(1991 - Sinclair-Stevenson Ltd.)

"Poor cancer, the word is dark and terrible, full of fear to the medical profession as much as anyone else. I believe it is a constellation; you become simply one of thousands and thousands of stars within it. It is a common, everyday disease. A star may be sharp, and full of pain, but it may also be a guide, a useful companion on a dark night.
There is a hidden current within every individual. It seeks and stirs, hides and yearns. Sometimes it is bewildered, a mixture of anger and pain and certainty. It may recede, but it never escapes. In moments of crisis, it is often full of voice.
Make a Pilgrimage. Go to ancient places. Go wherever there are contemporary seekers. Go in whatever way it works out. Just go!"

(1999 - Bloomsbury)

Dedication:

For Margery Kempe
Her memory, her fervour
and human frailty,
above all - her inspiration

About the book:

After 28 years of family life, seven children raised, 15 house moves and an operation for cancer, Jennifer Lash suddenly had the urge to go on Pilgrimage. She wanted to make an outward journey that might also prove to be an inward one; to leave the domestic space, the roles of wife and mother, and track back to the roots, the essence of being, from which so many compelling urges to seek, realise and apprehend all seem to be proceed.

This book is a journey. She set out in bitter cold at the beginning of April and returned in the intense heat of summer. The places are as various as the people: places of contemporary Christian pilgrimage - Lourdes, Lisieux, Taizé; the great gipsy festival at Les Saintes Maries de la Mer on the Mediterranean; a week of meditation study with Tibetan Buddhists in the Dordogne; Easter Week in the small Russian Orthodox Monastery at Bussy-en-Othe; a week in Nimes, with a Community of the Lion de Juda, a religious order founded by Brother Ephraim and his wife Jo as recently as 1972, in which celibate men and women, and couples with their children, share an intense contemplative life. As well as the great gatherings of pilgrims there are numerous stops made alone: Vézelay, Le Puy, La Chaise-Dieu high in the forests of the Auvergne, Saint-Gilles. Finally there is the incredible celebratory phenomenon of Santiago the Compostela in the far north-west of Spain.

The variety of myths, legends, bones, springs, saints and images; the spaces of silence and the sounds that complement them; chants, mantras, gongs and bells, are all found to be as present and powerful in Europe in 1990 as they would have been to the medieval pilgrim in the twelfth or thirteenth centuries. The contemplative depths of man seem to be a spring that is unstoppable.

Press voices:

"Shrewd and courageous"
Sir Alec Guiness, Sunday Times Books of the Year

"Warm liveliness, humour and genuine tolerance"
Catholic Herald

"Excellent reflective passages, brilliant asides spiked with a spicy mix of deep perception and a dry humorous philosophy ... One is with her on her quest for a lost faith and one cheers her on"
Travel Courier Magazine

"Funny, alert and sensitive"
The Tablet