Northumbria Community

Waymarks Part 1

An important lesson for us as a Community is well captured in the prayer towards the end of our Brendan Liturgy, ‘Lord, I will trust You, help me to journey beyond the familiar and into the unknown. Give me the faith to leave old ways and break fresh ground with You. I will believe You for my future, chapter by chapter, until all the story is written’.

 This awareness that the story of our Community is still being written, so that new chapters are an inevitable and essential part of the story in progress: yet also realising that they don’t replace or negate the old chapters because both old and new are vital parts of our ongoing life. To understand that we need to grasp the familiar in order to go beyond it: we take hold of the known so as to enter the unknown, and, as a result, our Community needs both story-keepers and story-makers existing in tandem.

 Let me try to explain! Unlike the journey across the Pilgrim Way to Holy Island where the way-marks are numerous and the way clear, the spiritual journey is often ‘a journey without maps’. Time and again, we have to carefully plot a course, not always knowing if it is the right path. In Jeremiah 31:21 God says to the pilgrim people, wandering in exile, ‘Set up road markers’; as you journey ‘make your self guide posts’, turn your thoughts to the way you went, so that if needed you can retrace your steps. They were to build pillars, leave poles and stones to mark their way so that unlike Hansel and Gretel the birds wouldn’t eat up their markers, so they could find their way back on course.

 As Companions and Friends, as Community Groups, we need way-marks;

1] because all pilgrims are tempted from time-to-time to take an easier path, or a more exciting alternative route or equally, to remain stagnant on the known familiar path even when called to pioneer new ways. And

2] because nothing is static, everything is moving since it is life actually being lived, it is pilgrimage, people on a journey. The Kaleidoscope of life brings change with every turn but we recognize that all the different patterns emerging are in fact made up of the very same pieces - our DNA!

 What are the pieces that are a constant for us? At what point do we need to stop and take the opportunity to retrace our steps, and look for these way-marks, as Jeremiah 6:16 ‘Ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is and walk in it’. We need to be aware that as a Community now into 3^rd generation there are peculiar dangers, one of which is illustrated by the following story.