News

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Lent and Leaflets

Posted: Wednesday 28th February 2024, 9:37 AM

Once again, Ali Green is posting on our Facebook page a daily meditation, linked to one of our Places, each day during Lent. It is worth just taking a few minutes to pause, read, think. Our newsletter has just gone out to members, and our new leaflets are at last following as fast as we can get them into envelopes.

Looking forward

Posted: Tuesday 2nd January 2024, 4:31 PM

Many thanks to Ali for her inspiring thoughts during Advent. We hope that you all had a good Christmas and send our best wishes for the New Year. As we turn our thoughts to 2024 we are pleased to say that we have a new leaflet now available and will be sending this out to members and Places shortly. We will also be following up on the discussions that took place at the 2023 National Gathering and hope to share this with the wider membership in due course. The Featured Gallery at the moment shows our newest Place - St Sampson's, South Hill, in Cornwall.

Advent posts on Facebook

Posted: Wednesday 13th December 2023, 11:04 AM

Advent is well and truly upon us, and once again Ali Green is posting a brief meditation and image from a SPP on our Facebook page every day. Have a look, Like and Share. We are working on the ideas raised by the National Gathering in October, and hope to share these soon. New leaflets will also be available shortly and will be sent to members after Christmas.

Creationtide posts

Posted: Saturday 2nd September 2023, 10:16 AM

Ali Green is once again posting every day on our Facebook page, with a Creationtide thought and pictures from a relevant Small Pilgrim Place. Do have a look, and 'Like' to spread the word!

Newsletter and National Gathering

Posted: Wednesday 23rd August 2023, 9:39 AM

The Summer Newsletter has just been circulated (see Recent Additions), including news of this year's National Gathering which will take place by Zoom on Saturday 28th October, where we hope to discuss practical ways of building up the regional aspects of the Network.

Labyrinths

Posted: Friday 21st July 2023, 10:26 AM

Our featured gallery at the moment shows some of the labyrinths associated with Small Pilgrim Places. Labyrinths are ancient spiritual pathways found across the world and embraced by church communities since the 4th century as a support for prayer. A labyrinth is different from a maze. A labyrinth has only one path that always leads to the centre...you cannot get lost...just stay on the path. Today labyrinths are again being created to offer a spiritual space for prayer and reflection, providing a stilling space in a busy world. They are a way of slowing down...of being thoughtful...of spending time with god. Walking a labyrinth is like making a pilgrimage - it is a journey where on the way in you might think about loved ones, distractions or burdens, be open to receiving grace, love and peace at the centre, and returning uplifted, blessed and renewed.

Poetry and SPPs

Posted: Tuesday 20th June 2023, 4:27 PM

To celebrate East and West Worlington Churches becoming members of the SPPN there was an evening of poetry on the theme of walking/pilgrimage on Thursday 8 June. Among the poems included was Part of An Tobar' (The Well), an old Gaelic poem, found at the beginning of Poacher's Pilgrimage: A journey into land and soul by Alistair McIntosh. Also read was 'The Moor' by RS Thomas, which connects with the recent R S Thomas & M E Eldridge Festival at Aberdaron which included the inaugural Jim Cotter Memorial Lecture at St Maelrhys. Some photos of all these Small Pilgrim Places are in the Featured Gallery.

New on the Website!

Posted: Thursday 6th April 2023, 4:51 PM

We are very pleased that there is now an interactive map (on Home page or link on Places to Visit page). The map enables you to see how many Places there are in a Region, and if you zoom in you can see the individual Places - clicking on the Place marker will bring up all the information about that Place. We hope this will make it easier for people to plan visits, or just to see where Places are in a geographical context. Many thanks to our Web manager Kevin for his hard work in getting this done for us.

National Gathering

Posted: Saturday 23rd October 2021, 7:06 PM

A group of members met by Zoom on Saturday to discuss the Network and how it should move forward. There was lots of useful discussion, sharing of different experience of members and Places, and the Core Group will now put this discussion into a format which can be shared and help all the Network members to participate in the Network's future. Coming out of the discussion was the value of connecting with other Places and members in the Network, and also an affirmation of the vision of places as somewhere to provide "space on the journey, for breathing, pondering, meditating, praying and just ‘being’". Watch this space!

Let there be peace

Posted: Sunday 12th November 2017, 4:49 PM

Appropriately on Remembrance Sunday the SPP at Abergavenny recently sent us a poem "Let there be peace" by Lemn Sissay spoken at Abergavenny Friends gathering on International Peace Day. It is in the Inspiration section of our Members' Area or can easily be found by Googling, or use the weblink http://blog.lemnsissay.com/2012/03/23/let-there-be-peace/#sthash.jaOE1EV2.dpbs

National Gathering

Posted: Monday 7th November 2016, 10:45 AM

We had a really good day at the National Gathering at Hedd Wen, Abergavenny. We were made very welcome, and it was good to meet other members and friends from the Network. Esther de Waal's inspiring talk was entitled “The Garden of the heart - a place to be alone with God“. She spoke of the importance of the sense of interior space, something known and acknowledged across the world, across religions, through the ages - the need for an inner space. It is there in the monastery - the cloister round the enclosed central (often green) breathing space; in the roman house, the mosque, the temple, the farmstead - sometimes even in the shopping centre. And there in the breathing space so often will be a fountain. A poem from Bonnie Thurston - "At the monastic centre is always a cloister, an orchestrated emptiness, a place of light a fountain to feed the heart’s garden. Give me this life: a centre empty of all but light, the stillness of Eden before fruit was plucked, my heart a spring of living water."

Children's Photo Art Trail

Posted: Sunday 14th September 2014, 9:10 PM

St. Laurence Church,Hallgarth, Pittington (www.saint-laurence.org.uk) has set up a PHOTO ART TRAIL for Children. ST. LAURENCE’S 10th century church is full of pictures, stories, patterns and shapes, in stone, wood and glass. It can make a family visit - there are refreshments to enjoy along with the activities. The trail encourages children to get the BIG picture from the SMALL details, TEST their observation, SEARCH for details, DRAW and DESIGN, and THINK BIG with some puzzling objects For more information or to make a group booking, please contact Dave Arnott: 0191 372 1683 or Sylvia Hope: 0191 372 1190

Etched by Silence - A Pilgrimage Through the Poetry of R. S. Thomas

Posted: Sunday 25th August 2013, 7:30 PM

Canterbury Press (www.canterburypress.co.uk) have published a new edition of Jim Cotter’s compilation of poems by Wales' famous poet-priest, R S Thomas, interspersed with short reflections and questions for exploration that connect the poetry to the North Wales landscape that inspired it. Originally produced locally, its appeal extends to all who know and love the poetry, and whose own faith and questions are mirrored in it. The book brings the poetry alive in a fresh way and provides a pilgrim guide to the locality, along with reflections that enable readers everywhere to enter more deeply into the world of the poems. The companion DVD is also still available - contact jim@cottercairns.co.uk. All royalties will continue to go to maintaining the church at Aberdaron (which is one of our Small Pilgrim Places).

Church bell rings out at Shopping Centre

Posted: Wednesday 9th January 2013, 1:43 PM

“Church bell to ring out at shopping centre” – one of our Places made the headlines as its bell, cast by Exeter's Robert Norton during the reign of Henry VI, was restored following a donation from the city's Guildhall shopping centre, in which the church sits. Andrew McNeilly, manager of the shopping centre, said: "The church is an important part of what makes us unique – we are the only shopping centre in the world to boast a 12th-century church at its heart.." The bell bears the Latin inscription "Quamvis sum parva tamen audior ampla per arva", which means: "I may be small, nevertheless I am heard over a wide distance."