Day 72 of Pilgrimage – St Paul’s Cathedral, Sale, Victoria

Friday 30 October 2020

I am almost at the doors of St Paul’s Cathedral in the beautiful city of Sale.

https://www.stpaulssale.org.au/

It has taken 72 days – 720k – and I arranged a zoom meeting recorded earlier in the week where I received a fantastic welcome from the Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral, the Very Reverend Susanna Pain. Our conversation went so well and was so interesting that I forgot at the time to ask what I could be praying for as I visited the Cathedral. In an email latter she wrote:

Please pray for smooth transitions as restrictions ease; and deep connections with those feeling isolated, and still isolating. For our synod coming up in a few weeks on zoom, and ordination at the end of the month, with who knows how many people.

Here is our zoom conversation:

The quiet day that the Dean mentions is on this coming Sunday and the details are here:

quiet 1 November 2020

The weather is again fantastic early in the morning when I do the bulk of my 10k’s – here is another glorious sunrise – not as spectacular as the last one posted but nevertheless beautiful – peaceful and quiet.

Thanks to the generosity of so many, donations have now just passed the $3000 mark and I am very thankful for all your kind support. More reflections from the Rule of Benedict:

Prayer in the Benedictine tradition, then, is not an exercise done for the sake of quantity or penance or the garnering of spiritual merit. Benedictine prayer is not an excursion into a prayer-wheel spirituality where more is better and recitation is more important than meaning. Prayer, in the spirit of these chapters, if we ‘sing praise wisely,’ or well, or truly, becomes a furnace in which every act of our lives is submitted to the heat and purifying process of the smelter’s fire so that our minds and our hearts, our ideas and our lives, come to be in sync, so that we are what we say we are, so that the prayers that pass our lips change our lives, so that God’s presences becomes palpable to us. Prayer brings us to burn off the dross of what clings to our souls like mildew and sets us free for deeper, richer, truer lives in which we become what we seek.

I am reminded of the motto of my High-School, Wavell State High, in Brisbane, which is Esse Quam Videri which means: To be, rather than to seem to be. How to be authentic and faithful in trying circumstances has been a question floating around in my head as I walk. To be people of deep real hope is my prayer for us all this week.