FRIENDS

I feel a little strange writing this to you.  I have spent the last 3 months on sabbatical exploring my own journey through life and at present have a clear sense of moving back from the world I have inhabited for the last 3 months to the “real” world around me.  The New World seems a bit threatening.  It is full of people I don’t know and places and practices I am not sure of.

As some of you will know, during part of my sabbatical I walked St Cuthbert’s Way in Northumberland.  It is a beautiful 64 mile walk that starts at Melrose and gently meanders across the Scottish border through the Cheviot Hills to the lovely island of Lindisfarne.  As I walked, reviewing my own journey through life, I passed through a hamlet that bore the same name (though spelt differently) as one of my previous churches.  I had the sense of re-enacting a life journey.

Some of you may be aware of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales – a group of people on pilgrimage journey and telling each other stories.  My two companions and I also did this.  There is something enchanting, almost irresistible about the sense of moving on a little further day by day, walking and talking. Pilgrimages are not just about the arrival, they are also to a big part about the journey.  They are in short an echo of your life’s journey.  Looking back, looking forward, wondering if you could have done things better, wondering what the next stage of the journey will bring, wondering if it will be well way-marked or if you will have to find your own pathway.

All these things are as true of life and faith as they are about walking.  I come here as an enthusiastic, but often clumsy pilgrim, wondering what the next stage of our communal journey will bring.  Wondering if the way will be well marked or if we will have to make our own pathway. Wondering if I have brought the right things in my “pack” or not.

That is how Karen and I see the start of our time here with you, as a continuation of a pilgrim walk, exploring life’s pathways together.  We will worship together, we will find mission together.  I hope that we will become friends as we become walking partners through our continuing faith journey. You will have stories to tell me about your journey.  I will have stories to tell you.  I know that we will both walk a better journey because of it.  Earlier in my sabbatical, I spent 2½ weeks in Jerusalem and there I found this blessing.  I offer it to you now as we begin our journey together.

Amen

 Alan Poolton