Have I left pilgrimage behind? I had a very trying experience some years ago, when I was involved in a legal case that was very personal. I brought the case, so it was my responsibility, but it was personally very taxing. I was wonderfully supported by Laurence, and by an astonishing legal team to whom I shall forever be indebted. They treated me with great care and kindness as well as providing their invaluable expertise.

What I learnt through that experience was that because the entire process went on for almost three years, I had to compartmentalise if I was not going to be consumed by the experience. I learnt to put the questions and uncertainties in a mental box that I only got down when I needed to for the next stage of the process. It helped keep me relatively sane.

But this experience is different. It is all positive. It is not at all traumatic. I can allow it to flow through me, perhaps in ways I don’t yet see or understand, over the next weeks and months. I have spent a good bit of time migrating my website from one host to another (the first was too techy for me, the other is simpler and does what I need perfectly well), and that has given me a chance to reread my immediate impressions and to add to them, and to frame the whole site in a slightly different way.

What I think I am learning is that pilgrimage is a new way of looking at life for me. In a week I have a journey to make to an academic conference, and I will add to that a visit to a bereaved relative. I’m finding that this too may become an occasion of pilgrimage – not to a place so much, but in intention. Pilgrimage is about being open and prayerful; wanting, as you move around, to be as fully aware of everyone and everything that is around you. It is about finding still spaces to be and reflect, and not to be consumed in the busyness of life. Being busy is normal for me – but pilgrimage boths challenges and invites me to live in that in a different way.

There is something else that pilgrimage pushes at. It is the question of competence. I know what I can do, and I know what I can do well. I have got to the time of life when it would be easy to stick to those well-worn grooves, and not to venture too much beyond them. I am not diminishing the value of doing the things I am competent at well, not at all. But in late-middle age am I open to being stretched? Pilgrimage suggests that there is always more, and that in the company of the man who roamed Palestine (for ever on pilgrimage?) it is, if not without risk, then an adventure I am being invited into in all parts of life.

I had initially thought that I would do this pilgrimage in annual stages. But, with Laurence’s encouragement (most generous, as I know he misses me very much), I have booked another week’s walking in October. Between now and then there may be some occasional blogs, so if you follow me here or on my Facebook page, you will get notification of anything that comes up.