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A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Francis Davis, Academic and social entrepreneur

Life changing walks

Good morning.

This year I walked from Salisbury to Portsmouth via Winchester. It’s a beautiful journey that begins with the gentle hills and fields, includes chalk streams with swimming spots and ends in a city with warm hospitality.

I learnt that graduates don’t build Cathedrals because Thomas Hardy, the self - taught writer, had been a stonemason at Salisbury cathedral. I discovered that submariners may be more useful than architects because Winchester Cathedral once had to despatch a diver into the streams beneath it to repair water-soaked foundations. Portsmouth Cathedral still looks beyond land and, each year, casts wreaths into the sea on Admiral Nelson’s Day of memorial.

On the second day I encountered a group of Lancastrian women walking while singing joyously. They’d travelled from Beaconsfield, via Reading and were headed to the coast. Some of them then planned to cross the English Channel – presumably at this point not on foot- and keep going all the way to Santiago De Compostella in Northern Spain. It is said, you see, that St James hand is housed in Beaconsfield in Buckinghamshire whereas the rest of the dear man is in the Cathedral of Santiago, Galicia

The Lancastrian’s humour and laughter was infectious. In fact, they won’t ever know it but a consequence of that group’s walk and my walk becoming one for a while is that next year my son and I will be walking on the same ancient pilgrim’s way but beginning from the French Alps. That chance encounter has in a small way, literally changed the direction of our lives.

Lord, I pray for those who, by simply rejoicing in who they are, inspire each of us to take new directions.

Amen

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