Chairman's Report for 2008
The following report was delivered at the Confraternity's AGM on 31 January 2009, and will be published in a forthcoming Bulletin. You may quote reasonable extracts without permission, though we would appreciate an acknowledgement. For more substantial use, please contact the Secretary. |
When we gathered in this place one year ago, we were celebrating the 25th anniversary of the founding of the Confraternity. We reflected on Hope as the essential virtue for a pilgrim, on celebration and on giving thanks. We have continued through the past year to celebrate and to give thanks. For one more year, the vision of our six founders has been put into practice by our 2000 or so members, as we explored the nature of pilgrimage, stepped out into pilgrimage, and invited and assisted others to be pilgrims. Much to celebrate, much for which to give thanks, much for which to continue to be hopeful. As an expression of our reflection, thanksgiving and hopeful desiring, there emerged , thanks to the initiative of John Rafferty, the small and precious book “Roads to Santiago : a Spiritual Companion”. To mark our 25 years, 25 members have reflected on different aspects of the pilgrimage, matched with beautiful photographs and passages from Scripture. The book is a jewel with 25 facets, but of course there should be 2000 facets to it. Every pilgrimage is unique. Each of us has unique insights into the nature of pilgrimage. Use the book as a stimulus to your own reflections, and create that other book with its 2000 facets.
Looking back on the last year, as always there is much for which, on your behalf, I want to give thanks. We are a Confraternity ; what we do we do together. I thank you for your activities at meetings of various kinds, Practical Pilgrim meetings, Returned Pilgrims’ meetings, meetings in various parts of the country, services to celebrate St James’s Day and our 25th anniversary, meetings of intending and returned hospitaleros. Thank you for sharing your insights in the Bulletin, the Slide Library, and our on-line resources. Thank you for giving generously to our refugios at Rabanal and Miraz, in fundraising, sponsorship and as hospitaleros. Thank you to all who have offered themselves as hospitaliers in the refuges run by our sister Association on the Vezelay route.
There are several individuals I must thank for their special contributions to this work that we do together. Our new President, HE Don Carles Casajuana, who has succeeded the Count of Casa Miranda as Spanish Ambassador. Those who serve on our Committee, our Vice-Chairmen Alison Raju and Revd Colin Jones, our Secretary Marion Marples, our Treasurer Tony Ward, our Finance Manager Alison Thorp, our Bulletin Editor Dr Gosia Brykczynska, Roger Davies, Sue Goddard, Paul Graham, Catherine Kimmel, Mary Moseley, Angelika Schneider, Cristina Spink, Graeme Taylor and Revd Ricky Yates. Cristina Spink, who is stepping down, has, with her husband Paul, been a remarkable double-act on the Rabanal Committee. We are sorry that Ricky’s departure for Prague has caused him also to step down, after having given us his special expertise on the Publications Subcommittee. The Committee are grateful to Anne Froud and Wendy Beecher for taking minutes at our meetings.
Thanks to all those who make the Office so welcoming to members and enquirers, to Marion Marples, Alison Thorp, Christine Pleasants and all the volunteers, notably Wendy Beecher, Willie Bossert, Robin Dorkings, Schzen Ooi, and Richard Jefferies. For the Library to Howard Nelson and John Curtin,and many new volunteers. Howard and John have devised a scheme to classify the Library’s large holdings of accounts of members’ pilgrimages. Many have generously volunteered to work on this, and also to read and analyse the journals we receive from overseas. For our Website, thanks again to Howard Nelson, for the Slide Library to John Hatfield, for the Digital Library to Michael Krier. For all those who work with Gosia to produce the Bulletin : James Hatts, John Revell and those enlisted at stuffing-time. Doreen Hansen for sending out our pilgrim records, and Paul Turnbull who keeps the pilgrim register. All those who write our guides and other publications.
You will be hearing more about Rabanal from Paul Graham, whom we welcome back as Chairman of the Subcommittee, and more about Miraz from Colin Jones. Co-ordinator of hospitaleros for Rabanal is Graham Scholes, for Miraz Alan Cutbush. And John Hatfield continues to be our link with the Vezelay Association for those wishing to be hospitaliers in their refuges. To all of you for making us what we are, our thanks.
I said earlier that the 25 facets displayed in the book “Roads to Santiago” should be thought of as shining on behalf of 2000 or even more facets. I would like to suggest that those 25 pilgrims are maintaining the ancient tradition of substitutory pilgrimage. As you know, it was accepted practice in the Middle Ages for pilgrims to set out to perform
a pilgrimage on behalf of someone who was unable to perform it. Is there not a sense in which all of us are substitutory pilgrims ? I cast my own mind back to 1990, a year in which I had hoped to set out along the Via de la Plata, and suffered the great disappointment of being unable to go. Three years later, I was received as a pilgrim at the Hospitalite St Jacques in Estaing, and learned that the founders of that community had made their pilgrimage along the Vezelay route in 1990. I felt strongly that their pilgrimage in 1990 had been made on my behalf, although along a different route, and although neither they nor I knew it at the time. Every one of us setting out does not set out alone but in union with those others who are bound together in this Confraternity, in union with all other pilgrims around the world, in union with all those who desire to be pilgrims, in union with those who do not even know that they desire pilgrimage.
Another year lies ahead of us, in which to make our unique contribution to
Pilgrimage for ourselves and countless others. A year for hope, for desire, for giving, for thanksgiving. St James, be with us in our journeying.
William Griffiths