Homecoming

It wasn’t that I was being stubbornly independent that I insisted on walking home … well, it might have been partly that. On returning from the Diocesan Pilgrimage to Taize, I was offered various lifts, but I wanted to walk. Yes, I had luggage, but not so much that I couldn’t manage on my own. However on the way home, I realised why I was so definite about walking. Most of the route was one I walk every day, and it was an important part of the end of the pilgrimage. It was part of my homecoming that I walked, part of the finishing of the pilgrimage and saying that I was now home.

Going away can give us different viewpoints on our life, can encourage and deepen our relationship with God, particularly if we have gone with that aim in mind. Pilgrimages and retreats are both ways to do this. Our yearly Community trip to Whitby includes our annual retreat, and the opportunity to spend time in silence together, praying and worshipping in a different setting, is always a precious time. The outstanding scenery and the nearby sea also contribute much. The ending of these times is important in ensuring that this isn’t just a time apart, but a time that incorporates itself into our daily lives, that changes and deepens our faith.

I am currently writing this while staying with Sr Pamela on the Isle of Mull; this trip was more to do with seeing Sr Pamela, than a pilgrimage as such, but given the length of the journey, it does have some overtones of that, especially as a trip to Iona is planned. What struck me yesterday, when we were exploring the area around where Sr Pamela lives, is how much the countryside can contribute to our faith in the God who created both it and us. Getting away from built up areas, and allowing the cobwebs that have built up in our daily lives to be blown away, can help us see not only our lives but our God afresh.

But it always requires a homecoming. However spectacular the Isle of Mull is, my life is not here but in Norfolk; however much I’ve appreciated spending time with Sr Pamela, I live in Norwich, not Scotland. I can allow the experience to fade away and become simply that: an experience. Or I can find ways to take this time with me onwards into life in Norwich. To pray to the God who creates not just the Isle of Mull, but also both you and me. To allow the beauty of this place not only to change how I see God, but also how I see myself and those I meet. How I go home is a vital part of having been away. Am I going to only remember the time and the places we visited, or will I also take the deeper lessons of faith into my daily life? How each of us does that will differ, and there will be a time when this is no longer conscious but has simply become part of our life.

Homecoming has more implications than this, though. In a sense, we are pilgrims on earth, and our true home is in God. We are journeying home throughout our life, and a journey home from a retreat or a pilgrimage can be something that reminds is of this; indeed, it could bring us to a clearer realisation of where we are truly at home. That is not to say that we are not resident on earth, or that we’re can ignore the needs and demands of earth, because it is part of God’s creation, and we are called to care for it. One day there will be a new heaven and a new earth, and we will be at home there. Until then, we are always on a pilgrimage of faith, a journey of exploration of our living and wonderful God, and of the earth our God created. Can we use our journeys home as a reminder and a prayer? A reminder of where our true home lies, and a prayer that God will always call us further in, deepening our commitment as disciples, whatever that might look like in our own lives.

The stubborn independence that may have contributed to my walk home was both right and wrong. We are all called as ourselves, and can only come before God as ourselves, not as someone else. But we are also all called together; our faith is not an individualistic one, but communal. God calls us home, but we are called home together, as pilgrims not as pilgrim. God calls us home, and our home is love, as God is love. We can only follow a God of love by becoming disciples in love. There will be many times when we feel very far from that; many times when we may feel that God is far from that. We are not called to judge but to follow faith-fully, and in that faithful following will we find our true home.