Wales 2007: Howard Huws
Orthodox Friends of Iona Pilgrimage: Pembrokeshire 2007.
This was my first FOI pilgrimage, having been alerted to the Friends’ existence by Geraldine Fagan and Mother Nectaria last year. For that, I’m very grateful to both of them.
It proved to be a wonderful week. The weather kept fine, and we had an excellent place in which to stay: but far better than even those advantages was the company of like-minded Orthodox believers, under Archbishop Kallistos’ leadership. Living in north-west Wales, one isn’t short of interesting sites and fine examples of the Lord’s handiwork: but the Orthodox are few and scattered, so the annual pilgrimage to Holywell (1st Saturday in October) is the only regular pilgrimage on which we go. Meeting such good company at Ffald y Brenin, so many others from all parts of the world, was (and is) a great comfort and revelation. To visit holy places together, to eat and converse and worship together, free of distraction...can there be a better way to spend time? No wonder so many of our ancestors were willing to risk so much by embarking on the road to St Davids, or Santiago, or the Holy Land: such a recharge to one’s spiritual batteries could power the rest of one’s life.
I’m afraid I couldn’t refrain from spouting information at anyone within earshot: it’s one of my many failings. In mitigation, I plead an awareness of the fragility of knowledge: one must pass it on, as quickly and fully and accurately as possible, if it isn’t to flicker out like a spent candle and leave us in permanent darkness. Perhaps it’s a cultural trait: the Welsh have a long and flourishing oral tradition, and there’s much to transmit. We’ve been living a long time in a small country, so almost every hill and hollow has a significance, a part in a story, as if the land were a sheet of Braille from which our story can be read. Christianity is an integral part of that story: it has been an essential and continuous thread in the fabric of our being since we emerged from the wreckage of the Roman Empire in the 5th century. To visit holy sites, walking the paths and touching the stones and praying at the shrines, is to affirm that connection with the past and with the eternal, and draw new energy from it. To be able to let others in on that was a privilege, an unmissable opportunity, so please forgive my acting the know-all.
I’ve put my name down for next year’s pilgrimage to Jerusalem. There my tongue can rest, and let my ears do the work.
Howard \ Garmon.
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