Skip to main content
8-24-22 Glenda Simpkins Hoffman
I shared the blessing of my recent Celtic Pilgrimage in my last blog. But the trip itself was not without some stress. A month before departure, one of the legs of my flight was cancelled. The airline had automatically re-assigned me to a flight that would arrive in New Castle, England, at midnight. That was not a good option as I was traveling alone and unfamiliar with the area. I ended up opting for a flight through Dublin a day earlier.
When I went to check in, I was told they had no record of my ticket. I won’t go into all the details of what had to happen to resolve this issue, but let’s just say it was a good thing the flight was delayed and I had four instead of three hours to deal with this issue. I confess it was very unsettling, and at one point I was ready to throw in the towel.
It finally was resolved. As I was boarding the aircraft and breathing deeply, I thanked God and asked the Lord to use this time as he wills. While I usually greet those sitting next to me and am open to talking, most people don’t want to do so. However, I sat next to a young man headed to Rome for six weeks. He is a believer but disillusioned with the church. We ended up having very rich two-hour conversation.
When I got to Dublin, I met up with the three leaders of the trip. A few days earlier I learned their flight had also been cancelled and they too were flying through Dublin. Because they were familiar with where we were staying, I was so grateful to connect with them and arrive in the country together, share a taxi to our hotels, and simply have time to hang with them the first day before others arrived. God’s providential care was certainly evident.
I already shared about how wonderful the actual pilgrimage was, and I will have more to say about that in future blogs. After the pilgrimage, on the day it was time to return home, my same group shared a taxi to the airport as we once again had the same flight, this time to Heathrow. However, the agents could not print my second boarding pass. After 15-20 minutes, they said I would have to get it printed in London. When I got there, there were more problems and more waiting, but it was finally resolved. The “problem” was that I had been given a “discretionary upgrade,” with which their system was having problems.
When I finally got on the plane, I was amazed to discover I was in first class—the individual seats that can be made into beds. While I didn’t actually sleep, it was truly a gift from the Lord that I thoroughly enjoyed stretching out my legs throughout the flight just because I could. And yesterday I received notice that the airlines is reimbursing the expense of my extra night’s stay in a hotel at the beginning of the trip.
Why I am telling you all this? Pilgrimage can sound very spiritual and exotic, but in reality, it means dislocation, inconvenience, risk, even hardship. It requires letting go of the familiar of home to venture off to unknown places and experiences. There are new things to see and people to meet, but it also means leaving behind the safety and security of the known to follow God into the unknown and an uncertain future.
As I have said already, pilgrimage is not just about the outward journey but the inward journey with God. The Celtic word for pilgrimage is peregrinati. In her book The Celtic Way of Prayer, Esther De Waal explains the meaning:
“The word is almost untranslatable, but its essence is caught in the ninth-century story of three Irishmen drifting over the sea from Ireland for seven days, in coracles without oars, coming ashore in Cornwall and then being brought to the court of King Alfred. When he asked them where they had come from and where they were going they answered they ‘stole away because we wanted for the love of God to be on pilgrimage, we care not where’…. Peregrinatio is not undertaken at the suggestion of some monastic abbot or superior but because of an inner prompting in those who set out, a passionate conviction that they must undertake what was essentially an inner journey. Ready to go wherever the Spirit might take them seeing themselves as hospites mundi, ‘guests of the world,’ what they are seeking is the place of their resurrection, the resurrected self, the true self in Christ, which is for all of us our true home.”
I remember sixteen years ago when I was interviewing for the position here at VPC, it was hard. I didn’t want to leave the church in River Forest or our home in Oak Park, Illinois. However, I felt God was opening a door and calling us to Vienna. As someone who had spent the first half of life in the West (raised in Nevada, college in Utah, first ministry in the Bay Area of California), marrying a man from the Midwest and moving to Chicago had already been a big step for me.
I never imagined myself living in the East. While I didn’t have that language then, it felt like a pilgrimage leaving the known and familiar to go into exile for the love of God. It was a challenging transition at first, but in time, it truly did became home for us. While in preschool, someone asked our son where he lived. He replied, “I have two homes—one on Blair Road and one at VPC.” This is the only home they can truly remember, and our home in this community of faith has been a gift.
As I live into this last season of ministry here at VPC to journey onward to wherever God leads, I’m grateful for my recent Celtic Pilgrimage to England. While it was supposed to be last summer, the pandemic caused it to be delayed. The timing is truly providential for me providing both the language and the experience to frame this present experience as a new turn in my life and ministry as part of my “pilgrimage” and our pilgrimage together as a church.
Even the travel hassles I experienced to get to England reminded me that pilgrimage is not easy and often trying and difficult, but God is always in control. While I had to endure some uncertainty and the stress of changes and inconveniences, God had even better plans and preparations ahead for me that I could never have imagined or orchestrated on my own.
While this transition in the church may seem a little bumpy at the moment for me and perhaps for some of you, we can remain confident of the goodness, providence, and sovereignty of God who is always powerfully working in and through and for us to get us all where he wants us to be. It’s not always easy, but he is always good and faithful.
While there is still a lot of uncertainty about what is ahead, I keep reminding myself that at least I am not like the monks venturing off in a boat with no oars. I am very grateful for the love, support, and resources God has and is giving to make this transition as smooth as possible. I am clinging to the hope of God’s promises that he knows the future and will get me and my family where he wants me to be.us
Having said that, I am also human. So the challenges and losses that accompany this transition are real and have to be processed and grieved. That is not only true for me, but for many of you as well.
I am not the only one on a pilgrimage; it is about your pilgrimage as well—individually and collectively—as the body of Christ at VPC. There have been changes already and there will be many more ahead. This is part of pilgrimage, which implies movement. We never stay in one place or circumstance. Life is dynamic, always changing.
God is always inviting us to take new steps of faith. I don’t even know what those are for me, nor do I know what that means for you. But God is with us inviting us to trust him and follow him wherever he is leading. What we can know is that it will be good—not painless or necessarily easy, but always good. Like the monks of old, God is also leading us “to our true self in Christ, which is for all of us our true home.”
