In several months I will be embarking on a pilgrimage. No, that is not quite right. I have already been on a pilgrimage, even though I have not left home. There are already things happening within me and in my relationship with my husband and fellow pilgrim. It was his decision to schedule a long delayed sabbatical that began the journey.
Finding a block of time to step out of two busy schedules has been challenging, the primary cause for his delay. There are always things that one of us needed to be doing. So, we last summer we started looking for time in the autumn or winter of 2016. We tried to balance possible destinations against the seasons of the year we could be away. If he were to follow his dream to visit an ashram in India, we were told that winter would be the best time. If we wanted to visit stone circles in Scotland, autumn would be the better time. It was slow going, until there was an opening for the entire month of September.
In September I will have completed my year as a CPE Chaplain Fellow with a hospice facility. Taking the month on an external journey will also provide space for an inward pilgrimage of transition. I will be leaving behind rich friendships, built in our work as a multidisciplinary team providing a joint ministry of caring for the dying and supporting those living through the death of loved family members. I will still be carrying faces and voices of those who I came to know so briefly. I will be facing a different kind of grief in letting go of those friendships, and a rewarding, demanding and often exhausting ministry.
As we focused on taking September for the sabbatical time, I saw an advertisement for In the Footsteps of the Celtic Saints: A Pilgrimage to Lindisfarne and Iona. I sent an email, and waited to hear more.
Saturday, February 13, 2016
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