Tag: Ian Mobsby

pilgrimage, Prayer

Still walking with Werburgh….and the Risen Christ

Dr. Jennifer Fox Eades

This post is written a week after my last walk….a long walk to Marple and back. And perhaps it was too long? It certainly left me with bruised toes and a need to work out how to better protect my feet on a 20 mile hike. And perhaps it left me with a bruised ego too…..hence the time lag between walking and reflection. Somehow I thought I could do this without struggle, without pain.

But the day AFTER my overly long walk, I was planning ANOTHER pilgrimage, this time with Year 6 at St John’s Primary School, Bollington. The children want to walk a Bollington pilgrimage as part of saying goodbye and marking the end of their time at primary school. And a wise and articulate 11 year old girl said, ‘It can be hard work. Pilgrimages ought to be hard’.

And of course, she is right. Pilgrimages ARE meant to be a struggle, are meant to tax us, physically, mentally, spiritually. Because it’s when we are challenged that we grow.

And my walking is being done in the season of Easter. As I explained to children at St John’s and Bollington Cross this week, Easter is a LONG festival, it lasts 7 Sundays, ending on the feast of Pentecost on 24th May this year. And I have been walking it with Werburgh and, a little unexpectedly for me, with a new sense of the presence of the Risen Christ.

Ian Mobsby, in his reflection for the Sixth Sunday of Easter speaks of letting go as a contemplative practice….letting go of certainty, letting go of needing to have clear answers, letting go even of our images of God. https://postsecularcontemplative.substack.com/p/easter-week-6-10-16th-may-reflection?r=50siwv&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true

I agree. That has been my experience. About 20 years ago, after being profoundly wounded by people in the church, I felt called to let go of everything I believed about God. And it hurt. And I felt a sense of loss, of bereavement. I mourned the faith I had let go of.

More recently I found myself unexpectedly back in church and even on the path to ordination. Yet I also found myself letting go of Jesus. It was not that I stopped believing in the Trinity, the kind divine community at the heart of Christianity but the White Jesus, the Colonial Jesus, the dominating, powerful macho Jesus proclaimed in a riot at the Whitehouse and used to wound and hurt my black and disabled and LGBTQI+ friends….I felt called to let go of him. Not really knowing if another Jesus would turn up…..

And again, I felt lonely. Again, it hurt. Again I mourned the relationship I had let go. But I just wasn’t sure who Jesus was anymore. It was hard, listening to friends in chapel singing about this Jesus I didn’t think I recognized anymore. Intellectually I knew Jesus hadn’t gone anywhere but he felt …..absent.

And then, again unexpectedly, this Easter, the Risen Christ has been with me once more, walking the canal paths, sitting with me in Ian’s beautiful meditations, somehow there once more. And I feel a profound comfort and a sense of being healed, of being held.

The spiritual life IS a pilgrimage. And I know I, at least, need to let go of the idea that this pilgrimage is, or ought to be easy. Ought not to hurt. Because sometimes we get bruised toes. But always, always…..felt or not…….the Risen Christ is with us. Amen.

pilgrimage, Prayer, Spirituality

Walking with Werburgh 5: A crowded towpath or You’ll never walk alone

Dr. Jennifer Fox Eades

In these post Easter weeks, I am continuing to walk whenever I can in preparation for my June pilgrimage. And this morning, on the way to church along the Macclesfield Canal, I was reflecting on two things. Firstly, I had been reading Ian Mobsby’s blog on the text for this Sunday, the 1st after Easter. It’s John:19-31, where Jesus appears in a locked upper room, first to most of his disciples, but NOT Thomas and then a week later, to Thomas as well.

And Ian notes that the Risen Christ comes not into strength or victory, but into fear, into confusion and uncertainty, into anxiety, into the locked room of our ordinary and often muddled lives. The Risen Christ, Ian writes, ‘moves into the very heart of what they and we are experiencing’. You can read Ian’s blog, Contemplative Christian in a PostSecular Culture here https://postsecularcontemplative.substack.com/p/breathing-peace-through-locked-doors

And what I was noticing, as I walked along, was that I tend to think I OUGHT NOT to feel that anxiety in my chest or that grumbling irritation in my gut or that sudden inexplicable sadness that wells up unexpectedly. I tend to think I should rid myself of such feelings – be somehow more serene, more together, a more calm and confident version of myself. Surely, at my advanced age, and after SO much therapy and SO much self-work, I’m somehow past these emotional squalls?

But today, in the light of Ian’s words, I wondered how it would be if instead of trying to rid myself of that tight ball of anger/fear/sadness in my chest – and often I find it’s all three rolled into one – I saw that as the very place, the very room where the Risen Christ arrives, unannounced and says ‘Peace be with you’. I wondered how it would be if I effectively welcomed my emotions as the place where Christ dwells?

And as I mused on that this morning I noticed that the anger/fear/sadness didn’t go away, precisely. But I began to experience them a little differently, to be curious about their source and their potential, to wonder about Christ in the middle of them, not scolding me for feeling them, but breathing on them and me and blessing us, in all our muddle and confusion.

And my second thought was that, just as the Risen Christ comes and stands in the locked rooms of our lives and travels ahead of us into Galilee, so he walks besides us all the time. As do a lot of other people……

Last Tuesday I did a long walk in company, for a change. Part of my family and I walked through Rainow and along Kerridge to White Nancy and breakfast at Waterside Cafe before heading home along the canal. Now, as an introvert, while I LOVE walking with other people, I actually find it easier walking alone – I can go at my own pace, stop when I please. And certainly, most of my rambles and my planned pilgrimage will be solitary.

But of course, my walk isn’t solitary at all – or at least, a Christian worldview asserts that my walk is not solitary. And increasingly, that is my faith, that is my experience. I am ALWAYS walking in company.

This morning, and every morning, the Risen Christ is both before and beside me.

And I consciously place myself, through my prayers, in the company of the ‘kind divine community of the Trinity’ (Butcher 2022), Mother, Son and Holy Spirit.

And as a Franciscan I am always walking in company with St Francis and St Clare of Assisi.

And on this pilgrimage I have specifically invited both St Werburgh and St Chad to come along too.

And as I age I have more of a sense of the community of my own personal saints always alongside me – my mum, my dad, my beloved grandmother Nanny Hubble.

And I walk as a prayer with and for the people in my life now, my lovely family and friends, the churches I serve, St Oswald’s, Bollington https://stoswaldbollington.org.uk/ and St Peter’s Macclesfield https://stpetersmacc.org/; my Alexander colleagues, my church colleagues, the countries and causes I care about and more……

Somehow they are all there on the towpath. It’s quiet and peaceful and solitary – and crowded, full of an unseen presence. They are all there, in the locked room of my heart, in the midst of my grumbles, anxieties and sadnesses, beckoning me onwards, beckoning me outwards, beckoning me to unlock the door and take each step as a prayer of thanksgiving for all that is, all that I’ve been given, all that I am and will be. Introvert or not, I am always in company with others and I thank God for that. And I thank God that, together, they all whisper, ‘Peace be with you’.

A walk in company – photo by my son-in-law

Nichalos Herman/Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection, Practice of the Presence, A Revolutionary Translation by Carmen Acevedo Butcher 2022, Broadleaf Books: Minneapolis