Synod Pilgrimage - Wednesday

John and I drove up from Suffolk yesterday to join the pilgrimage today. It was a joy to meet old friends from the pilgrimage last year at breakfast. The accommodation at the Jean Muir centre is very swish compared to that last year. Rowena lead  us in a service after breakfast and asked us to consider reconciliation today. 

Walking in to Kelso

Since the last pilgrimage I have acquired two new young dogs and consequently am walking much more than I was a year ago but thirteen miles was nevertheless arduous. We started out from Dryburgh and ended our walk in Kelso. The beauty of the river Tweed and the borders with its sloping fields of bleached corn, its wild flowers and birdsong was a glory to the eye and peace for the soul. Motorists rush through this area on their way to Edinburgh, Glasgow and the highlands. More discerning ones stop perhaps in one of the towns like Coldstream for a coffee but the area can only be properly appreciated on foot following the river as we did today. It was a day of pleasure catching up with fellow pilgrims' news and of pain feeling sore and swollen feet towards the end of the walk! 

Reconciliation is a hard subject when one feels another has blighted ones life in someway. Or when one feels God has dealt one a very unfair hand. It gives rise to anger fury and fear - all negative black emotions. These feelings estrange us from God and the only way to surmount them is through following Jesus' teachings and strenuous prayer. A woman I knew hated her father who had blighted life at home with his adultery his bad tempers and violence. Finally she made the decision not to see him and did not see him for eight years. For her it was putting the lid on a can and she hoped thereby to rid herself of a situation which was causing her terrible anger pain and grief. But it didn't work because all the dark emotions remained and would surface from time to time worse than before when she did see her father. She became a Christian and went to a retreat in France for a week. While there, away from all the pressures and rushing around of her normal life she began to think seriously about making a peace with her father. She started by praying the Lord's Prayer and when she came to the words "forgive them that trespass against us  " she would say I forgive you in her mind to her father. She told me that the words came from her mouth but slowly ( it was not a quick process ) they came from her heart. She still remembered incidents from her childhood with sadness but without the anger and much of the pain evaporated. She met up with her father who by now was an old man who had had many serious strokes. They were reconciled before he died. She had moved from darkness to the light of Christ and by following Christ's teachings of forgiving those that sin against us and in being reconciled to her father she became closer to God and found a real peace. To achieve it we have to set aside "self" and our own importance and trust in Jesus.

Caroline Byles