Day 58 of Pilgrimage – two weeks to go to get to Sale

Friday 16 October 2020

The weather is certainly changing. The views at particular points in my daily route are spectacular. Here is the dawn breaking over the Dandenong range last Wednesday (14 October 2020)

By the end of today I will have walked 580k and will arrive ‘virtually’ in Sale, God willing, on Friday 30 October. I am looking forward to catching up with the Dean of the Cathedral of the Diocese of Gippsland soon!

Thanks to the generosity of so many the pilgrimage account has over $2500. This is a fantastic effort and I thought you might like to see where the money is going. The Whitehorse Churches Care group is a partnership between many of the churches (including the Anglican Parish of Box Hill) in the Whitehorse council area to provide much needed love and care and compassion and support to those in need in our area.

Here is the link to our website: http://whitehorsechurchescare.org.au/

Walking early in the day in the peace and beauty and quiet of Box Hill gives one plenty of think to reflect. Here is more material that has been bouncing around in my head and heart. From The Rule of Benedict, chapters 10 and 11 – comments by Joan Chittister,

… the message of Benedictine spirituality is a consistent one: live life normally, live life thoughtfully, live life profoundly, live life well. Never neglect and never exaggerate. It is a lesson that a world full of cults and fads and workaholics and short courses in difficult subjects needs dearly to learn.

Prayer is the development of an attitude of mind that is concentrated and contemplative. For Benedict, therefore, the Sunday Office is a centrepiece that is fixed and solemn. The message is clear: Sunday, the weekly celebration of creation and resurrection, is always a reminder of new life, always special, always meant to take us back to the Beginning and the End, the Alpha and the Omega, the Centre of life. It is a day full of tradition and rhythm and rememberings of the simple but important concepts of existence. It is a return to basic truths that are never to be sacrificed for variety and always reinforced through repetition… the Sabbath is the moment for returning to the surety and solemnity of life, for setting our sights above the daily, for restating the basics, for giving meaning to the rest of the week so that the mundane and the immediate do not become the level of our existence.