The theme was Pilgrimage, we didn’t get far or did we?
International Interfaith Zoom gathering
Sometimes it is good not to be too prepared. We had a notion that we may talk about pilgrimage but with an initial zoom time of 40 minutes maybe we needed to talk about brief pilgrimages and something about our summer.
Nadia had just travelled halfway across Canada having visited her first grandchild and somehow agreed to host us and volunteer to do two reading at her church. She left us just before 10 00 am Eastern Time. Well, I say she left us but she let her use her account as we reentered after Zoom’s initial free 40 minutes expired. It was bizarre as she left her camera on giving us a view of her beautiful garden.
Max had spent most of the summer preparing college classes with a particular focus on the indigenous people. Media awareness around the graves of Canada’s indigenous people had brought home to whites what indigenous people already knew. He spoke with a commitment to the need for truth and reconciliation .
James in Texas had revisited his old university as part of their centennial celebrations of the university’s Christian student ministry.
April found five days of writing material from a pilgrimage from her home to her church which was only a quarter of a mile away.
Covid seemed to eclipse my summer well not quite as I shared about my visit to the Krishnamurti Centre in Hampshire. The architecture of the building, the interior design and the setting drew me like a painting may draw another.
One spoke of pilgrimage being an interior experience while others connected it to both an external and internal experience. Sometimes it is deliberate most time it happens as does life. It is as random as a call to a Dominican Friary when stuck in Ottawa that changes your travel cum career plans.
We spoke about the changes in our lives some good like the birth of a grandchild others more difficult yet whatever is happening right now it will become part of our stories that we look back upon and probably see a crossroads on our journey.
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