to be a (virtual) pilgrim

As some of you will know I have often in recent years spent Holy Week walking to Walsingham with Northern Leg of Student and Pilgrim Cross. 

It is an intense community experience which involves a whole lot of time spent intensely in the close proximity of others, a whole lot of walking across swathes of the country and a whole lot of accepting hospitality from pubs and churches along the way. Nothing about its usual format, really, is compatible with our current reality.

For the second year in a row it was, obviously, impossible for it to go ahead as normal. For the second year in a row, it took place online as a virtual pilgrimage.

Last year, I remember being very unsure how a pilgrimage based primarily around the very physical act of walking on the road, and the very physical building of community would work from behind our individual computer screens, in our own little zoom squares.  

I remember being very pleasantly surprised.

We committed to the pilgrimage and to each other. We spent a quite frankly ridiculous number of hours on zoom. We stayed up late. We chatted about the substantial and the inconsequential, the serious and the very, very silly. We sang and prayed and talked. We created a space which held fears and uncertainties, as well as lots of laughter.

But that was back in the days when lockdown was a very new thing. When we were finding our way. When we had few expectations. When zoom was new to almost everyone and zoom fatigue had yet to be discovered. When I, but I think probably we, were less tired of this whole reality.

For these, and other reasons, this year was always going to be different. I approached it, once again, unsure how it would be.

Both last year, and this, there were things I very much missed which are integral to what this pilgrimage usually is. I missed the all-consuming reality of it. I missed being outdoors all day on the road whatever the weather. I missed the deeply humbling warmth of the welcomes we receive along the way. I missed the physical exhaustion and the accompanying sense of satisfaction. I missed singing together. I missed those little one-to-one conversations which are so much more possible on the road than on zoom. I missed the hugs. 

All this is true. And yet, albeit imperfectly, I still felt held as part of this very precious community, held in a safe space which allows for both laughter and tears. 

I felt at least partly, transported to being in a different "space". I felt it helped set Holy Week apart from the mundane reality of every other week stretching back in time and on into the foreseeable future. I felt connected to a community of friends who really matter to me and felt able to get to know some new people (or those who were previously just remembered names from somebody else's stories). I felt able to share in the stories, and memories, and in-jokes that are part of our oral history and shared identity. I felt connected through the shared creation of and participation in creative prayer and liturgies and the reflections they engendered. I felt valued, supported and cared about, in the conversations, the messages, the small gestures of others. 

I felt, mostly, able to be honest to whom I am.

Thank you.