Twelve years ago, Kate and I enjoyed our first winter in Menorca. That is to say we enjoyed the months from November until March, which bore little relation meteorologically to the season of winter in Canada, where we were before. Anyway, as anyone knows who has spent the ‘quiet’ season in Menorca, it can be very tranquil and peaceful. So much so that even though we had been in Menorca less than a year, when things started to open again in April, we both had a sort of instinctively indignant reaction: ‘Who are all these people invading our quiet island?!’ Apart from being a disturbing display of possessiveness, I suppose that it was a measure of just how easily we came to feel at home here, and just how appealing this island can be - especially if one enjoys the tranquility and simplicity of the ‘quiet’ season. 

In Homer’s Odyssey, one of the places encountered by Odysseus and his companions as they return from the Trojan war is the land of the Lotus Eaters, a place that made people forget their responsibilities and live in a sort of narcotically induced, stupefied state. I’ve wondered whether Menorca might be an equivalent, apart from the narcotics, of course. How many people have come to the island for a holiday, or a brief stay, or a couple of years of ministry, and found themselves staying far longer than their original intent? 

However, Menorca is a little different from Homer’s land of the Lotus Eaters, in that while this island is alluring and keeps us here, it does not stupefy us. Quite the opposite: it heightens our awareness of the natural world and reminds us how fragile this earth is - and that maintaining its beauty depends upon our efforts to preserve its qualities while allowing for responsible, carefully measured and managed progress. To spend a winter here is to be reminded how important it is to have fallow time. But to spend a winter in Menorca implies (generally) that either one is a native of Menorca, or one of the rest of us who have found ourselves imbedded in this funny little crossroads that seems to attract people disproportionately to its physical size - in other words, a wanderer. Or perhaps a pilgrim? 

I was pondering this while researching material for a sermon on Willibrord, an eighth century Yorkshireman, and I discovered an interesting thing. He entered a monastery, and then after he became a monk, chose to pursue his vocation in Ireland. Why? Because like many other monks of the time, he believed that exile from his native country on earth would make him a better pilgrim on the way to his eternal homeland in heaven. This sense of pilgrimage motivated his decision to lead a mission to the land of the Frisians, who were the ancestors of the modern Dutch and Belgians. So apparently the idea of being a migrant 1300 years ago was grounded in spiritual beliefs and the idea that life is a pilgrimage, travelling and migrating from mortality towards immortality. 

The spiritual beliefs relating to migration can be seen to be rooted in biblical texts. Two pivotal events in the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament) are the Exodus from Egypt and the enforced exile of the people of Israel in Babylon, but there are many other depictions of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers. The New Testament perpetuates this idea of divinely sanctioned migration and discipleship as pilgrimage. The birth of Jesus is set in a place that was not his family home, and shortly afterwards he and his parents flee to Egypt as refugees. So if the biblical record is anything to go by, God is rather favourably disposed towards migrants and refugees, who share the common characteristic of being outsiders, searching for identity and a sense of belonging. 

This brings up is an important aspect of migration, or life as a pilgrimage from mortality to immortality that should not be overlooked. Moving away, or moving on, means leaving something behind. Like the Yorkshireman, Willibrord, who went into the church more than 1300 years ago and became a migrant for his faith, there is a complex interplay between identity formed by what has been left behind, and that is then shaped by a new environment. 

Perhaps one of the more dramatic (or melodramatic) expressions of letting go in order to move on is in David Byrne’s song, Burning Down The House. It’s about destroying something that offers safety, but has us trapped, and in many ways can be seen as a metaphor for those aspects of life that we need to let go in order to be free to move on. 

Dr Guli Francis-Dehqani, the Bishop of Chelmsford, is the first woman from a minority ethnic background to be ordained as an Anglican bishop in the UK. Having arrived in the UK as a refugee from Iran in 1980, she is familiar with the experience of having identity reshaped by a new culture. In a new book, Listening to the Music of the Soul, she writes, ‘There is no escaping the fact that sometimes you have to lose your identity to find it. This is true not only for those who suffer displacement as refugees and asylum seekers, but also for those who experience serious illness, divorce, grief, abuse .. in fact profound loss or injustice of any kind … At times like these, we can either remain stuck or we can begin the climb to a new sense of self, which may be slow and painful, but also possibly transformative.’ There are many fictional illustrations of this process, including the character of Jean Valjean in Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables. 

It is this possibility of transformation that underpins the intentional migration of the mediaeval monks such as Willibrord, seeking to refine their identity by allowing new settings to reshape it. Whether consciously or subconsciously, it underpins the wandering that brings many people to Menorca. Like many who have spent extended time in Menorca, I know that I am not the same person as the one who passed the first of thirteen winters (so far!) here. And I believe that it is the tranquility of these quiet seasons that has allowed me to embrace a saying that originated in the autobiography of the golfer, Walter Hagen: ‘You’re only here for a short visit. Don’t hurry. Don’t worry. And be sure to smell the flowers along the way,’ or at least the fennel, rosemary and chamomile. There is certainly plenty of hustle and bustle in the world around us as autumn gives way to winter and we await the arrival of spring. But there can be peace, too. 

I believe that for all of us, life is a process of growth by embracing the notion that we are all offered the opportunity of journeying as pilgrims. That by letting go of what holds us back, we can allow our identity to be shaped and formed by the changes along the way. That by immersing ourselves in seasons or places of tranquility we can find calm and inner peace. And that we can let our journeys be a gift of contentment to ourselves and others.