From the Cocoon to the Web: A Pilgrim’s Shift
As I approach my seventy-eighth year as a Catholic, I realise how long it has taken me to emerge from a rigid cocoon — one that promised safety by insisting that the only truth was to be found within the Church.
My Catholic upbringing immersed me in a world that seemed to have answers to everything. It was a complete and coherent universe: a map of the cosmos, of life and the afterlife. Moral and immoral behaviour were defined down to the legal minutiae of Canon Law. The structure provided identity and belonging. Yet it was also exclusive. We believed we possessed the fullness of truth; even the status of other Protestant souls could seem, at times, uncertain.
My Jesuit training later immersed me in a world of questions rather than answers. Certainty gave way to inquiry. The ground became less solid, more alive.
When I walked my Caminos in the 2010s, I did not discover anything spectacularly new. What I gained was a still-growing awareness of the sheer privilege of being alive. Raw nature was all around me, embracing me. What I felt was more present than what I was thinking.
The Recording from Ardrossan
Recently, I came across a voice recording I made while walking to Iona, the small monastic island off the west coast of Scotland.
It had been a monumental journey. In February 2011, I set out from Alicante on the Mediterranean, walking first to Santiago de Compostela. After a short rest, I resumed in Javier, crossed France and England, and eventually took a boat from Mull to Iona. After 153 days on foot, I arrived.
In the recording, I recount a brief encounter near Ardrossan, less than a week from my destination. A woman, learning that I was a pilgrim, asked me to say a prayer for her.
On pilgrimage, such brief encounters often create singular moments of connection. Like a butterfly landing on an open flower, the moment passes quickly, yet something intangible is exchanged. Long before the internet, human beings were weaving a physical web of connection — for trade, for war, for love. We have always travelled toward one another. Our survival has depended upon it.
Listening now to my younger self, I hear a man who attributed the unspoken energy of that meeting to the hand of God.
Fourteen years on, “the hand of God” is still appropriate metaphorically. However, I understand it differently.
I now see that energy as something profoundly human — a gift shaped by evolution. A small reward for openness. A spark that flares when two people meet without defence or agenda.
In those moments, when we offer an open ear and an inner silence, the ego loosens its grip. For a few seconds, we are simply present to one another.
Love, outside of time.