This morning for Eucharist we switched things up by going to Salisbury Cathedral for the service. For a service where the normal attendance is maybe a dozen, us ~40 pilgrims showed up! It was nice to be able to share in the Eucharist in an Anglican church again. It's been good to be able to partake of the sacrament as often as we have. Truthfully, I am considering making communion a weekly occurance as a separate service back home in Indiana for any of those who would like to participate in this spiritually forming practice.
With consideration to how lecture heavy yesterday was, Steve Manskar and Paul Chilcote (the leaders of this pilgrimage) decided to shorten this morning's lecture and allow for a question and answer session with Paul. Granted, I didn't mind the lectures - I actually have been getting a lot out of them! The Q and A was an awesome hour, though, as we were all able to share questions and begin to address the possibility for praticality in a ministry context. Hopefully, another session like that will be made available before the pilgrimage is over.
After lunch we had free time for the rest of the day, and we packed it! I went with a group out to Stonehenge - first time seeing it! When you stop and think about the fact that this monument was completed around 2300 BC and it's still standing, the rock originating from at least 19 miles away, it's very impressive! At the same time, though, we don't know who built it. Evidently, scholarship within the past 100 years or so have disproven that the Druids built it. So not only do we not know who made it, but we don't know why or even how these massive rocks were transported - it's a lot of speculation.
One of the guys in my group, Chris Abel, brought up an interesting point: people gather from all over the world to be impressed by these massive rocks in their formation that have been standing there for 4000+ years, but we don't know anything about the reasoning or the people behind them. We have these Scriptures, these stories, some of them pre-dating Stonehenge's construction, and we know about the why and the people in them. Taking that one step farther, whoever built this monument built something physical that, even though it's lasted a very long time, has still dilapidated over time and has required maintenance to put some of the stones back in place and even patched up a bit. God's Word has built a spiritual foundation on which our souls can stand stronger than any rock or monument... how awe-inspiring is that?
We go back on the bus for Salisbury and ate dinner at a nice pub that we hadn't tried out yet. It had an outside eating area by the river that runs through Salisbury. After that, we found another pub that had really nice couches to sit and chat for awhile. Realizing that essentially everything closes (except for the clubs and pubs) during the evenings, we realized that we did have one other option: the movies! Now, I did kick myself a little bit, but it was a fun time with 3 other pilgrims. It wound up being rather a good move, though. The movie was fun - Ant-Man (I was going to see it eventually anyway), but the theatre that we were in was a converted live-performance theatre. The seating didn't start for quite a distance from the screen because that's an actual stage floor. There was some tapestries and the original beams in the ceiling. So we went to the movies and wound up watching a modern-day movie in old theatre: kinda' neat, actually!
After the movie ended we hurried ourselves back to the Cathedral's close because we didn't want to be locked out of our rooms at Sarum College (which is inside the close). (A close is a gated area, and our close's gates are locked around 11pm). Luckily, the gate hadn't been locked yet. The Cathedral is beautifully lit at night, so we went over there, took some pictures and were hoping to play in the art installation lighting that is in the main entrance archway to the Cathedral. Unfortunately, they had locked that area off from being able to enter into it while we had been out so we couldn't take nice pictures actually inside the lights. When I can, though, I will be sure to post what I'm talking about. If you're Facebook friends with me, you be able to see them within 24 hours!
It's been a fun day getting to know some of the others better on this trip and making new friends. I'm planning on keeping in contact with a number of the people on this pilgrimage! I know that sounds like something a camper would say before heading home, but it's true. This is a short-term community with the goal of growing spiritually as we learn about how we might help our congregations at home grow as well - and that is fantastic!
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