A Pilgrim's Diary: A More Excellent Way

28 June: A sabbatical begins not with escape, but with simple acts of love

28 June—Sabbaticals, like so many of our best-laid plans, have a way of beginning not with the exhale of stress we imagine but with the sharp intake of reality. I had pictured a gentle on-ramp: slow days spent preparing for my long absence from St Mary’s Brecon and checking in on the sick and housebound whom I visit regularly.

Instead, the last fortnight became an unexpected time of being at my father’s side as he entered a new stage of life. After a series of falls, it was clear he could no longer safely live alone, so my final pastoral acts before my sabbatical were for him: helping move him from the familiar walls of his flat to a nearby care home. There was a peculiar dissonance in that. As he surrenders the freedom to move as he wishes, I step into a season I’ve designed for movement—walks, pilgrimages, open roads and footpaths. He trades a flat he could navigate for a single room I helped to unpack on his behalf. I trade the packed diary for a blank page and a pair of walking shoes. But beneath the irony was a truth that felt like an echo of Paul’s words to the Corinthians: there is always a more excellent way.

We think of freedom as an escape from obligation. But if age and family teach us anything, it’s that we’re most free when we’re most entangled—when our plans bend to the needs of those we love. I didn’t begin my sabbatical by stepping away from duty of love; I began by leaning a little harder into it with the generous help of Sarah and of friends.

Before leaving, there was one last act of hospitality to offer. We opened our home to Frank Logue, the Bishop of Georgia, and his wife Victoria. They arrived to cover a couple of Sundays at St Mary’s in my absence and, perhaps more courageously, to care for our mad pack of spaniels. It felt fitting that the first days of my supposed “withdrawal” from parish life were marked not by absence but by a shared meal, good conversation, and the gift of someone trustworthy holding things together back home.

And then we were off. Sarah and I rose early to drive to Heathrow. If you know Sarah, you know that she doesn’t enjoy flying. This is, in fact, an understatement. She approaches each flight with the same grim resolve one brings to childbirth: an ordeal faced for the joy that follows. She does it anyway, every time, though the courage costs her dearly.

And courage is the right word. We’re quick to praise the grand gestures — dramatic rescues, brave headlines. But Paul reminds us that love’s greatest strength is patient, quiet, often unnoticed. Real courage is like that too: a stubborn resolve to face what frightens us because something — or someone — matters more. When fear corners me, I tend to hide my head and hope to God it passes. Sarah squares her shoulders, boards the plane, and flies anyway.

The flight came and went without fuss. The car hire was blessedly uneventful. We found ourselves in the sticky Achaean heat, unloading suitcases to the chant of a Eucharist drifting through the evening air from a nearby church. After the busy days behind me, it felt like a benediction—a reminder that the bread we break alone is never really ours alone.

In the soft neon glow of a nearby market, we found some cheese, drinks, and the only fresh bread still on the shelf: artos, the blessed bread, handed out as a sign of fellowship to the faithful. To arrive in Corinth—where Paul first laid out the mystery of the Last Supper—and in our first meal to be fed by that same sign felt like more than coincidence. A reminder that grace waits at our beginnings, hidden even in a small loaf from a quiet market.

So this sabbatical begins, not quite as I planned but perhaps as I need: not with grand adventures, but with simple acts of faithfulness and care. Not in solitude, but at my father’s side in an unfamiliar care home and my wife’s side at 30,000 feet. The lesson seems clear: the truest pilgrimages don’t start when we step out the door. They begin when we see that every detour, every quiet act of love, every hidden sacrifice is holy ground. These first days may not have been how I pictured setting out. But perhaps Paul was right: the more excellent way isn’t the road we choose, but the love we carry with us.