Day 93 – Almost done!

Friday 20 November 2020

On Sunday 22 November – the celebration of the Feast of Christ the King – I FINISH my pilgrimage as I make my way virtually back to St Peter’s Anglican Church, Box Hill, after completing 945k in total and after having visited each of the five Cathedrals in the Province. Today I have made it back to St Paul’s Cathedral and I caught up with the Dean for a brief chat which you can see here:

Thanks to the generosity of so many we have passed the $4000 mark in donations to Whitehorse Churches Care:

Also to show I have done the walking I include this snapshot from my phone showing my walking since May (when I got the phone).  I have been able to average more than 10k a day which way my plan:

I have really enjoyed the challenge of the pilgrimage and have firmly embedded the habit of getting up at 5am to go for a walk. I have gone through one pair of runners over the course of the last three months which is also a testament to the concrete pavements I have pounded around Box Hill South. But one of the wonderful opportunities afforded to me as I walked was time to reflect and pray. I have enjoyed immensely the Joan Chittister   book on the Rule of Benedict and leave you with one final quote. I think it apt with all the complaining and whining around on so many issues – not least the Covid 19 restrictions!

If Benedictine spirituality understands anything about life at all, it understands the corrosive effects of constant complaining. Complaining is the acid that shrivels our own souls and the soul of the community around us as well. Complaining is what shapes our mental set. Feelings, psychology tells us, do not affect thoughts. Thoughts affect feelings. What we allow ourselves to think is what we are really allowing ourselves to feel. When we learn how to correct out thoughts processes, then we learn not only how to stabilise our own emotions but how to change the environment around us at the same time. What we see as negative we make negative and feel negative about. What we are willing to think about in a positive way becomes positive.

Complaining, in other words, undermines the hope of a community and smothers possibility in a group. The whinner, the constant critic, the armchair complainer make an office, a family, a department, a community a polluted place to be. What we accept wholeheartedly that fails, we can always correct. What we condemn to failure before we have ever really tried to accept it, is not corrected; it is doomed to an untimely and, more than likely, an unnecessary death.

Benedictine spirituality tells us to open our hearts and our minds to let grace come in from unlikely places, without preplanning and prejudgments. “When there is no desire,” the Tao Te Ching instructs, “all things are at peace.”

So this is the last post for the time being. Thank you once again to all who have followed my 95 day pilgrimage and blessings to you all.