‘St Andrews Peregrinos’
Good morning…
on a second Rest Day for the University.
But how restful will it be for me and the four other members of the St Andrews Peregrinos? We are all part of the Chaplaincy and have entered this year’s Step Count Challenge, along with other University teams. The Challenge begins today, and runs till the end of May. Each day from today we’ll count our steps – the point is “to keep active, stay connected and have some fun along the way.” It’s not just steps: cycling, dancing, gardening, house cleaning, lawn-mowing, pilates, rowing machine, swimming (in the North Sea?), trampoline, yoga and zumba can all be converted into a step count. In house, flat, garden and neighbourhood, our smartphones and fitbits will be counting every step. See https://www.stepcount.org.uk/index
Last year the Chaplaincy’s teams could include golf, tennis, scuba diving and, of course, kickboxing to the count. If we’d wanted to. My greatest total was 24,399 on 29 May (golf on the Castle Course). My lowest – a paltry 3027 on 19 May (recovering from the Eurovision Party the night before?). This year, social distancing must be adhered to – perhaps all the more reason to stay active. (NB remote control zapping does not have a conversion figure.)
As for our name, St Andrews Peregrinos, it’s a nod to pilgrimage. Pilgrims walk to their destination, active, connected, having fun along the way, but also hoping to deepen in knowledge of their route and insight into themselves, and to find greater meaning in life. We have given ourselves a Spanish name to honour perhaps the most famous pilgrimage route of all, the Camino, which ends in Santiago de Compostella, in Galicia in north-western Spain.
None of us will be walking the entire Camino this spring. But we may take a few steps along other pilgrim routes near our door. For us in Fife it may be the Fife Pilgrim Way, which runs between Culross and North Queensferry in the south-west and St Andrews in the north-east. I had hoped to walk this in August – and it may still be possible. But many of us will have walked part of it this past month, in Craigtoun Park, along the Lade Braes, in St Andrews approaching the Cathedral. Our own honorary Church of Scotland Chaplain, Revd Prof Ian Bradley, has published The Fife Pilgrim Way: In the Footsteps of Monks, Miners and Martyrs, which sets the pilgrim way in its historical and spiritual context, worth reading before or after walking the route. I spotted an ad for the book one day at Haymarket Station before the current season:
Perhaps for some of us, our pilgrimage this season will have a different goal. It can’t be a place, as all our days return us home. And we lack what usually shapes and gives purpose to time – an end-date, a deadline. But we can still journey, whether in a step count challenge or not, in discerning who we are, and how we can share our resources with others on the journey.
¡Vamos, peregrinos!
Yours,
Donald.
Hello there, You have done a great job. I will certainly digg it and personally suggest to my friends. I'm confident they will be benefited from this site.