I am currently sitting on a coach as we return from The Taizé Community. Our Bishop, +Smitha has led us on pilgrimage taking young people for a glimpse of the community’s life and worship. For a week, they have met together with thousands of young people from all round the globe. We have had a fantastic time and we hope that it is going to happen each year.
When making a pilgrimage, I am always surprised by the things that are discovered on the periphery. Here in the coach we have formed a community of disparate people who have become united in purpose and service of one another through shared experience. Learning to properly see each other and tend to each other’s need. Hearing “the butter fairy has arrived” each morning when one pilgrim hands the butter he doesn’t use to the pilgrim who doesn’t have enough for her bread roll.
In an international gathering like Taizé, the surprisingly joyous things you take away are the people you have shared your differences with each day. For an hour each night, I was part of a washing up team doing the giant pans that catering en masse requires. Our group consisted mainly of Austrians and Portuguese people as well as others. We all found our place in the team and laughed and joked and sang and danced our way around the kitchen each evening before heading to church. We bonded as we discussed times when people had moved to the UK for university. We shared our different experiences of living in our own country, and worshipping in churches in different countries. I had roads in Austria recommended for Ruth and I to explore on future riding tours. We all agreed that priests in Austria and Portugal don’t look like me. And we became friends. Most importantly, we stacked the drying rack better than the lunch time washing up team 😁
As I type this I realise that the point I thought I was going to make is the least important. I thought I was writing a post about the things we find on the road that are unexpected or were not planned. I thought I was writing about how a small group of us visited Cluny Abbey where we saw the relics and climbed the Tour de Fromage*. And I thought I was writing a blog post to share some pictures and talk about seeing what other things are on the road that you may miss if you are singularly focussed. What I now realise I am writing about is making sure you take time to discover *who else is on the road*. Perhaps you too can stumble across a table to sit with fellow pilgrims and share your spiritual journeys together over escargot and Bœuf Bourguignon?
One day you too may decide to take a pilgrimage. I highly recommend taking time to go looking for yourself on a journey of spiritual exploration as you go to a holy place. Whilst doing that I suggest that on that road you take the time to look around you and discover the people walking alongside you. Perhaps you will take a little piece of them home within you. And in doing this, it is quite possible that you may actually find yourself.
*no fromage. Only tour.