lived and died prematurely in this part of the world: “Closure — the word is unfortunate, it is not faithful to the open-ended rhythm of experience. Creatures made of clay with porous skin and porous minds are quite incapable of the hermetic sealing that the strategy of “closure” seems to imply. The word “completion” is a truer word.”

In the days leading up to the pilgrimage, I copied those words from a book I received as a gift from a dear friend. The message has been tucked into my writing book that now holds the words, thoughts, feelings, moments, and memories of the past six weeks. Two days before my departure, I wrote the following: “Already, I know, this will be my first, but not the last pilgrimage that I will lead”. On my final morning in Norwich, I slipped quietly into St. Julian’s Church and left a prayer to be read in the anchorage in my absence: “Please pray for my return”. The double-entendre was intentional. Returning has had its own significance before I ever departed. One of my “Pilgrim Sisters”, an artist, gave each of us a hand -painted card with one of the five words that make up a true pilgrimage: Call; Departure; Arrival; Labyrinth; Return. She gave me the “Return” card which I also carried with me. “A bona fide pilgrimage may mean becoming more conscious about yourself and the world . . . But it needs to bring about a change of mind, a shift in the soul. No change, no pilgrimage”, said O’Donohue.

Change is inevitable and that moment of conscious change began for me on the threshold the day before the departure at my granddaughter’s college graduation. I saw in this lovely young woman in cap and gown the baby I had held in my arms. “The future is here. Now.” That thought has pervaded every step and day of the past six weeks from Norwich to Canterbury to London to Edinburgh to Oxford from where I write on the penultimate day of this pilgrimage. As the return comes closer, I know from past experience that anything can happen on the way home.

Five years ago, on my return from a solo pilgrimage to Julian of Norwich’s anchorage, the man seated beside me on the eight-hour flight told me he was returning home from his twenty-four year old grandson’s funeral: “He was climbing the Matterhorn and fell”. I can still hear those words in that unexpected and unanticipated defining moment of that return. I can imagine his loss now that my own granddaughter is that same age. Alive and well.

This time in my conscious expectation of the return, I am anticipating something is already waiting for me along the way. I’ll let you know what happens . . .

The video was taken from the train going from England to Scotland.

*www.johnodonohue.com