Thomas à Kempis, in his classic “The Imitation of Christ,” has this interesting line: “Few are improved by sickness; so also they that go much on pilgrimage seldom grow in sanctity.” (Book 1, ch. 23)

Those of us who say we are on pilgrimage at the moment have to deal with this. What was Thomas getting at? How can we best respond? Did this mean something different in the 1400s, when he wrote, than it might now?

I think right now, sitting down to dinner in a Welsh pub built around the year 1600, that the motivations for the pilgrimage make a lot of difference. Back in Thomas’s time, a pilgrimage either was to make up for some sin or offense; or it might have been intended to store up good on one’s account with God. Those aren’t the reasons I’m walking  Britain.

Interestingly, I have a little difficulty spelling out religious or theological reasons for doing this. I guess I would say that my motivations are devotional or spiritual. I want to see places where people have worshipped for centuries the triune God whom I love. I want to be in the places they were in. I want to see (and sometimes, like today, climb) the hills they saw, listen to the descendants of the birds who were in their gardens, I’d like to see the stars from the places they saw them.

Certainly, much has changed in Britain over the centuries. Including its landscape. Much has changed in its church. It has Celtic roots, Roman roots, Henry VIII’s influence, the intertwining of church and state, its current decline in attendance, signs perhaps also of revival.

My motivation for my pilgrimage is to see what I can of this history, to connect to it, and to somehow apply its lessons to my own spiritual life. I spend hours every day out here essentially alone and in silence. Today I left the village of Pandy at 7:00. I hiked up into the Black Mountains along the Offas Dyke Path, one of the national trails in the United Kingdom, and I did not see another person until around 2:00, I think it was. (I did see sheep, wild ponies, and cows.)

Many of my days are like that. I have ample time for prayer, for meditation on a verse I read in the morning, for contemplating God’s creation and my place in it.

None if it makes me holy, or makes me grow in sanctity. That, I believe, is a pure gift of God. But it might help. It might help me see my own place and role in our world more clearly. It might clear the decks, or set the stage, making me ready for God’s gift should he – in his overwhelming love – want to give it to me.

(written on 12 May 2025 in Hay-on-Wye, Powys, Wales)