Pilgrimage, tourism and the place of the local church
Address to the Victorian Council of Churches Regional Conference at Echuca: 8th November, 2009
Fr John Davis, Vicar of St Peter's, Eastern Hill
I remember when I was studying theology at the United Faculty in Melbourne, Church History 1 texts included a fourth century document which was given the title 'Egeria's Travels'. Egeria was a nun from Spain who was able to make the trip of her life in going to the Holy Land for Holy Week and Easter at the time of the great bishop Cyril of Jerusalem. She wrote this account for her sisters back in the community. We know nothing else of her. Evidently the first and last papyrus sheets of the document were lost, but the bulk of this fundamental text relating to spiritual tourism — or as we Christians would prefer to say, pilgrimage, has survived and been republished many times. Her descriptions of the great ceremonies, her summaries of the addresses, her word pictures of the week of weeks for Christians, made even more remarkable by happening where the original events happened and following the same pattern, make this a wonderful resource and inspiration all these years later.
And now perhaps for the basic English source for pilgrimage studies: the Prologue to Chaucer's 14th century Canterbury Tales:
Here begins the Book of the Tales of Canterbury.
When April with his showers sweet with fruit
The drought of March has pierced unto the root
And bathed each vein with liquor that has power.
To generate therein and sire the flower;
When Zephyr also has, with his sweet breath,
Quickened again, in every holt and heath,
The tender shoots and buds, and the young sun
Into the Ram one half his course has run,
And many little birds make melody
That sleep through all the night with open eye
(So Nature pricks them on to ramp and rage)—
Then do folk long to go on pilgrimage,
And palmers to go seeking out strange strands,
To distant shrines well known in sundry lands.
And specially from every shire's end
Of England they to Canterbury wend,
The holy blessed martyr there to seek.
It helps to have a place and a time of year. It helps to have a Jerusalem or a Canterbury. It helps to have an appearance or a dramatic martyrdom. It helps to have a good story to tell and hospitality to share.
I was born in the South East of South Australia and my earliest years were in and around Penola. My great grandmother was one of the children that Blessed Mary MacKillop started her first school in Penola for. I consider myself a kind of second-class relic therefore.
Penola is an excellent contemporary example of rural spiritual tourism. The local Catholic parish church, the school and even my great great grandparents' family slab hut are all part of the tour that most people who go to that famous wine region centred on nearby Coonawarra will also make. There are excellent displays and welcoming volunteers. There is local accommodation though probably many would only choose to make a break in a longer journey. The area has been totally transformed in these two complementary ways since my childhood.
South Australia's rich German past also means that the Barossa and Adelaide Hills towns have at their centres several formerly competing Lutheran churches, often of exquisite simple beauty and surrounded by graveyards with German inscriptions telling the story of the community through the generations.
Again, vineyards and churches go together.
Another stranger South Australian example is the inescapably Australian shrine of Our Lady of Yankalilla, an hour or so south of Adelaide. The little Anglican parish church there had some significant damp problems on the top right hand wall of the sanctuary of the 1854 stone church. But in that shadowy set of markings some could see the Blessed Virgin and they believed it. Later in the garden a visiting quite secular family claimed to have seen a beautiful lady, who spoke to them. When I visited the church a couple of times from the late 1990s it had become of place of devoted pilgrimage and prayer, with claims of healing and transformed lives, as well as controversy and dispute. Some of this made the national press and certainly the Adelaide papers revelled in the eccentricity of it all. The fact remained that every weekend busloads of pilgrims were coming to that little church to see for themselves the marks on the wall that some saw as the outline of the Virgin, not with the child Jesus but with her dead son, as in the famous Pieta. There was, and no doubt still is, prayer and worship; hospitality and food. A welcoming and beautiful spiritual place with a focus and an intention.
Another different and now Victorian example that I can throw into our mix, is something that I was heavily involved in for five years during the 1980s. During those years a concerted effort was made to actually manufacture an occasion and a focus for pilgrimage and for gathering. These were the years of the Trinity Train Pilgrimages — I think three times to Wangaratta Cathedral and twice to Bendigo. That began with around 150 people, and I think finished with around 450. There was a vaguely Canterbury Tales edge to things, with more than a little of the noise and rambling nature that the experience of Italian festivals encourages. Anglican parishes all over Melbourne were encouraged to come as groups, with parish banners. Clergy and servers brought their gear for the big mass that was to be the central event upon arrival. For several years the train that took us from Spencer Street was steam, the carriages were in the old style. As the train pulled into the destination a brass band was pumping out a robust tune or the pipes were skirling. The procession made its noisy way to the cathedral as best it could, to be met on the steps by the local bishop and so it continued. The service included rousing hymns and a substantial sermon. Afterwards there was an experience of generous country catering, with a special wine bottling conveniently on sale. The home journey began with a blessing on the station platform. When 450 people fall to their knees on Wangaratta station platform 1, at the invitation of a megaphoned elderly archbishop, it is something to behold! The return journey was broken by a stop at another town on the line, where everyone squeezed as best they could into the local parish church for an old style parish evensong. Those were indeed the days. I do not know if it would work now.
But I do know that for instance last Sunday morning Wangaratta Cathedral had some 600 in attendance for the annual Jazz Mass that has become a big part of the famous first weekend in November festival. There is an excellent example of the church piggybacking on a secular event in a mutually acceptable way and indeed taking on board specific aspects of the celebration. This offers an unparalleled opportunity to get across substantial content in a positive way. Interestingly, some two thirds of that congregation made their communion at that time.
I have spent ten years of my ministry in Albury serving at the central Anglican church there, including the time of rebuilding after a major fire. Churches are indeed potentially a great source of interest both locally and with visitors if there is a story to be told, a welcome to be shared or a simply a quiet and loved place of prayer to be experienced.
I have no doubt that the sight of churches resolutely locked except for an hour two on Sunday is in no way going to be able to encourage any of the interaction with tourism, or better still, spiritual tourism or pilgrimage, that we have been considering. I saw one such church not that far from here last Saturday when I took a wedding in another nearby church. The town was packed with visitors. The pretty church with a pert little tower placed right in the centre of the main street had nothing on offer at all — not even a welcoming open door into a quiet cared-for space that said something of God.
My own present position is as Vicar of St Peter's Eastern Hill in Melbourne. It is the historic parish church of the city, dating back to 1846. Many visitors come every day. The wayside cross on the corner outside is constantly refreshed with new flowers. We are able to have some welcomers there sometimes to tell the story or to explain or to just to greet. Some in any case just want to pray. The church, though small, is big enough for all that to happen at once. We could do a lot better than we do no doubt.
The Melbourne City Churches Good Friday Way of the Cross each year is a remarkable example ecumenically. It has been going now for some 9 years. On the otherwise very quiet Good Friday morning streets of Melbourne, this Way of the Cross, a little like the one that Sister Egeria described in the document I began with, winds its way through the city streets and lanes, from church to church, with readings, prayers, Taize chants, quiet. Last year well over 4,000 people took part, over nearly three hours.
Perhaps there are two questions here. How does tourism affect a rural community and local churches and how might it? I have given us several examples, mostly rural, as a jumping off point for the discussion and forum we are about to share in. I have also suggested that in that absence of something spiritually spectacular happening in our own back yard, we might just have to work at it a little. I have also hinted that if we are not seen to be welcoming a creative engagement with what is already actually happening in many of our communities, we will simply become even more of an irrelevance.
What is it we have to share? What is it that we might offer? What partnerships might be entered into? What resources do we have? What stories can we tell? What pre-existing events or festivals can we quietly enter into?
These are some of the challenging issues that we might fruitfully engage.
Dr John Davis
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