Pilgrimage for the Common Good
Kendal and Sedbergh Area Meeting are supporting the 'Barrow Pilgrimage for the Common Good'
Friends are organising a pilgrimage in April that aims to highlight the lives of those who have fallen out of the ‘safety net’ of the welfare state.
The ‘Barrow Pilgrimage For the Common Good’ is supported by Kendal and Sedbergh Area Meeting and begins on 10 April. The first stage will start at Brigflatts Meeting House and then proceed via Kendal, Rookhow and Swarthmoor, ending at Barrow Town Hall on 13 April. Accommodation has been arranged en route.
Tim Farron MP, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, will join the pilgrimage at Kendal Meeting House for a Meeting for Worship before Friends leave the Cumbrian town for the second day of the pilgrimage to Rookhow Meeting House.
Local Quakers have thrown out a challenge to Friends who want to combine fresh air with history and also make a statement about injustice in Britain today. They hope the pilgrimage will be a way of highlighting important concerns and connections.
Andy Weller, an attender at Brigflatts Meeting who is helping to organise the event, says: ‘Didn’t George Fox have a vision of people clothed in white there and changed people’s lives? We had a vision once: the welfare state. It was our “safety net”, there to catch us if we got hit by the contingencies of life.’
He says that with ‘the thinning of the safety net people are falling through as the contingencies of life hit them without the financial means to protect themselves’. He believes that ‘in the falling there can be distress and pain, a thinning out of their sense of worth. This is happening away from our view.’
He asks Friends to reflect on how they are connected to the lives of those who are suffering and he welcomes participants for the pilgrimage: ‘You can walk for as long or as short a distance as you wish,’ he says.
He adds: ‘On 13 April, Maundy Thursday, when the queen offers charity to the poor, the walk will end with silent witness as a symbolic act of our willingness to offer more tax to uphold the right to social justice, equality and peace embodied in our welfare state. There is further information from justsally1961@gmail.com.’
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