Travels with a Stick

I recently read Richard Frazer's book “Travels with a Stick” in which he recounts something of his experiences walking a significant chunk of the Camino de Santiago. I always enjoy books about the Camino – I have read just a few, but it is encouraging to enter the experience of the pilgrims and inevitably hear something of their reflections. Richard is a Church of Scotland minister, now retired, but at the time of his pilgrimage and writing, the minister of Greyfriars Kirk in Edinburgh, so reflections with a distinctively Scottish and Presbyterian note which struck a particular chord with me. For example, I do like his reflection on Communion, with the interesting challenge that he throws in with the help of a friend of his. He writes: “The central part of the liturgy that most people know is the communion, the sharing of bread and wine that Jesus did on the night he was betrayed and arrested. Christians have been doing that since before they had Bibles, which is an interesting point to make to fellow Reformed Presbyterians who have often made a much bigger thing of the Bible than of the communion. In John's Gospel, on that last night before his arrest, Jesus doesn't share bread and wine; instead he washes his disciples’ feet. A priest friend of mine pointed out recently that the Christian church might have been quite a different organisation if we washed each other's feet every week!” One other example – I am also challenged by a reflection he offers on how folk see the church. He says: “In so many places the church has become an anxious institution, obsessed with its own self-preservation and nostalgic for a lost golden age. But here on the journey of the pilgrim, people just set off, not being sure, not being fettered by institutional boundaries, journeying with hope and even being prepared to get a little lost. Isn't this, I was beginning to think, a much more helpful approach to encounter mystery than the proscribed, dogmatic structure of institutions that often operate in a way that no longer makes sense to so many people?” Some interesting thoughts, inspired by what was clearly a fascinating and challenging experience. One last quote - “To be a pilgrim you don't have to jump through hoops or sign up to doctrines you'd rather question - you just have to set off! Indeed, that is what the first ever pilgrim, Abraham, did. Ripe in years, he just upped and left Haran with his equally ancient wife, Sarah, and the rest is history, as it were.”