Pilgrimage or Collector's Item?

Yes, I am back, having spent a few days in Barcelona (Barrrrthelohna... with a lot of tongue behind teeth stuff). Ben, my son and Madeleine my daughter joined me in taking Elspeth - my wife - to Barcelona for her 60th Birthday. (And before there are any queries - yes - we both now have bus passes...!) The tapas was on the whole enjoyable, if you were the patient one among us. The climate was wonderful.... The Sagrada Familia Cathedral(Gaudi's work in progress) was astonishing. Here is an extraordinary piece of archectural courage and vision, a holy place emerging almost organically. What is so outrageous (thank God) is that this Sacred Building is being created and does not have functionality as its prime objective. Nor is it a statement. What a relief. There is a declaration, a proclamation even, in the composition which pushes the intellect and the imagination beyond themselves... However, we went to Montserrat (The jagged mountain range 30 miles West of Barcelona) to the famous Benedictine Abbey and Basilica which 'houses' the shrine of The Black Madonna... The Abbey is situated on what seems a precarious site on the edge of the mountains. The fact that a funiculor railway and a cable car transports people to and fro - sorry - up and down, sadly distils (if that's the right word) the sense of this Sacred Space being 'on the edge'. No effort is required to get there or even to be there. In the basilica, we were squeezed in to wait and watch for the famous boys choir who sing there every day at 1.00pm. I, along with a vast number of others, fired away with my digital camera, despite the forbidding notices. This was no pilgrimage. This was ticking a box in 'special places', 'special events' lists. Cafeteria, Restaurants, Shops and Interpretative centres did nothing to give a sense of the holiness of the lives of the monks who were somewhere on the other side of a wall, let alone the sacred history lived out for centuries here. As I left, licking my chocolate and vanilla Magnum I realised that the experience was a warning. Beware in Following Columba that I don't turn him into another box to be ticked. Making a pilgrimage is not visiting a Christian resource centre. What is it? Well, let me try and answer breifly! Pilgrimage enables me and sustains me as I seek to live the Christ-like life charged and enlivened by being in and with Christ in a place where prayer not only has been, but is valid.

Well now. The journey inwards - following Columba! My previous posting attempting to expand a little more on being aware of feelings and not being identified with them. These feelings are in a deeper place within us than emotions. This final stage of the meditation is a simple but demanding one. Having gently and carefully disidentified with the circumstances of place and my own body withits thoughts, emotions and feelings, I now let the question 'Who am I?' settle in my mind and my heart. I am in a specific place. I have a body, thoughts, feelings etc. But I am not these. 'Who then am I?' There is not an answer in the sense of a response to a problem or a puzzle. (Problems have solutions; questions have answers, mysteryis about struggle...) There is only the mystery of being 'made in the image of God' which is, of course, beyond understanding. In the silence of meditation then, I just remain with the simple reality of the mystery of who I am in God.

Next? Well, St Columba is nudging me on a path that doesn't change course, but takes in a different view.

+Martin
Argyll and The Isles