Now for a few bones!

I have had some response to this idea. So now I should develop it a little.
Ask yourself the question, 'What did I gain on pilgrimage'? For most people this seems an easy question until they begin to look
more closely at it. That takes a little while, make some
of that coffee, you know the one you save for a special treat.
Find a nice piece of paper,not the back of and envelop,
one that of worthy of great thoughts. Find a quite place
and sit down.Now you are ready!

In the middle of the paper write the details of the pilgrimage, dates, starting place, when you finished. Draw a circle around it.
From that place other short sentences that sum up your pilgrimage.
Put them in a seperate circle and link them with a line to the main circle. Keep going until you have exhausted all that you have to
say. You do not have to finish it in one go. It maybe that you
would like to empty the mind and come back later when you have
thought more about it. In time you will build up a
diagram of your pilgrimage. It will contain a variety of
elements and people. Some will be highly private~ so private
that you will only wish to make an oblique sentence that means
nothing to anyone but you. That is OK. Getting it out on paper
is the focus of this exercise. It is for your benefit. It is not
for publishing. For your eyes only.

When you are ready and it may take a day or two to get there, take another
sheet of paper and make lists based on your orginal sheet. The lists should include a column for people you want to keep contact with,
places that have special significance for you, events that
spoke to you and what they said, and lessons and resolutions
that you want to put into place. Now when that is done, do what has to be done. Contact the folk you want to keep contact with and develop a means of friendship,letters, email, facebook, myspace etc. Stick
the pictures in the photo album. And lastly look hard at the list of lessons and try to work out how they apply to daily life and
what changes will have to be implimented to bring them about.

The next step will follow shortly. You have enough to be going on with.

Sign posts are interesting things. They take many forms and go from useful to
misinformation. For me the most useless sign post is one the tells you
information that you have no wish to learn. The person who put up the sign
thought that it would useful to those who look at it to be told that you
are 5629 miles from some small town in the other hemisphere.
But if you have no idea where that is, know nothing about it,
and have never been there, and never will, what use is it?

At this stage of development I feel rather like that about this fledgling community.
I have some ideas which to me seem cool. But I may be completely wrong! It
is so easy to get funny little ideas that are bouncing off the wall and get depressed
that no one what to know. Perhaps the sign maker needs a sign from others to
help understand where folk want to go to.

So. It is rather over to you. What do you think that you need to preserve about
your pilgrimage. When we have gather a few ideas, then we can go forward.
Until then I am not going to take you to a place which you have no
desire to visit.
Ian Holdsworth.
Priest.
Pilgrim Anam Cara.

House keeping.

You will notice that I  have had to change the name of this group as there is a very active
group based in the states with the same name with a big web presence. As I reflect on it
community is a better note that order with its shades of compulsion.

Why this development?

So you have been on a pilgrimage. You enjoyed it and learnt so much!
It changed your life. You will never be able to look at things quite the same.
You had experiences that we out of you box and made you realize, perhaps
for the first time that there is more to life than the 9~5. You never
thought that strangers could be so kind. You saw that there was another way to
live. One of respect and kindness to others. A simple lifestyle that made
all the hassle of life seem so far away and so wrong. You have come
home with a commitment to be different and to treat others and life differently.
To travel light. And most of all to be more aware of God. who you
met in those long hours of walking.

Now you are home and wonder what to do with all those wonderful
thoughts and experiences. Well here is an answer. Join us. We are a
small group of pilgrims who are trying to extend the experience
'over there' into a way of living our day to day lives. We are not
experts nor do we have all the answers, but we know what we
know of our pilgrim experiences and we know what we now
want to be.

The experience is not new. Saints and Sinners thought the ages
have come to this point. One of the answer has been to take the
experience and resolve into a few simple sentences and try to live
by the statement. In classical Christian spiritually this is called
forming 'A Rule.' We do not yet have a rule and it may be sometime
before we have got to the point where the rule has been developed
in a way that is satisfactory to all. However, we are moving towards
that goal. It will be like a rule of one of the Monastic communities~ a third
order style rule. ( If you want to look at an example trying googleing
'Third Order Franciscans',to get a better idea. of where we are going. )

So I invite you to join in a a conversation here about this way to
incorporate thepilgrim life into you life in was that truly makes it
life changing,