Pilgrims From Thames To Forth Bridge
What a joy to celebrate Sally Steen's seventieth birthday with her family and friends from her Burmese charity work and The Community of Aidan and Hilda. We embarked at Westminster Pier on an Edwardian cruiser, saw London's sights accompanied by musicians and a delicious lunch. One guest got me a ticket for The Lady in Black on her i-phone. We waited thirty minutes to cross one street (one and a half million turned out for London's Pride event) but there was plenty of time. On Sunday morning I atttended Quaker worship at London's Friends House.
Then I took two days north, across the new Forth Bridge, to see Peter and Dorothy Neilson near St. Andrews. Peter is my soul friend. The view from Crail across the Firth of Forth is magnificent.
On Monday Lyndon and Chris came to see me. This Canadian priest and his wife are using a three month sabbatical to pilgrimage through Britain. He writes reflections and seeks spiritual direction during the pilgrimage.
In between these activities I have worked on a draft brochure for CAH Australia Caim Council to consider: Its cover headliner is 'A New Dispersed Monastic Community for Australia's future. Rhythm with God. Roots in the Land. Relationship with the people.'
Inside it states: 'We are followers of Jesus from different faith traditions who draw inspiration from the Celtic monastic tradition before the colonial mentality entered Christianity, which calls us to be indigenous and diverse in every land'. The brochure highlights ten practices and quotes from David Tacey in Celtic Spirituality in an Australian Landscape by Brent Lyons Lee and myself (St. Aidan Press), and from Gary Worete Deverell's Gondwana Theology: A Trawoolway man reflects on Christian Faith (Morning Star). He writes 'Aboriginal identity is about the perseverence of a sense of Indigenous being - embedded in a deeply ontological sense of belonging to kin and country - over and against the will of a dominant culture and a culture that has systematically sought to erase these things... The Trinity is the grammar out of which we may start to comrehend our world, our society and our church as the arena of God's action for forgiveness, justice and peace... The way of self-emptying love is the way of Jesus...'