Colour Supplement

Articles by Christians around the world

Sunday 30 June 2008

 

To travel, or not?

by Jeremy Harvey - Reader at St. Andrew's Church

 

 

Travel, it has been said, broadens the mind. A recent Radio 4 programme challenged this belief and suggested that most British travellers do anything but broaden their mind on holiday.  Meant in fun, this questioning of why we travel got me thinking.

 

Do you like travelling? I do - provided there is a purpose to it.  Should we travel? Yes, provided we first weigh up the consequences and costs - to our pockets and to the planet. The threat to the planet caused by, among other things, too high rates of carbon emissions and the resulting very serious global warming, have created real dilemmas for the traveller. Time now to stay put. Give up flying? Use public transport where possible?

 

Each of us has to act responsibly, I suggest, and do what seems right in the circumstances in which we find ourselves. Thank goodness we are not told by someone in authority over us whether we can travel or not. But moral pressure is building up especially about how we travel.

 

People have always travelled, and it was Chaucer who write that in April folk long to go on pilgrimages. He described his assorted pilgrims making their way from London to Canterbury to visit the shrine of Thomas a Beckett.

 

I shall shortly be going to Avila in Spain on a study-pilgrimage visit. I am looking forward to it and hope to learn more about Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross and to meet some Spanish people. I have been on pilgrimages before - in particular to places associated with Christ's life - and found them positive and challenging. To step out of my routine, to visit other places in the company of strangers, to submit to a pattern of daily worship, to learn how others live and cope, is enriching and testing.

 

Jeremy Harvey

 

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