The Way April 2019!1

Transcription

1 Pilgrims of Saint Francis Compagnons de Saint Francois Compaňeros de San Francisco Gefährten des heiligen Franziscus Franciskanska Pilgrimsrörelsen Tochtgenoten van Sint Frans April 2019!1

2 Information The Way is the quarterly magazine of the Pilgrims of St Francis in Britain. It is affiliated to the magazines of the Movement in other countries: Ruta in Spain, L Appel de la Route in France, Feuille de la Route in Belgium, Roep Van de Weg in Holland, Pa Wag in Sweden and Rundbrief in Germany. The production and financing of the magazine are the concern of the National Movement. Articles and letters are most gratefully received. They should be sent to: - Celia Potter, 1 Margaret Street, Derby DE1 3FE. or sheana@talktalk.net and should end with the writer s name and address. (Celia s Tel ) Please send articles for the next issue by June 6 at the latest. Every Pilgrim aged 18 or over is expected to pay an ANNUAL subscription to the Movement of 22 per person. This is split between the National and International funds ( 10 - International funds; 8 for the National funds and 4 for the Magazine) and helps to maintain the organisation s infrastructure. (Pilgrims living on VERY limited means who would find this difficult need not pay and should tell the Treasurer at the time their subscription would fall due). Only those paying a full subscription and aged 16 or over, are eligible to vote and are covered by our insurance. You will receive a reminder about renewing your subscription with the last copy of the magazine that you have paid for. The number on your address label is that of the last copy of the magazine for which you have paid. To summarise, subscriptions are: - a. 1 adult Pilgrim 22 b. 2 adult Pilgrims at the same address 40 (1 magazine) c. Address where pilgrims under 18 need to receive their own copy of The Way 4 d. Address where Pilgrims of limited means wish to receive The Way only 4 Please send your subscription directly, if you can, to:- HSBC bank. Sort Code Acc or make cheques payable to: - The Pilgrims of St Francis and send them to: - Margaret Humphries (T ; if you need her address) If you pay direct to the bank please tell Margaret Humphries margaret.humphries@googl .com April 2019!2

3 Contents Contents News from the Guardiannats p. 4 Stolpersteine p. 8 Pilgrimage and Silence p. 11 Pilgrim updates p. 14 Dates for your Diary back page April 2019!3

4 News from the Guardiannat Guardiannat Membership As many of you will be aware, Gill Myall, who has been a member of the National Guardiannat team for many years and is a past National Guardian, had hip replacement surgery eighteen months ago. Full recovery has not been as quick as we all would have liked. Gill has been on time out as Guardiannat Secretary for a year and has now decided that she must stand down permanently. The Guardiannat has regretfully accepted Gill s resignation. The movement owes her a massive thank you for her contribution to the both nationally and internationally. We trust that she will be able to join us at an event very soon. When a vacancy in Guardiannat membership occurs between the elections which we hold every four years it is the responsibility of the Guardiannat to fill that vacancy. We are pleased to announce that Sheana Barby has accepted the role of Guardiannat Secretary with immediate effect. Sheana can be contacted at 2 Margaret St Derby DE1 3FE Telephone sheana@talktalk.net Let s give it away Our constitution requires that we give at least 1% or our income away each year. Over several years the Guardiannat has agreed a sum of 60, which has been given to a variety of charities or good causes. Last year our contribution helped purchase a computer printer for use by students at a theological college in Zimbabwe. The Guardiannat decided that this year our contribution should go somewhere within Britain. In chatting before the Guardiannat Meeting had begun we had commented on how many people we were seeing who were homeless and sleeping rough. We decided that this year our 60 should go to help the homeless. If you are a Radio 4 listener you will be familiar with the Vicar s Relief Fund it is the beneficiary of their Christmas appeal each year. The Vicar in question is that of St Martin s in the Fields in London, but grants are made April 2019!4

5 News from the Guardiannat all over Britain. The Fund can be accessed on behalf of anyone who is about to be made homeless and is desperate for a few hundred pounds to stop being evicted, or by someone who is presently homeless and needs a few hundred pounds to secure the tenancy of a new home. Grants are never large, are one off and can be turned round within a day or two with the minimum of bureaucracy. For further information go online to: Miles aren t free! As a principle, when Pilgrim s aren t walking they try to travel by public transport, but sometimes a car needs to be used, either because public transport doesn t do what we need to do or because a car is going to be cheaper. Whenever a member has to use their vehicle on behalf of Movement we, of course, cover their costs, paying a mileage rate. This rate is agreed internationally by the International Guardiannat at 30 euro cents per kilometre. When this rate was first fixed we did our maths to turn it from kilometres to miles and from cents to pence and came up with 38p per mile. But since then the euro has strengthened and the pound has weakened. The conversion is no longer correct. The National Guardiannat re-did the maths, and has agreed that going forward we pay 42p per mile for any mileage claim made by members who use their vehicle on behalf of the Movement. Pay by the day. You will recall that last year we introduced a new pricing policy for our events. Rather than pricing them individually event by event, making some seem more expensive than other, we introduced a standard daily rate for all events. The Guardiannat has reviewed the first year of working of this policy and has agreed that it worked in principle, but that it had been set a little lower April 2019!5

6 News from the Guardiannat than was necessary to sensibly cover the costs of running our Pilgrim events. We therefore agreed an increase. Events in 2019 will be: Full price: per day Reduced rate for full time students over the age of 12 and those living solely on state benefits: Children under the age of 12: 7.50 For the event in Ireland, where payment will be made in euros, the rates will be: Full price: per day Reduced rate: per day These rates will be reflected in the prices quoted in joining instructions sent out to people who have booked to participate in events during the year. April 2019!6

7 News from the International Guardiannat Some thoughts on our new logo You will remember the article in The Way last year when it was reported that the International Guardiannat had decided that the time had come to update the Movement s logo. The Chi Rho surrounded by the rope with three knots has served us well but it causes confusion for some people and has no particular Franciscan significance. Members were asked to suggest possible new logos. When the International Guardiannat met last autumn they carefully considered all the suggestions which members had submitted. They wanted something simple, easy to recognise, easy to reproduce both in colour and in black and white; something with no words, because which language should we use! The logo which was the unanimous decision of the Guardiannat members first appeared on the cover of the January The Way, and again on this cover. As our shiny new website goes live and becomes the way in which most people will first meet the Movement the new logo will be very evident. We see a tau cross, a traditional Franciscan symbol, placed over a circle representing the world. The three arms of the cross are open at their ends, the love of God knows no boundaries and is bigger than the world it embraces. When reproduced in colour the centre of the cross is green, representing the fields and forests through which we traditionally pilgrimage and our concerns for green issues. The green fades to nothing as the arms stretch out there is no boundary to our involvement in the world. When reproduced in black and white the green appears grey but we know what it means!! Ian Mason, National Guardian. April 2019!7

8 This year s theme Stolpersteine We are coming to the end of our present Pilgrim Theme People on the Move (We start the new theme of Hope at Pentecost). The following article remembers who were moved unwillingly, often to their death in what is now known as The Holocaust. A little stone in the street. If you ve been in Germany or France, any time these past twenty-five years, or many other countries in continental Europe, you may well have seen one. A little stone in the street, a little concrete square the size of a cobblestone, set in the street level with the other cobblestones or the pavement, and, on the upper face of the stone, a brass plaque. This is a Stolperstein. On the brass plaque it will say, in French or German or Croat or whatever is the right language, here lived and a name. Someone of this name lived here. And there will be dates, a date of birth, and the date when this person was deported from here, and if it s known it will say where this person was taken and what happened. It is a memorial to someone who lived here and who was killed in the Holocaust. That is a Stolperstein. There are at least 70,000 of them by now, but they began with one stone in Cologne in It was part of the commemoration that year marking events 50 years earlier, in 1942, and in particular an order Heinrich Himmler signed late in 1942 for deportations from Nazi Germany to Auschwitz. That was one moment in what was by then a huge catalogue of deportations and mass killings of people, Jewish people and others, some of whom a very small fraction of the whole are now remembered with Stolpersteine where they lived. Gunter Demnig was the artist who devised the first Stolperstein in 1992, April 2019!8

9 This year s theme and he has remained involved with the project as it has grown and developed ever since. It is the biggest decentralised memorial in the world, now, and it has changed as it has grown. But each Stolperstein is still placed where a person last lived, where they chose to live, before, under fascist persecution, they were deported or murdered or had to emigrate or committed suicide. So the inscriptions begin Here lived. Hier wohnt. Ici habitait. Her bodde. Hier woonde. Tu mieszkał. The Stolpersteine are memorials to people who were torn from their homes, from where they lived, placed at those homes. Just outside, in the streets. There are memorials to them elsewhere as well, where they died, and in the memorials that have been put up in city centres, and in museums, and in works of art. But the Stolpersteine are small and individual and local, as people are. When I see one, it makes me look at the street where I m standing, and wonder how much it s changed since the 1940s, and which house the person lived in, and where they bought their milk and their newspaper and which of the people passing by now they might have looked like. In spite of its smallness and its understatement, it s a memorial at home that brings home the reality of what happened, and how it happened in the middle of what we refer to, in another bold understatement, as ordinary daily life. So I think you will understand why, when I was thinking about the theme of Torn from home, I remembered the Stolpersteine. Stolperstein means stumbling block. Something you trip up on, that stops you in the middle of ordinary daily life. Something you just stumble across by accident. And it has darker resonances as well. The people commemorated were tripped up, stopped. There was something people used to say then when somebody tripped, a Jew must be buried here. A bit of casual insidious antisemitism. There was what people did later with Jewish gravestones, which were uprooted and laid as paving stones for everyone to walk on, in contempt. If you are familiar with the New Testament perhaps you are remembering the passage where St Paul describes Jesus and his cross as a stumbling-block in context, he is talking about how Jesus goes beyond the law for Jews and beyond reason for Greeks, folly for Greeks and a stumbling-block for Jews but perhaps April 2019!9

10 This year s theme you are also wondering if that text got twisted into that antisemitism, and the church let it happen. The Stolpersteine, there in the street in the middle of it all, take on those darker resonances, they square up to them, and they are set there as little quiet acts of defiance. A little stone in the street. The Jewish theologian and philosopher Martin Buber has a phrase about the tiny strictness and grace of the everyday. He s talking about dealing with the otherness of other people, about recognising that they are other and that they are people, about doing that with discipline and grace, every day. In one way, the Stolpersteine are the gravestones of that. They are there marking the time and the place where that absolutely failed. But in another way they are affirmations of that. They name this person in this person s time and place in the home they lived in. They name the tearing away. I have never known a time when it is more important to affirm, in what we refer to as ordinary daily life, that other people are people and that they have a right to be other. When it has been more important to stop in our tracks and name it, challenge it, whenever that is challenged or undermined. Whenever people have been made victims, denied respect, denied life, denied a home. And so I commend to you the witness of the Stolpersteine, and the tiny strictness and grace of the everyday. The Rev d Canon Elizabeth Thomson This article is from a sermon preached for Holocaust Memorial Day, Derby Cathedral, 28 th January 2019 by Canon Elizabeth Thomson April 2019!10

11 A reflection on Pilgrimage Pilgrimage and Silence The bustle and noise of an airport, the hooting of buses and lorries, the noise of tramping feet, the chattering of folk sharing and encouraging, the pounding of exhausted hearts and lungs. All these are the stuff of pilgrimage. Pilgrimage is a challenge and an adventure. It stretches across all faiths and none as people make the effort to visit places or undertake journeys significant to them. The places may have been made sacred by the past - by people, events, myths - and perhaps the core of all that is important. But also places made sacred today by the hopes and values of those who continue to travel such routes. The many books, academic dissertations, films or maps of pilgrim routes old and new seem to belong in a realm far from the reality of our daily life - as part of a community meeting regularly in church or as an individual sitting quietly alone waiting on God in the silence. And yet.... Pilgrimage can take many forms and pilgrims have many motives. This is not the place to explore the nature and variety of pilgrimage. What I write comes from my own particular experiences. For many years I have walked on pilgrimage in the company of others from western European countries. Each year a group from a different country organises the pilgrimage to a significant place. We walk in multi-ethnic, multi-generational and multi-lingual groups for about nine days. We walk with the minimal of belongings, sleeping in village or church halls en route. Living simply and worshipping ecumenically we have time to discuss things of importance. Whilst all pilgrimages, of their very essence, have a goal it soon becomes obvious that of almost equal significance is the journey itself - the sharing of stories, the learning about each other and ourselves, the involvement in the life along the route - people, places, views, the natural world. But even as we walk together there are many times when silence is paramount. It may be through exhaustion, or simply the recognition that each of us April 2019!11

12 A reflection on Pilgrimage needs our own space to reflect on who and where we are. How we are part of God s world in one particular time and place. Prayer is rooted in the very walking. We do not need speech to be aware that next to us our neighbour is struggling. The helplessness of not being able to speak Spanish or German to a fellow pilgrim leads us to a sharing of ideas through nonverbal ways. Words take on a different value and work in a different way. One of the most important features of Pilgrimage is that, for a few hours or days, we can become totally immersed in the experience. We put aside the distractions of everyday life (some disciplined souls leave their mobile phones at home!) and are totally absorbed in the event (psychologists have likened it to the focus of fans at a football match). It is a liminal experience - neither in our own world or another but exploring the edges between the two. In this focused time we live in the present moment. One day at a time is enough to cope with. And in the present moment comes an awareness of so much - the blisters and the aching muscles remind us of how our body works - or doesn't work! The needs of the moment lead to a real understanding of many spiritual clichés: we share each others burdens, we feed each other we know that slough of despond we fight with the giants of fear - the fear of responsibility (be it map reading or cooking supper, or holding up the others) we know we have left undone those things that we ought to have done; and we have done those things that we ought not to have done and there is no health in us. we take on new challenges and surprise even ourselves we learn to let go of ideas and objects that we thought were essential. Most importantly, in the pilgrim experience - with the tramp of boots or rhythms of train and bus comes a silence deep within. A silence that is every bit as valuable as the silence of sitting alone. The silence is within - and the external noises become the more valuable. God incarnate in the April 2019!12

13 A reflection on Pilgrimage world - in our physical, noisy, painful, disaster- filled world and in our neighbour too. So where does travelling on age-old routes to holy places link with the holy space of my living room or a familiar church? Or, dear reader, your holy space? Our journey to that silence within, however short or long, strenuous or easy, is to a meeting with the other, and others. To face challenges and distractions. To be ourselves, vulnerable and open, sharing and receiving - alive to love incarnate. So where, for each of us, are the holy places, the places on the edge of normal life - where can we take off our shoes to tread on holy ground - where we meet the challenges of knowing ourselves, our neighbour and our God? The poet TS Eliot wrote: We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. (Little Gidding- the Four Quartets) To which I add the blessing we often use at the start of the day or the end of the pilgrimage :- May our holy God surprise you on your way Christ Jesus be your companion and the Holy Spirit give you life. Sheana Barby a postscript which says it all:- At the end of a recent pilgrimage, an Italian in my group wrote to the group after the pilgrimage:- I write to all of you to say THANK YOU! Each of you has brought on our common path your own enthusiasm, fatigue, boredom, your physical strength and also your own tiredness, the desire to sing, to walk, to cook, to laugh and cry, to play to talk and to be on your own in silence... but the most important thing is to have shared many good and bad moments whose memory we will bring all of us into this year. April 2019!13

14 Pilgrim News and updates Françoise Gille On April 5th Françoise died after many years of frail health. She and Louis worked tirelessly throughout their lives for the Pilgrim Movement - especially in Belgium where they hosted many meetings. Françoise was a quiet gentle woman, often content to be in the background but gracious and generous in her hospitality and support to others. It was her wish that she be remembered in a franciscan way - a quiet ceremony sharing stories, music, readings and a bowl of soup. This will be at their children s home on April 12. We are all invited to remember her then and, if possible, to plant something in our gardens, or nearby meadows to accompany her on her last journey. Louis had some major strokes a few years ago and now lives in a care home:- Home St Joseph, 266 rue Haute 1000 Bruxelles 02/ April 2019!14

15 in the darkness of the current happenings in our world we look towards Easter and the Easter Hope... God s Grandeur The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod? Generations have trod, have trod, have trod; And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod. And for all this, nature is never spent; There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; And though the last lights off the black West went Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs Because the Holy Ghost over the bent World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings. Gerald Manley Hopkins April 2019!15

16 Dates for your Diary 2019/20 Events in 2019 May 7-14 June 8-10 July 30 - Aug 8 Aug Oct. 4-7 National event in Ireland The International Chapter at Mozet in Belgium, The International Pilgrimage, in Germany, starting and finishing at Lahnstein (Rheinland-Pfalz) National event in York National Event in Stroud ~~~~~~~~~~~ Events in 2020 The International Pilgrimage will be in Sweden (dates not yet fixed but between July 27/Aug 8) ~~~~~~~~~~~ Events in other countries in 2019 (details available on the website.) The Netherlands 24 June Coastal walk near Soefitempel at Katwijk aan Zee 9-13 Sept. Midweek meeting - Veluwe Bosbeek Germany 22 April Emmaus walk 6-8 Sept Family weekend Oct. National Chapter Please note: These events are arranged by individual countries; There is no guarantee there will be any opportunity for translation - normally everything is in the language of the host country. The International Guardiannat are meeting on April 13-14, 2019 in Brussels: on October 26-27, 2019: Eindhoven on April 25-26, 2020: For more information :- or contact the National Guardian:- Ian Mason 92 Bodmin Ave. Stafford ST17 0EQ T ianmason@talktalk.net April 2019!16