Refresh
Te hautaka hoatu ora

My breakthrough moment came through deep conversations with six young women from our group who were interested in the spiritual practices I had adopted over the years. They were eager to know how I had pursued God in ways that resulted in both spiritual and psychological growth and transformation. Each conversation finished with someone saying: ‘Angelika, you must write a book’.  This was the boon that I had been waiting for!

As a child, visits to Canterbury’s towering cathedral gave me a sense of the timelessness of faith and an awareness of many in whose footsteps I followed. So, what’s in this pilgrimage life? Just as in Chaucer's day, I find community in a rich diversity of people and landscapes. I hear people’s stories and I see in action what I’ve come to describe as God’s choreography in the wonder of timing, of place.

Love has a compass, so I try to ensure that the direction of my life, and its everyday realities, are fostering sensitivity to God’s loving presence and invitations. God nudges, invites, and draws me onward into more of what it means for me to be truly alive. The way of love ‘means to be sensitive to life, to things, to persons, to feel for everything and everyone to the exclusion of nothing and no one.

In a scallop shaped chapel in the Spanish town of Ponte Vedra I climbed the winding stairs up into the dome. My back felt so sore – for the first time ever. I’d been travelling for weeks, walking kilometres every day on the most amazing pilgrim route imaginable. Yet suddenly, weirdly, I felt pain and it worried me.