Recently we spent a few days in Liverpool a city I had heard a lot about, and have passed through but never stayed in. Whilst we were there we visited the Beatles Museum, the home of Liverpool Football Club at Anfield and the Anglican and Catholic Cathedrals at either end of Hope Street. I have always been a fan of the Beatles so it was not surprising to me to find myself moved by the sight of George Harrison’s first guitar, (not that different to my first guitar), a pair of John Lennon’s iconic glasses, and the piano on which he played the song Imagine, and then hearing ‘Let It Be’, as we left the museum for its shop, and yes, I did buy a tee shirt.
What did surprise me was to find myself rather emotional on our visit to Anfield. I must confess that I am not fan of football, I am not entirely indifferent to it, but if there something else on I will probably watch that, and yet here I was at Anfield surrounded by people who had come from all over this country, and indeed all over the world, many of them wearing Liverpool shirts, and I could see that for them this was a kind of pilgrimage to holy place and I could not help but swept up in it, not least when I stood on the Kop as the audio tour played the crowd singing ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’. And I did remember that as a child I had supported Liverpool.
The two cathedrals did not disappoint, the stained glass in the Catholic cathedral, and its stillness made a perfect end to this ‘pilgrimage’.
What struck me was the fact that even in our non religious age we still seem to have sense of the sacred, that guitar, those glasses, that piano, they are almost like the relics of saints. And the hallowed turf of Anfield is not called that without reason. We were warned before the tour started not to even think about walking on it, and that reminded me of God’s words to Moses, ‘Remove your sandals because you are walking on holy ground’.
There is something about their story that makes these places and things important to us, not least because in some way they have become a part of our story. I remember hearing the news of John Lennon’s violent death and how on the same day I heard his irreligious hymn ‘Imagine’ for the first time, and how it touched my soul. It is still a favourite.
Your lives and mine are as yet un-ended stories and journeys, and these places, moments and objects are like touchstones that we return or travel to because they tell something about who we are and where we are going, and our place in the great pattern of things. The late John O’Donohue said that ‘The pilgrim travels differently, always in a pilgrimage there is change of mind, and a change of heart, the outer landscape becomes a metaphor for the unknown inner landscape’.
If we let it, the outer journey is always a reflection of the inner journey, and both journeys can be a sacred pilgrimage towards the God ‘in whom all things hold together’.
Brislington Community News 