Well, we’re back from an amazing time away together of feasting and celebrating, praying and pilgriming (is that a word?), laughing and soaking up beauty and sunshine and space… We tasted a little bit of the renewed earth and have come home energised and enormously thankful!  The ThirdSpace pilgrimage day took us to Newport Sands where we began with the words ‘The Father has called you, the Christ walks with you and the Spirit will surely surprise you’.

There we found treasures representing our heart’s prayer and there we drew and named the ‘angels’ God has sent us at key times in our lives (as he sent his angels to St Brynach on Carn Ingli); we wandered through the dunes and took shelter and reflected on what ThirdSpace has meant to us saying:

 ‘May the God who is community be with us   as we seek to be community’.

From there to Nevern to the wonderful St Brynach’s Church with its ancient Celtic cross and time to rest and to meditate in the intense stillness there. 

For many of us the Pilgrims’ Cross on the pilgrimage route to St Davids was the most poignant part of the day, as we placed our treasures in the cracks in  the stones and placed a special blessed piece of driftwood for our good friend Tony who was still in hospital and so not with us…

The final part of the  day was at St Non’s with an unforgettable time in the chapel there, as we anointed one another with water from the well, echoing those first words of the day and ended with the ‘companion’ liturgy.

We were then treated to such hospitality that we cannot expect to see again this side of eternity from the Sisters of Mercy at the St Non’s Reatreat House. What a day. What a privilege. What wonderful companions.