Journeys: An Introduction

The Reverend Canon Tim Jones, Director of Ministry

I once met some real-life Vikings* knitting socks by using long chunky needles held in place by their bushy beards. They were giving me a lift to Germany from a pilgrimage to the Taizé monastic commune in Burgundy, France, in a converted “folk-bus” (think Cliff Richard in Summer Holiday). The time in Taizé was life-changing for 21-year-old me, and that certainly includes the journey. We took a coach there and hitched the ride with the Vikings* to get home. The people we met, the conversations, the prayers, the adventures, the singing, the laughter, the crises – and the knitting – all swirled together into a powerful faith experience.

A pilgrimage, a journey made in faith, is an age-old invitation to walk more closely with God. Not all such physical journeys are gladly chosen; I remember other, urgent journeys made across the country at the news of dangerously ill loved ones. Somehow, the very act of travelling became part of the eventual grieving, and part of the honouring of their life and their love. It was also a part of offering it all to God’s mercy and care.

Our purposeful journeys in life, our very acts of moving, weave together physical reality, metaphor, and our growth into spiritual and emotional maturity. We should savour those journeys, even (perhaps especially) the short ones. Our

Sunday journeys to church and back: those are pilgrimages too, part of our praise, part of our encounter with Christ. One of the reasons for going to church is to be there for each other, to support each other in faith, and indeed to support each other in life.

To be a Christian is to be on a journey, often physical but always spiritual, always personal, and very frequently in the company of others who we are called by God to encounter on the way. Even Vikings*

*They might not have been actual Vikings. But they were definitely Danish, with fierce beards, and they knew how to wield wooden knitting needles with terrifying zeal.