In Via
Planning a trip? Or just on the pilgrimage of daily living? We are the podcast at the intersection of faith and travel, assisting you on the journey to encounter Christ. Hear stories, discover travel tips, and learn more about our Catholic faith. Along the way, we’ll show you that if God seeks to meet us in Jerusalem, Rome, Lourdes, Mexico City, or Santiago, he also wants to encounter you - right there in your car, on your run, or in the middle of your workday.
In Via
Tales of English Pilgrimage with Father Philip Connor
In today's episode we continue our discussion of the history of pilgrimage, this time heading over to England. Our guest is Father Philip Connor, a parish priest from Cumbria in the northwest of England. Father is a self-described addict of pilgrimage, and he shares tales of faith and devotion from medieval England to the modern resurgence of pilgrimages. Our paths cross with iconic figures such as St. Thomas Becket, exploring sites like Canterbury and Walsingham, where history and spirituality intertwine.
We also discuss how the English Reformation affected the pilgrimage tradition. As we unravel the centuries-old allure of sacred travels, Father Connor's personal anecdotes reveal how these quests mirror life's broader journey, enriching our daily existence.
Welcome to In Via, the podcast where we're navigating the pilgrimage of life. We are all in via on the way and we are learning a lot as we go. I'm your host, joan Watson. Join me as we listen to stories, discover travel tips and learn more about our Catholic faith. Along the way, we'll see that if God seeks to meet us in Jerusalem, rome or Santiago, he also wants to encounter you right there in your car, on your run or in the middle of your workday. Welcome back to In Via.
Joan:In today's episode we continue our discussion of the history of pilgrimage, this time heading over to England. My guest is Father Philip Connor, a parish priest from Cumbria in the northwest of England. We talk about the history of English pilgrimage, including Canterbury, thomas a Beckett, walsingham and the Holy Wells, along with how the Reformation affected the English pilgrimage tradition. Father is a self-described addict of pilgrimage, so he regales us with tales of his own journeys and has a lot to teach us along the way. So I actually always begin our conversation just asking. I usually am very specific and ask for three sentences. If you could tell somebody three sentences about yourself, just to kind of make someone really tell us the highlights. But, father, do you just want to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about yourself?
Father Conner:Yeah, hello, my name's Father Philip Connor. I'm a parish priest in a place in West Cumbria, which is on the west coast of England, actually just across the border from Scotland. I've been a priest for 18 years. I have a brother who's also a priest, and three other brothers and a sister, so that's my background. I spent a lot of my life as a priest, as a pilgrim, moving from place to place, and currently I'm a parish priest, but before that I was a youth chaplain for the diocese and worked in the college campus ministry. Yeah, my background my father was in the army, so it's probably quite a good preparation for the priesthood because you get moved around different places. So I don't really have any roots.
Joan:So if you're trying to work out where my English accent is from.
Father Conner:it's a bit of a mixer of everything. I love it Most of my college time. University was up in Scotland, so I'm a little bit of a mixer. I think, well, I'm definitely up to and just yeah, life as a priest, as a Catholic and as a Christian is fantastic. Yeah.
Joan:It's funny you mentioned the accent, because it was only really in getting to know people very well that are from England that I really came to appreciate the differences in English accents. Because I think growing up it was like, oh, you have an English accent. And then realizing, and you know all of our British TV shows that we consume as Americans, you realize there's a great nuance and you can just like America, right, like just like the United States.
Father Conner:You can tell, but you have a mix yes, if in fact, when I moved up to this part of England, when I first arrived here, I couldn't understand what people were saying. So even for an English person it can be quite hard. The West Gubberin accent it's like nothing else, and I think about 10 years ago we had there was some terrible tragedy in this part of the world and it was on the national news. They actually had to subtitle what the locals were saying because just the vocabulary and the language is different. This part of England has been influenced by, I think, a lot of Nordic and Icelandic peoples through the course of history. We're very different. There are Vikings up here. That's fabulous, and maybe because it's so far away from places like London and stuff and behind the mountains it sort of cuts off. It's a very distant part of the country.
Joan:There are probably some similarities to the deep south in the United States where there's other woods for things. And you go and you're like are you speaking English too? I thought I was speaking English and so I love it.
Joan:I love, like love, thinking about linguistics in that way, about pilgrimage, not just, you know, actual pilgrimages that we take walking, but also the pilgrimage of life and the lessons learned. But why? Why do you think pilgrimage is such an important part of so many religions? I mean, we see it obviously in Christianity that's what we're here to talk about but it's not just a Christian phenomenon. We see it, you know, in Mecca, and why do you think there's that pull of the heart, I guess, and maybe that gives the answer away. But why do you think christian? Why do you think pilgrimage is part of so many religions?
Father Conner:yeah, I I think sometimes it's really hard to get our hands around life because right in the middle of it and we don't it's just too much, we, we don't have any sense of perspective. So a little bit like a retreat. When you go on a retreat, you step out of your normal everyday life and you see things in a new light and and I think pilgrimage is just an extension of that sense that actually we step out of our normal everyday life, you begin to see your whole life in a new perspective and in this sense it provides a sort of miniature version of your whole life, because there's a beginning and there's an end and it provides something, a way of understanding your life, all of the ups and downs, the difficult times, the struggles, the wonderful people that you meet. So it's a very intense and very personal experience of life and I think if you live that experience, it then transforms the way in which you approach your whole life when you get back home. Does that make sense.
Father Conner:Yeah, I think. The other thing I'm really noticing, and certainly in this part of the world, that pilgrimage is having a massive comeback at the moment. People are having been lost for centuries. It seems to be being resurrected. Having been lost for centuries, it seems to be being resurrected and not just from the faithful, but all sorts of people are discovering it for all sorts of different reasons. Someone said I was walking in the route through Spain. It says not everyone begins the pilgrimage as a pilgrim, because everyone ends as a pilgrim.
Father Conner:And so I think it sort of shakes us all down you know and sort of helps you to work out what's real and what's not, what we can get rid of and what is actually essential to us. It gives us a sort of destination and a focus for life. And the other thing which I can just share and this was a beautiful insight and I didn't know what it meant, but when I set off on that route through Spain, we met someone who had walked the Camino de Santiago six times, you know, when we were just struggling on our first day, it made our jaws drop to think that someone had actually done the whole thing six days, six times. But he spoke to us and I always remember his words were just full of wisdom. He said you know, your first week on pilgrimage you will discover that you have a body. And the second week you begin to listen to your body. And the third week you will discover that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit.
Father Conner:I can remember and I've thought about that so many times, and it's not as if the pilgrimage you know falls neatly into those sorts of things, but those elements are all there and I think, particularly in the Western culture today we live so much in our heads.
Father Conner:You know, we're always on our phones, we're watching TV, we're thinking and talking about things, but we leave our bodies behind. In a sense, or they're an addition to we, or they're a addition to we, think they're an addition to who we are, but actually, as christians, we say no. No, the body and soul are one. We don't separate them out, and I think what pilgrimage is is helping us to understand this, is to rediscover the truth of who we are you, you know, bodily and spiritually you know. And and also, as I said, giving us a destination and a direction. Because people have such horizontal lives, we've forgotten the transcendental dimension that we're made for heaven. You know, we're made. So I think, in a strange way, I think the Holy Spirit is using pilgrimage today to wake up some of these things in us.
Joan:Yeah, yeah, I was talking to a friend the other day and actually we've talked about on this podcast, about how it's hard for us to be uncomfortable to be taken out of our comfort zones unless we go on pilgrimage. He had walked the.
Joan:Camino and he said you know it's, it's too easy to live the comfortable life. You actually have to go to seek this, to actually find that, that union of body and soul, and to recognize these things we have to be shaken out of our comfort zone and I think it's hard to convince somebody sometimes to do that. Who is very comfortable, who's not searching you know, you see this influx of people on the Camino who aren't religious but are searching, and they probably have a better chance of finding the answer than the comfortable catholic who's just living. You know, oh well, I go to mass on sunday and I'm fine like no. You need to be shaken out of it too. You need to be shaken out of this comfort and you need to start searching. But how, you know, how do you convince somebody they need to go suffer, to, uh, to answer the call to pilgrimage, you know?
Father Conner:but I think you'd have to think of a different marketing tactic. You know, come and have some suffering, it will do you some good, you don't sell a lot of pilgrimages that way.
Father Conner:But it's not. I mean, I've never thought of it. You know, occasionally you get a blister or your legs are tied and things like this, but the suffering is, that's not the point of it, right? Yeah, you know, and I and I, and I think that may happen and it does happen, and um, but you, you, you discover so much um which, yeah, you're not gonna, you're not gonna discover by just sitting on your sofa at home and your couch. You know, and um, and I would even say there is a difference, because I used to take a lot of young people to lourdes in the south of france and different pilgrimage places would jump on a bus and or, or sometimes people would fly to it and then they'd have this experience. I think they all had wonderful experiences, they loved it, but there's a difference. I would almost call that like religious tourism. You know where you go, you stay in a nice hotel and everything's provided, there's a nice routine and things.
Father Conner:But, as you said, one of the things about pilgrimage is that you might have your idea how it's all going to be, but you'll discover pretty quickly, maybe on day one or day two or, if not, definitely by day three, that that your version of how it's going to be just won't work, because all the things which we think are important, actually when you become a pilgrim you realize actually they're not important, those aren't the significant things. And so this sort of revolution has to take place, and that's why it's such a powerful experience. You know, in a sense we are dismantled and then rebuilt, and it is. We are dismantled and then rebuilt, and it is okay. If you're going to mention the suffering, I can't deny that there's no suffering, but there is a resurrection as well, and that's what makes the whole thing possible. And so you begin to choose it.
Father Conner:I actually I think I've probably become addicted to it now. I actually I think I've probably become addicted to it now, but that's what I actually find this. Why have I got addicted to it? It's because it's, I know it does something really good for me. It's pulling me out of myself and we have very strong gravitational forces which pull us into ourselves, which close our walls in on ourselves, which which seek for comfort, and actually that's not the way to life.
Joan:Yeah, yeah yeah, we have to make our choices. It is, um, the walking pilgrimage does bring those things to the forefront, so much clearer and quicker than something like a pilgrimage. So I do work for a pilgrimage company and most of our trips are more fly to a place, get on a bus, right, and it's interesting to help the pilgrims on those trips embrace the pilgrim mentality, because it's harder to see and it's harder to experience than when you're on a walking pilgrimage. The elements are still there, but not to the extremes that they are, and so you might have somebody go on one of these pilgrimages and be unsatisfied at the end because their bed was too hard or they were rushed from site to site and you're like, okay, this was a pilgrimage, this wasn't a vacation, and so I think on a walking pilgrimage, all of that is brought to the forefront so much clearer because you have to face it immediately, like your days not might not go the way you want it to go, because it's raining, for example. You know there's all these elements in the walking pilgrimage. Um, and I'm I'm anxious to hear you said you're addicted. Um, I can't wait to hear about more of the walking pilgrimages you've done.
Joan:We've talked to people about the Camino, and I think that's what comes to people's minds when they hear this idea of walking pilgrimage. But, being in England, there are other pilgrimages and I think I'd love to talk to you about Canterbury a little bit before we get to some of the other ones, because to many Americans Canterbury Tales is a book we read in high school or college and there's kind of a disconnect between the idea, even though it's all about pilgrimage. It is like the pilgrimage tale. I think sometimes there's a disconnect because maybe we don't know the story of Thomas Beckett, and so I'd love to know more about like the Pilgrim's Way. And why Canterbury? Why Thomas? Where is this in English history and why is it important?
Father Conner:yeah, that's. Thank you for those questions. I I think right at the beginning. Um, during the medieval times, pilgrimage became massive in England because part of the reason for that was once the Crusades began. In the 11th century, the traditional places of pilgrimage would have been to Jerusalem.
Father Conner:And that's what people headed for. But once the Crusades began, people had to look for other places to go to, and that's why Santiago, where the relics of St James were, became very important. Or in Scotland there's St Andrews, which was a university city. It's a golfing place now, but that was a great place of pilgrimage to go to the relics of saint andrew, which arrived there in the 12th century from from uh, italy and different places like that. So in england, england, medieval times was covered with thousands of shrines, thousands of shrines and thousands of of holy wells like these. These were deep holy wells where people would go in into the water, bless themselves. Sometimes they were associated with saints, and many of them still exist. You have to do a little bit of research because as the layers of time have gone by, a lot of these have got lost from the public consciousness. But certainly where my parents live, in Preston, there's a very ancient shrine which goes back to the 7th or 8th century, called Ladywell.
Father Conner:And in the north of Wales there's another place called Holywell and it's still fully there. You can go to it and there's this huge, big, there's this spring of of water, really quite powerful, and it comes up out of the earth and it's all associated with saint winifred, who lived in the in the 7th or 8th century, and, um, you could go in and wash it and it's, it's beautiful. So these places were very popular in the medieval times and and out of all of the great shrines in England, I think people would go to Glastonbury because that was connected with the story of a visitor of Joseph of Arimathea, who of course, we know from the Gospels, but there was always a tradition that Joseph of Arimathea took Jesus on a trip to England at one point and there's that association with that. It's very ancient.
Joan:Is that why he shows up in King Arthur? Is that why he shows up in the Holy Grail? Exactly, yes, okay, excellent.
Father Conner:Yeah, that's the connection, yes, and then, of course, if we've got time, we can talk about Walsingham, which is in Norfolk, and there was a noble woman called Rochelle de Stavavish and she had this dream of the Holy House in Nazareth, and so when she woke up, she was inspired to build the house of Nazareth in Walsingham and it became known as England's Nazareth, and kings, even Henry VIII, they went on that, they walked to these places and they went on pilgrimage. But Canterbury in the 12th century became one of the biggest shrines and this was, as you said, because of St Thomas the Beckett, but also known as St Thomas of Canterbury, and so we have this tradition then.
Joan:So everybody's walking everywhere and we remember Canterbury, perhaps because of Canterbury Tales, but it wasn't limited. It's actually a pretty prevalent desire to go on pilgrimage throughout England.
Father Conner:When you think about even the word. You say vacation. We call it holiday and the holiday comes from Holy Day and if you read the Canterbury Tales, it will speak about the season of spring is the time of pilgrimage. This is when everyone used to just get up out of their normal everyday life. Let's go on pilgrimage, let's meet some new people, and that's what the Canterbury Tales is all going on about the conversations they have and some of it. You know it's pretty gritty stuff but at the end of the day this is very, very incarnational. When we think about it, we don't just walk around with our hands held together and look all pious and holy. You know, when Jesus walked on this earth, he lived a pretty gritty life, going into the pubs and the taverns, speaking with the sinners, getting thrown into this situation, walking across deserts and meeting all sorts of people demoniacs and prostitutes and Roman soldiers and I think that's part of the glory of pilgrimage is that we break out of that little world.
Father Conner:So if you go to Canterbury, it's got a very ancient history in the sense that it was in Canterbury that St Augustine, who lived in the 6th century. He was a Benedictine monk who was sent by St Gregory the Great to bring Christianity to England and he was welcomed by the King of Kent and they set up a monastery at Canterbury and that became the first sort of Episcopal see. So the seat of the bishop, st Augustine, became St Augustine of Canterbury. This is became the first bishop there. So it was always like the centre of Christianity in England. But with time they built this great cathedral there which is absolutely awesome. It's just the most extraordinary building and builds. Yeah, I mean you just have to visit these cathedrals in Britain to see how people I mean some of these cathedrals were built over the course of 100 years, so the people who were building it at the beginning never saw the end of it. But they had this sense that they were building something of the kingdom of God in the midst of people and it really was.
Father Conner:The intention was that when you enter into these buildings you are entering into heaven, and so today they're pretty stripped back. I mean they're still absolutely awesome, but in the medieval times they would have been covered with frescoes and paints and different patterns and statues and and it was the sense of you'd come in from your long, long pilgrimage, your intentions, which you were carrying in your heart and you would approach the altar and you would approach the shrine of the saints and things like this, and it was this sense of heaven and earth being united, you know, with the singing, the music, the sense of majesty and grandeur and things like this. So they were great high points for people's lives. It's yeah, and I'm trying to think well, do you want me to share a little bit about St Thomas of Canterbury himself? Sure, yes, yeah, that would be great, was Canterbury.
Joan:Was it a place of pilgrimage before Thomas, or do you think it was just the center of Christianity in England?
Father Conner:No, I think St Thomas actually made it Okay, but I think because it was the first sea, yeah, like St Canterbury and York in the north of England were the two big ecclesiastical centers, okay, yeah, yeah, I think I think they were. Basically they governed the church throughout the kingdom, those two big places, one in the north, one in the south. So St Thomas Becket well, you can tell from his name that he, you know, at this time of British English history that Normandy, in the north of France, was very much part, well, at least linked, associated with England. You know there's a lot of crossover. Remember, william the Conqueror was Norman, and so the boundaries which we think of now as England and that's France, it wasn't quite that straightforward at that time. These boundaries have changed quite a bit through the course of history.
Father Conner:But St Thomas the Becket was actually, I think, from a fairly middle class, middle ranking, but he was noticed as having particular skills by the bishops or the ecclesiastical sort of set up in London and things like this, and he was introduced to Henry II's court and he was seen as a great fixer, a political fixer, and I think Henry II thought, yeah, they used to love going out, drinking and having wild times together and stuff like this. And so when Henry II became king, he thought, right, I know what I'm going to do, I'm going to make my friend Thomas Archbishop. And at this point he wasn't even ordained, thomas, wow, he was just. He'd been trained up in the church by the great churchmen at the time, but he was a politician, okay, you know. So he was quickly ordained and made Archbishop and things. And Henry II got a bit of a shock, because it's questionable, I don't know how much of a conversion Henry had at that, sorry, thomas had at that point. But he, he obviously understood that he had different responsibilities. He wasn't just there to be the king's like rubber stamp, everything the king did. And, um, he, he now was in a sense speaking on the behalf of the church and and of god, and and he realized actually he, having having attacked the church's privileges as a politician, now as a church man, he began to realize, no, I, I have to protect the church. That has to be some sort of of can't just let Henry II be a tyrant and just overrule everything. So I think that's where the tensions began. Their friendship became a little bit taut. It became difficult, a bit stressed, there were different efforts to try and help the church and the state to work better together with each other, but it never seemed to work. Thomas the Becket was exiled at some point for I don't know several years. He lived in the north of France, he was protected and eventually he came back to England and I think things calmed down a bit. But of course it wasn't long before the tensions grew up again.
Father Conner:And I think there's that famous line which, if you read, I think is it TS Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral. You know, there's that great account of just Henry II's exasperation, just overspilling and saying who will rid me of this turbulent priest? And those four knights think that they're doing the king a great favour and actually take him at his word. They hunt Thomas of Canterbury in the cathedral and I think it's yeah, it's just at the end of December, isn't it? And he's about to celebrate evening prayer and things and he's knocked to the ground and there's a bit of scuffle and things like this.
Father Conner:But I think when you read the accounts and what historical information we have, it was really. I mean, if you look at him as a, where was his sanctity coming from, I think in the last few months of his life, thomas understood that actually, going back to Canterbury, his days were numbered and I think it's amazing and you find this on a pilgrimage Actually your whole life could come into focus in a very, very short amount of time, and I think there's a lot which is contradictory in thomas beckett's life. But in the last few weeks, months, you know his prayer and his, his sort of centering of his life upon christ and his surrender of his life to christ. This is really what puts him in a place so that when his martyrdom comes it is out of love for the church, but also, you know, a total surrender of himself to Christ, and I think that's there's something wonderful about him. He's not a papy maché saint. He's quite, as I say, contradictory as a character.
Joan:I love saints like that that I can actually I can find myself in because I struggle myself right and we all do.
Joan:Our life is a pilgrimage and sometimes we get off the path, sometimes we're walking on the wrong path, right. And so I love when saints reflect that that they're not these completely pious all the time, never but that they struggle being true and it's how they ultimately choose for Christ. That's right At the end, you know, and I think the juxtaposition of him dying in the cathedral, which should have given him sanctuary, we don't think of I mean, especially in America, we don't think of this idea of sanctuary in churches. But you should have been able to find sanctuary in the church and been freed from political power, right. And he actually dies, showing that when he took on that role as Bishop he wasn't, there was no sanctuary in that, right. He was actually taking on a very difficult position where he was going to have to contradict his friend and and put his life on the line. And he doesn't even find sanctuary in the building of the church, but he's killed right there.
Father Conner:That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think after his murder, actually the whole country was in a state of shock. I think Henry was in a state of shock and he regretted it. You know he did penance for it and things like this and things like this, but there was this immediate outpouring of well, public acclamation of Thomas Beckett's holiness or sanctity, and so it wasn't long after that that he was canonized.
Father Conner:And then you get all the characters which we meet on the Canterbury Tales appearing and wanting to touch something of his tomb and to come in to you know, to reach out to a saint, you know. And so what you get along all these pilgrimage routes, is it little brass or metal medallions and pilgrimage crosses and things like that are created and pilgrimage routes begin to be established.
Joan:I love that incarnational, like we want something, we want to touch something. We need these examples in our life of holiness we're going to take this incarnational walk to like.
Joan:there's so much in the Catholic sacramental worldview that's present in pilgrimage and I'm going to limit it to not. How does the Reformation affect all of this? Because I know it means the closing of churches and monasteries. But how would you say the Reformation affects this practice of pilgrimage, when I think we could falsely see it as earning our way to heaven or, you know, working. And so it seems that in the Reformation, pilgrimage would be looked down upon because it seems to be a work. Reformation, pilgrimage would be looked down upon because it seems to be a work. But is that the case? How do the post-Reformation years look in terms of pilgrimage? Do we still see, I mean I know Walsingham, for example, becomes an Anglican shrine, so there's some practical results, but do we also see the waning of pilgrimage in practice?
Father Conner:Well, actually even Walsingham. It's only in the 19th century that it's been rediscovered as a shrine amongst Africans.
Father Conner:So at the time of the Reformation everything was destroyed, everything, all the monasteries, the Holy House, it was absolutely destroyed. And I think the great shrines, let's say, durham Cathedral had the tomb of St Cuthbert, westminster Abbey had the tomb of St Edward the Confessor, I don't know like Canterbury had Thomas Becket, but a lot of these tombs were opened up and they were in some cases, in some places, the relics and things were all just thrown out.
Father Conner:And just you know. But you know there were a lot of people who didn't. This was, I think they're sort of ardent, sort of iconoclasts and people who wanted to destroy all of this.
Father Conner:They were actually a very small minority of people and there were lots of holy people who were just absolutely scandalized and shocked, absolutely scandalized and shocked, and so I think a lot of the holy things and relics and statues and paintings they were hidden away. They were taken away and hidden in places until time eased up a bit. So, yeah, there was a massive disruption. You couldn't have public pilgrimages and things like this.
Father Conner:Um, however I think you know it wasn't, as if one day england was all catholic and the next day was, it became like ultra calvinist and and just totally even if, even Even through all of the centuries, there was a lot, you know, which I think a lot of people still had, these deep oceans and things like this. And so we know, for example, holywell, which is in the north of Wales, it's one of those holy wells, wales, it's a um, one of those holy wells, it's it. You know there were Catholics going there all of the time and the, the police authorities, they couldn't stop it. You know, and we know lots of Jesuit priests and missionary priests were going and celebrating mass in these places secretly and things like this. So in, in a sense, these things never stopped the public, sort of big jamboree, pilgrimages and things, that's all finished. But quite the other people found pilgrimages and because I mean a lot of people would have done made their own quiet journeys to Rome and places like this. So the practice of pilgrimage continued.
Father Conner:Interestingly, when I walked to Canterbury the main route is from London to Canterbury I actually walked from Winchester, which is an Anglo-Saxon cathedral town, to Canterbury and we hadn't even planned to walk that pilgrimage route. But it was the time when there was a big volcanic ash cloud which was flying, which was filled the atmosphere around Iceland, and they and no planes could take off. So we had been planning to walk in the Santiago to Compostela and we couldn't do it anymore. And so we were sitting at home thinking I was with my brother and I was thinking, well, what should we do? This is our. And so we were sitting at home thinking I was with my brother and I was thinking, well, what should we do? This is our holiday time, we want to go on pilgrimage. So we just went down to Winchester, we bought a few maps, we had our rucksacks with our sleeping bags, and this is a great thing about pilgrimage is you don't need anything. Once we had two or three maps which would cover basically the 150 miles we had to walk. We just set off. We didn't know where we were going to eat, we didn't know where we were going to slay, we didn't know anything about the route and we just set off and we found out quite quickly. We found out quite quickly and this is why I'm saying about these ancient pilgrimage routes because, little by little, just tiny little indications here and there we became aware that we were walking on ancient pilgrimage routes. So you could find little street names in the countryside Pilgrim's Way or things like this, or little crosses hidden in the undergrowth and things like this which were from different times, or the names of the pubs were. They still hadn't changed the names of the pubs from the medieval times. And so when you're walking, because you're going slower, you begin to notice things. And we became aware that, although that is not an official pilgrimage route at the moment, we felt as if we were, you could sense it, that we were walking in the footsteps of other pilgrims who trampled on that route.
Father Conner:A wonderful experience, because we didn't stay in any hotels or there's no, no hostels or youth hostels along the way or anything. So what we used to do is we found a lot of these anglican churches, which all used to be catholic churches. They had lovely porchways, you know, and there was just enough room. You could get two sleeping bags in them and we slept in their porchways at different churches along the way. And most of those churchyards have a tap, and you know. So we always felt that if we had shelter and we had water, you know, because there was always a tap so that people could water their plants in the cemetery and things like this. So most nights we were actually sleeping in graveyards or in the porchways of churches. But it was a wonderful experience and it made me realize that you don't need anything complicated.
Father Conner:You know, and sometimes we got lost and um but but I think because we didn't plan it much and because we didn't know what was happening and it wasn't in our plan, we became very sensitive to the presence of the lord and jesus just just walking around, and some of the encounters that we had. I mean, the first person we met on that walk, it was a little boy actually. We were helping him to get his bike over the fence and we met his parents and we said, oh, what's your name? And he said Santiago. Wow, and that's where we were planning to have gone and we were feeling disappointed because we weren't going to Santiago and the first person we meet is called Santiago.
Father Conner:I mean, we met his, the family, we we met later on in the pub. We were just going to drop in and have a nice pint before finding somewhere to camp and actually they invited us to come and sit next to them and we sat around and had a meal together and then they took us back to their home that night and we had such a. It was such a good beginning to that pilgrimage and after that we felt, no, we're on the right tracks. This is, we're just really open to what happens and, honestly, you meet angels. You meet angels on these experiences, when you, when you stop over planning and overthinking and just just try and live and be present to what is before you you.
Father Conner:You realize that god has his plans and his, his, his. What he desires to give us is so much more than what we could think or imagine or plan for ourselves. So there's a big element of trust.
Joan:So you relied like that reliance on the Lord that's, I mean, that's a huge lesson for our life, right, and we can be so comfortable in our daily lives that we forget we're relying on the Lord unless something's taken away from us. But you, that very first day, the Lord, I, you know I've got your back. You didn't go to Santiago. In a way, santiago came to you in this form of this little boy right and the.
Joan:Lord was going to take care of you. I also thought, when you talked about slowing down and noticing things because you would slow down that how pilgrimage teaches us to be in the present moment, which can be so difficult in our everyday life, but to really live in the present moment, to think about the step that's right in front of us and to open our eyes and see and hear things that we would miss when we were thinking about the next. You know, a year from now, or you know, like so often, we're living in the future rather than in the present moment. That's a really powerful lesson of pilgrimage yeah yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Father Conner:I think that's one of my big lessons, because I'm definitely one of these people who prefer to have things organized. If I could just share this little experience. It was actually on the route to Santiago de Compostela. Again, I was with my brother and we arrived in Pamplona and I don't think we were in a good. We weren't in a good way at all. We had begun the pilgrimage sleeping in ditches and the rain was pouring down at night and we got soaked, we were tired and I don't it. Just it wasn't good.
Father Conner:But I was looking forward to arriving in Pamplona, because I know it's a beautiful city. It's got a fantastic history. It was a place where Saint Ignatius of Loyola had his leg blown off and there were so many things I wanted to visit. And I can remember going into the hostel and going to have a shower. I thought, oh, that's so nice having a shower. But whilst I was in the shower, my brother. He thought, well, he was doing a good deed. He got all my clothes and he went and put them into the washing machine, which was great, very nice, yeah.
Father Conner:But I came out. I didn't have any clothes to wear. But I came out I didn't have any clothes to wear. And just at that moment in the hostel because they're often mixed dormitories in these hostels all of these very nice French women all turned up, and they were about six or seven. I thought I was really self-conscious. I jumped into my sleeping bag and I was just like, but I was fuming, I was so angry inside. You know that, because there was my opportunity to visit the city it's gone. I had to stay stuck in my sleeping bag. I felt. I felt anyway. But you know, when I was looking back and it was later on the evening there's a few awkward hours when I did get my clothes back, you know, I began to laugh about it because that was a moment which something inside me broke, because there was me thinking I'm going to have this pilgrimage all in the perfect way.
Father Conner:And I've spoken to a lot of pilgrims and they say, somehow it happens to everyone. You, you have to get to that breaking point, you know, and um, but then it allows something wonderful to happen. Um, and I, I was thinking of an example of that and you remember, with saint francis of assisi, when he's had this great conversion and he was from a pretty wealthy background and stuff, and his dad is absolutely like furious with him that he's, he's had this religious turn in his life and and he says, dad, you know I love you and everything, but you can have everything. I know you've given me all these nice clothes, but you them. And he just took off all his clothes in the middle of the public square and he was totally free, he didn't need anything. And the bishop was scandalized and, of course, covered him up and things like this.
Joan:St.
Father Conner:Francis, but I thought that was my St Francis moment in a sense. I thought that was my St Francis moment. In a sense. It was a moment of something broken me and I thought, oh, I don't need any of this anymore and I was able to leave it all behind and the rest of that pilgrimage and in fact, all my years of doing pilgrimages since then, something has changed. You know, I don't I try not to over plan, I just try and go. Simply, I thinned out my rucksack to just like five or six kilos, and that includes my mask kit, so it's just bare minimum, and I've met so many other pilgrims who have done that. There was a guy walking the whole way from Belgium, all the way through France into Spain, and he said he didn't have a penny with him, he didn't bring any money, and he said he'd been walking for when we had met him for two and a half months and every single day he had had a meal. Wow, you think, well, how does that happen?
Father Conner:You know, yeah, so just the opportunity to trust in providence and to know actually, god is a father who provides, who, who gives us everything we need I mean even jesus, you, you see, when he he saw the five thousand and they saw how hungry they were and and things, he didn't just leave them, he fed them, them. So it does give you a wonderful sense of the providence of God. And I'll just give one other story which I think you might like. It was a very, very hot day again on that pilgrimage. We were exhausted. You can see me, my brother and myself, we have our moments, but we were absolutely exhausted and it was 38 degrees Celsius.
Father Conner:We'd been walking, I think, a long, long, long day and we went to try and get into the church and the church was locked Because in Spain everything, they have siesta, so everything gets shut, and we wanted to go in the church just because it would be the one cool place to go and sit and just relax and be at peace and things. It was locked and we just sat in the town square, absolutely exhausted, fed up and just thinking this is it. And then we heard the two shutters of window above our head. We were sitting on a bench open like that, and out came two ice cold beers and we thought, oh, my goodness, this is amazing. You know, they were speaking to the spanish guy who gave us. He was an elderly man and we asked him his name and his name was angel angle.
Joan:I like angels that bring beers. That's like that's a good angel. I like that's it, that that.
Father Conner:So this is what happens on pilgrimage and you know, I I think we're there's, there's surprises around every corner. There's just it's beautiful.
Joan:Yeah also that lesson of of accepting help, because I think some of us have a difficulty asking and accepting, like allowing people to help us, and so, even whether it's Santiago's parents letting you sleep, you know at their house or you know being stripped of everything, but being allowed to let others help us, I think that's an important lesson that it's hard to learn in our everyday life of living.
Father Conner:Absolutely yeah, yeah.
Joan:Well, we probably have to wrap up, but I can't help but ask. I think you're about to take a pilgrimage because you're addicted. There has to be another walking pilgrimage, Are you?
Father Conner:about to do part of the Viyagraha for Jijana.
Father Conner:Yes, that's right, yeah, Shijina, yes, that's right, yeah, so, um, yeah, so, my, all my siblings, so, um, the five of us, we're going to walk a section. I mean, the whole route is actually from Canterbury to Rome, okay, so that you need about three months for that. And, um, in fact, I would say, you know, if you're new to pilgrimage, you know, just begin in a little way. You can just start with a one day or a three day pilgrimage and just it's OK to and that's how, more or less, I began and just did it in little sections. So we're just doing, we're doing a five or six day section of the Rio Francigena.
Father Conner:But actually we thought, well, if we only got five or six days, let's do a nice bit, let's not just walk across flat French fields. So we're going to Tuscany, I love it. So we're flying to Pisa and then we'll walk from Lucca to Siena, beautiful, which will be through these beautiful places like San Gimignano and San Mignardo, the land of Chianti, wine, and yeah, so we're going to walk that. And actually, what will be different? I've often walked with my brother, who's a friar, but the three others want to come too. We just got to a point in life where actually people's responsibilities and things they've been able to work it so that we can actually.
Father Conner:So this will be the first time that we've all been on something just together and we don't even have our mom and dad to sort of sort out the fights and that will be an adventure it will be an adventure and, and you know one of my brothers, he wants to stay in five-star accommodation.
Father Conner:The other one wants to live in a hammock and just hang from the trees and things like this, and I think I think there's going to be some interesting uh sort of dynamics and things like this. But we're, we'll just see how it goes. So maybe you can all pray for us and uh, but, um, yeah, so, um, we're looking forward to that. That that's in the middle of May.
Joan:Definitely. Well, we definitely will be praying Father Definitely, and that's a beautiful gift. It'll be lots of lessons learned, I think even in the School of Humanity, probably on that trip. I guess I wanted to say, like one last question before we go Any recommendations for someone thinking about a walking pilgrimage? I know you said just go do it, maybe that's the best recommendation. Just start small, but do you have any other recommendations for someone?
Father Conner:Just to have courage, you know, not to be afraid. I think the hardest thing is stepping out of your house and just saying, right, I'm going, yeah, that that's the biggest, the biggest thing, you know. But but if you've got a week, yeah, just take the opportunity and just say, right, we're going to do this. And you know, um, you know, go with a few friends and things. You, you know it's, it's, make it, make it an adventure, you know, and you, you, you pull each other through it. And and, as well, don't be afraid to go lightly. You know, because I remember watching. There was a one pilgrim from South Korea. She has state-of-the-art gear, a huge rucksack and she but you could see her battling and battling, and battling every day. I thought that really is like the image of misery.
Father Conner:And one day I was sitting in a square in a village just resting and I saw her walking through square in a village just resting. And I saw her walking through the village and then she just threw her rucksack down. And it was amazing just watching her go through her rucksack and just chuck everything into the dustbin. And I tell you, if I wasn't on pilgrimage I would have looked in that dustbin afterwards because there must have been some nice equipment, nice things in there, but she realized she didn't need it. Yeah, um, and so that I think that was her breaking point, because I saw her a week later and she was flying and the joy in her face and you know, and you think that that that's what we want.
Father Conner:We want resurrection and we don't, we don't want to take things which they're nice, but they're actually weighing us down, you know. So, if you want to receive, if you want to to receive something, you have to be prepared to let go, and and that's ultimately what we have to do at the end of this earthly life. So why not get into training now? You know that's what that's what pilgrimage is about. Is is just just um, learning to let go a bit, and we let go, not so that we have emptiness in our life, but so that we can have fullness. You know, that's that christ is, is our fullness, and he gives us everything that we need, and we are his children. He will provide for us. So it, you know, I think it's the greatest adventure. So, um, have courage, don't be afraid. Um, if it's, don't over plan it and and and just go with the flow.
Father Conner:It's beautiful to see how different people live the experience of belgium, which everyone, everyone lives it in a different way. So don't think, oh, I need to do it like father ph, oh, I need to do it like Father Philip, or I need to do it like this person, or that. Just do it as you can. It's the same with prayer, isn't it? We pray as we can, not as we think we ought to, or should, or things. Let's just, let's try to be real.
Joan:Amen. Well, thank you, Father. This was great. Thank Well, thank you, Father. This was great. Thank you so much for the conversation. Thank you, listeners, for listening and tune in again when we talk about the pilgrimage of life on NVEA. God bless.
