What makes a journey a pilgrimage?

Travel may broaden the mind, but pilgrimage can nourish a soul.

Graeme Holdsworth

Graeme is a vicar of Marsden and Slaithwaite in West Yorkshire. He also cycles and juggles.

A country lane runs down a gentle hill between green and yellow fields under a cloud dappled sky.

The fields of Hertfordshire

Graeme Holdsworth.

On the recent anniversary of Chaucer’s pilgrims setting off to Canterbury, the British Pilgrimage Trust held a symposium on apocalyptic pilgrimage and spiritual tourism, in a London church – St James Clerkenwell. Nick Jones, the Editor of Seen & Unseen knows of my predilection for a spiritual aspect to travel, and recommended I go along. The only problem with his recommendation was that I live in West Yorkshire, and London seemed like an expensive journey for an evening sat quietly on church pews.

My nearest church is St James in Slaithwaite, and as St James is the patron saint of pilgrimages, it seemed obvious to turn the journey into a pilgrimage. The shortest walking distance is 185 miles and would take me a month to walk. Kosuke Koyama wrote that the speed of love is three miles an hour, the speed God walks. However, God has an eternity to travel, and I had to be back to lead Holy Communion the following Sunday. Cycling (the cheapest, easiest, and finest form of travel) would take me two days, if I took it easy and stayed in a hotel halfway.

I love the isolation of these high places, the wilderness-ness; it is a place for crying out, and place where only God is listening.

Not every journey is a pilgrimage. Sometimes people are just travelling. What would make this a pilgrimage rather than simply a long bicycle ride? I believe it is the intention of the heart that makes the difference - what are pilgrims hoping to achieve? Travel tends to broaden the mind, but a pilgrimage is something that might nourish a soul. There is no suggestion that every pilgrimage is religious, but when people undertake pilgrimages they are making a statement that they’re looking for something beyond themselves. For those who are religious, they’ve made space to meet God in the full knowledge that they may be disappointed. Dr Paula Gooder wrote that Christian faith sometimes focusses rather heavily on the state of a person’s soul, neglecting the state of their body. I hoped to enjoy some beautiful cycling, to re-engage with physical-prayer, and to worship God with my heart, soul, mind and strength in a whole body way. Racing cyclist Jens Voigt famously said, “Shut up legs” when the lactic acid began to burn, but what if my legs are speaking a non-verbal language understood by their creator God? Then let them shout: let the hydrolysis of adenosine triphosphate be my body praying ceaselessly, without words.

The beginning of my pilgrimage took me south and east along the edge of the Peak District. In my planning I had relied on cycling heat-maps to find the roads cyclists preferred. As I climbed a steep hill, I remembered that cyclists are a stupid bunch who often go out and find the hardest roads to cycle. I paused for breath at the top of the climb from High Bradfield; where the Agden, Dale Dike, and Strines reservoirs were stacked up into the distance, and the call of peewits pierced through the noise of the wind. I love the isolation of these high places, the wilderness-ness; it is a place for crying out, and place where only God is listening.

Bolsover castle was the last serious climb of the day, and from this point on the landscape became a lot gentler. Along the ridge after Bolsover, skirting around the west of Mansfield, I noticed the call of Skylarks, and that the fields had changed from drystone walled moorland to green and yellow crops, surrounded by hedgerows. Houses now had thatched roofs rather than the slate tiles of West Yorkshire. I also began to notice churches: Cottage-core villages with pretty gardens and pubs-on-the-green, their church buildings that seem well-kept, giving rural communities a sense of identity. It was around 7pm when I reached a Peterborough hotel.

Pilgrimages are often built around the destination, but I’ve found a real joy in the interim moment; the time between setting off and arriving.

Getting up in the morning after a long day of physical exercise is not easy. Although this day would bring an end to my mini-pilgrimage, I was looking forward to the symposium and meeting other pilgrims. Evensong at St Paul’s Cathedral was to begin at 5pm, and needed an early start to make sure I would arrive in time.

I passed a roadside marker with the distances to Huntingdon and London painted black on a white stone. The Milestone Society’ seeks to preserve these way markers which have a history stretching back to Roman times. I felt a sense of historical connection to those who would have travelled before me.

There was next to no traffic and I was alone with my thoughts and the songs I sing to myself when I’m happy. One of the lovely things about cycling is the activity itself: we’re doing the thing we want to do, and when we’ve finished we will no longer be doing the thing we want to do. Pilgrimages are often built around the destination, but I’ve found a real joy in the interim moment; the time between setting off and arriving.

Hopes and fears for the year

Graeme Holdsworth

Standing on the cold threshold of a new year, Graeme Holdsworth recalls past audacity and whether his aspirations are too timid.

01 January 2024

3 min read

The traffic was increasing as I closed in on London, and I noticed another change in the housing. Here in the home counties the houses were getting a lot larger, further back from the road, and protected by gates and security systems. The sense of community that came from closely packed thatched cottages around an ancient church building was disappearing. Then suddenly there was an exponential shift in the cycling experience as I entered Enfield: cars, scooters, cyclists, motorbikes. The sound, and visual intensity of city living humanity swamped my senses.

I’m glad I didn’t just catch a train to London. I felt that I’d remembered the diversity of English countryside, the freedom of long-distance cycling, and made connections with like-minded pilgrims. I also refreshed my spiritual practice of physical prayer, and time alone with God in the wilderness.

It was about 2:30pm when I checked into my hotel near Kings Cross, unpacked the clothes I’d brought with me and freshened up before taking a walk south to the Thames embankment. After a pie and pint in a London boozer, on the banks of the River Thames, I walked to St Paul’s Cathedral for Evensong, then joined a walking-pilgrimage back to St James in Clerkenwell. St James Slaithwaite to St James Clerkenwell completed, arriving in time for The British Pilgrimage Trust’s symposium of talks and singing. Among the wonderful speakers, it was a delight to hear historian Tom Holland as he spoke to the apocalyptic call: to be a pilgrim.

He spoke about Chaucer, pandemics, black death, and the community aspect of pilgrimages. He joked that academic historians tend to be squeamish about attributing too much credit to religious or spiritual experiences as driving forces behind historical events. However, spiritual and religious drivers are significant: in 1033 there was a massive pilgrimage from all over Europe to the holy land, which came with an apocalyptic anxiety as 1,000 years had passed since the death and resurrection of Jesus. I reflected that contemporary anxiety of apocalypse is less focussed on the return of Christ and more on trigger happy world leaders in Russia, Israel and Iran…but I wonder if there will be a similar Christian pilgrimage in 2033.

Read a full account of Graeme’s pilgrimage ride on his blog.

Find out more about the British Pilgrimage Trust’s routes and resources.

Article

Change

Psychology

27 August 2024

5 min read

Recovery came softly

A vision of grace amid an eating disorder.

From Mockingbird

Mockingbird connects the Christian faith with the realities of everyday life.

Under a tree, backlit by a sun set, two people sit in chairs outside and talk.

Harli Marten on Unsplash.

This article, by Lindsay Holifield, first appeared in Mockingbird. Published by kind permission.

I turned sixteen years old in a lavender-walled bedroom on the eating disorder unit at Texas Children’s Hospital. Surrounded by eagle-eyed nurses watching my every move and whirring machines keeping me alive, I quietly transitioned to Sweet Sixteen. The unit’s charge nurse was a gruff woman named Lupe, and despite her job, she did not particularly like children. But it was my birthday, and in an uncharacteristic act of kindness, Lupe offered me a slice of cake. She must have briefly forgotten her surroundings, because I was not a normal teenager. I was a patient on a pediatric eating disorder unit, and I broke down sobbing at the mere thought of such a high-calorie food entering my body.

This was my first birthday in a clinical treatment facility for anorexia, but it would not be the last. After receiving the initial diagnosis of anorexia nervosa as a teenager, the doctor’s pronouncement sounding like a death-knell at the time, I would admit to twenty treatment facilities on separate occasions across a period of fourteen years.

The treatment staff began to greet me knowingly when I would re-admit after only a few months out, as though I was an old friend returning from vacation. “Welcome back, Lindsay,” they would say, as they took my luggage and inserted yet another nasogastric feeding tube. Over time, I began to be labeled “chronic,” and I internalized a belief that I was one of the sufferers who was fated to live the rest of my life under the oppressive weight of this struggle.

I would have to try harder. I would have to pull myself up by my bootstraps and willpower my way into recovery. After each attempt under this approach, I would fall flat on my face.

It seemed that no matter how much motivation I mustered up, this internal drive to self-destruct would not leave me alone. I desperately wanted to wake up each day without having to submit afresh to the hellish existence of self-starvation and running till my lungs felt on the verge of collapse. But I felt chained to this destructive cycle deep into my bones, despite my best intentions.

I was often berated by various treatment providers for not having enough motivation. I didn’t necessarily want to die, but I could not find the strength within me to fight off the voice in my brain that demanded self-destruction. Doctors and mental health clinicians made it clear that if I really wanted to get better, I would have to try harder. I would have to pull myself up by my bootstraps and willpower my way into recovery. After each attempt under this approach, I would fall flat on my face. The despair of my situation began to swallow me whole: there was no way out, because I could not yell at myself enough to make myself well.

Because of the lavish softness I was shown, I began to approach myself with greater softness.

I was twenty-six years old, and I was sitting in a green folding chair in the summer on a farm in Nashville, Tennessee. The woman in the folding chair across from me is decidedly in support of my recovery, but she isn’t yelling at me or giving me a stern lecture. Instead, she is explaining with great care and tenderness how much sense my struggles make in light of my previous life experiences. “Perhaps,” she says gently, “your brain was trying to survive great pain. Perhaps you were simply trying to make the ache go away the best way you knew how.” Her compassionate words break something open within me, and I start weep like a small child. No one has ever approached me with compassion like this; they are all afraid being too soft will simply enable me to further harm my body. But they are wrong. It is precisely this compassion and sense of being witnessed that softens my armored heart.

Recovery did not come overnight, but I can unhesitatingly say that the compassion of a woman on that farm in Nashville is what radically changed the trajectory of my life. Because of the lavish softness I was shown, I began to approach myself with greater softness. The voice of condemnation quieted, and I slowly turned from self-destruction to life.

Do you not hear the gospel ringing out here? My story of recovery is simply a zoomed in image of the grander story, the beautiful truth that makes up the fabric of our existence. Admitting powerlessness to destructive forces of sin and death is important, but the condemnation of the law will not save us. It is the extravagant, one-way grace of God that resurrects the dead.

I have heard similar fears in faith communities that I continually hear in my recovery communities: if we are too extravagant with compassion, we are enabling sin and destructive behaviors. But I am a living testament that compassion is what softens hearts of stone, armored up by self-protection and attempting to earn love through behavioral perfection. I would have died many times over save for the compassion that chased me down and embraced me, and being held in such tender kindness was the only thing that could have changed my fate. I believe this for mental health, yes, but more importantly, I believe this for the rescue of all of humanity. The grace of God is the sole agent of resurrection and change.

To the surprise of those who cling tightly to rigid, white-knuckling versions of recovery, my behavioral change occurred only after I was met with a grace without strings attached. This should not be surprising to Christians, however. Here again, the gospel glaring back at us, that repentance is a response to the kindness of God. This is the God who loved us while we were dead in our sins, while we were powerless to the forces of the world, the flesh, and the devil. Against our behavior-driven moral sensibilities, God offers us grace that is a free gift, compassion in its fullest expression, and it is the only thing that will bring renewal and healing to the inhabitants of this desperately aching world: minds, hearts, and bodies included.