Going Home By Another Way

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. from T. S. Eliot, The Four Quartets: Little Giddings

On Sunday morning we gathered at the ruins of St. Enda's Church, with our Celtic celebrant, pilgrim guide and author Dara Malloy. We celebrated the Eucharist calling on all dimensions of Creation, all that is masculine and feminine, all that is in Earth and in Sky, all that is of Creation. We remembered the ancient peoples who found this land to be holy before they even knew what holy meant, the medieval monastics who followed them and built churches and cities and sanctified the land, and the pilgrims like us who have come to this sacred ground for centuries to be reminded of the grandeur of God. We chanted , we offered up our intentions for the service and our pilgrimage by burning them in an old soup can, and then we celebrated the Last Supper.

We broke bread and drank blackcurrant juice in memory of Jesus, whose sacrifice was the greatest act of love in all of human history.

And now we are headed home, most definitely by another way having tapped into the deep well of living water that is the promise of Jesus, the well filled with living water that quenches all thirst as Jesus told the woman at the well. We will never be the same, and so we will be re-entering and "knowing the place for the first time."