On the Canterbury Trail

On the fifth anniversary of one of the most horrible tragedies of my lifetime, I have chosen instead to write about one of the most powerful experiences of my summer. You might feel this is unfair, and today is a day that we all should remember. Believe me, I have thought about 9/11 a lot today, but I probably have nothing new to add that we all haven’t heard before, and I feel I need to think of something else.

On June 30^th, 2006 we pilgrims from Memphis on our Journey to Adulthood pilgrimage arrived at a youth hostel off of a dirt road in Dorking, England. Our guide had the GPS system in our rental car, but this hostel was really off the beaten path and after several hours of looking for our hostel, we drove down a dirt road for close to half of a mile to find a small guest house in the middle of the woods. Several of the young men that I was traveling with had recently seen the Quentin Tarantino movie Hostel which was a horror movie about a hostel in Europe, and I believe everyone was just a little bit nervous about our accommodations that night.

We pilgrims were on the Canterbury Trail and after a tough night of sleep we awoke to continue on our journey. Our guide had made reservations at a hostel about 12 miles away in Holmsbury, St. Mary. This guide had never been to this part of England, but he assured us that everything would be alright and in the morning, found a local survey map of the area from the one person who was not in our group and staying in the hostel. The map was old, but sure enough it showed us a way to our next hostel from a trail that led out the back of the hostel we had just stayed in. Everyone was optimistic and packed a light lunch and began our hike along the Canterbury Trail.

It soon became clear that both our hike would be extremely difficult and our guide had no clue where he was going. The trail forked nearly every quarter mile and at each turn we guessed using our best judgment which way we should go. The journey was beautiful and exciting and ultimately very scary. We had put our blind faith in a clueless leader to make sure we arrived to our desired location and were able to be fed and have a place to sleep. After nine hours of hiking and what we estimated was between 12 and 13 miles, we walked out of the woods to see a sign for the Holmsbury, St. Mary youth hostel only 500 yards up the road.

During our whole day of hiking, we began to realize that our journey was not our own, but that we were apart of something greater. For the first time in my life, an entire group of people who were so used to being shepherds became sheep. Everyone learn to trust one another and for one short day we worked together like one person, like one body. No one struggled to make all of the decisions and no one got mad at anyone else. Just like pilgrims of the last one thousand years traveling along the Canterbury Trail, we walked aimlessly trusting that God would provide us all that we needed. We might end up in place we wouldn’t want to stay, but we would have what we needed. And for one day, I really knew what it felt like to be that one body of Christ.