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The school I went to was flawed and exemplary, a broken yet beautiful place filled with broken and\u00a0<\/span>beautiful people. Hilarious people. Sad people. Clever people. Successful people. Anxious people.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n It wasn’t the kind of school I’d necessarily want every school to be like, and I learnt rather more than\u00a0<\/span>I might have wanted about pain and fear and sadness than I might have hoped. I also learnt an immense\u00a0<\/span>amount about the power of humour, the power of ideas, the power of listening, and the power of words to\u00a0<\/span>shape and direct and change.<\/p>\n At the time of writing, barring any major time travel or accidental lottery win, I am neither an old man nor\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>a rich man. I am, however, trying to be a pilgrim.\u00a0The school hymn at my school was ingrained on the minds of all of us who plodded it’s hallowed Halls\u00a0<\/span>and thumbed its green leatherette hymnboooks. Our school hymn tended to be sung bombastically and\u00a0<\/span>loudly, mostly from memory. It was, and is (at least until some multifarious pc consortium takes over) the\u00a0<\/span>brilliant ‘To Be a Pilgrim’. It opens with the marvelously nostalgic and almost culturally insensitive ‘He who\u00a0<\/span>would valiant be’, and is allegedly the only hymn that the great Christian writer John Bunyan (he of A\u00a0<\/span>Pilgrims Progress, which if you haven’t read, you are missing out) penned. It is a stirring hymn, seemingly\u00a0macho but on closer examination it is actually quite subtle.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Take these two verses:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n He who would valiant be \u2019gainst all disaster,<\/i><\/p>\n Let him in constancy follow the Master.<\/i><\/p>\n There\u2019s no discouragement shall make him once relent<\/i><\/p>\n His first avowed intent to be a pilgrim.<\/i><\/p>\n Who so beset him round with dismal stories<\/i><\/p>\n Do but themselves confound\u2014his strength the more is.<\/i><\/p>\n No foes shall stay his might; though he with giants fight,<\/i><\/p>\n He will make good his right to be a pilgrim.<\/i><\/p>\n Since, Lord, Thou dost defend us with Thy Spirit,<\/i><\/p>\n We know we at the end, shall life inherit.<\/i><\/p>\n Then fancies flee away! I\u2019ll fear not what men say,<\/i><\/p>\n I\u2019ll labor night and day to be a pilgrim.<\/i><\/p>\n Like the brilliant book from whence it’s themes flow.<\/p>\n But I digress.<\/p>\n This blog post isn’t really about my school days – but rather one word and it’s present implications for\u00a0<\/span>how I choose to use a fraction of my time and energy.\u00a0I’ve recently had the honor of becoming a Trustee of a charity. Like many people my age (I completely\u00a0refuse to recognize the label millennial, which is a word properly used in discussions of eschatology)\u00a0<\/span>I want to make a difference. Unlike some people my age, I’m also wary of new things for their own sake,\u00a0<\/span>or of starting new things because the old ones are complicated or hard to change.<\/p>\n And so the cause I have chosen is close to my heart. Older people. I have become a trustee of Pilgrims\u00a0<\/span><\/a>Friends Society<\/a> because I love and recognize their Christian faith and focus, their heritage and history,\u00a0<\/span>their team and eyes to the future. In a culture where the elderly are not particularly respected, where\u00a0<\/span>those with dementia are ignored and sidelined, I felt led to, in a very small way, stand for something\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I think is important.<\/p>\n I grew up in a church with a good spread of ages. I personally find it quite difficult being in mono-aged\u00a0<\/span>groups. Because we weren’t designed for a family of only one generation. Echoing the God we Image,\u00a0<\/span>we were designed for relationship, fathers and sons bound together in Love. I’m quite sure that this new\u00a0thing I’m embarking on is a bit nuts – the timing might be wrong, it isn’t perfect, I’m definitely not perfect,\u00a0<\/span>etc. – but I’m struck by that word from the hymn. That word from the charity’s name. That notion of calling\u00a0<\/span>and challenge and place and journey coming together. To be a pilgrim.<\/p>\n I don’t know whether I’ll blog much about this facet of my life. I do know that I’ll think deeply about it,\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>pray About it, and reflect outwards some of the things I hope God will teach me through it.<\/p>\n After all, I’ve got a lot to learn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The school I went to was flawed and exemplary, a broken yet beautiful place filled with broken and\u00a0beautiful people. Hilarious people. Sad people. Clever people. Successful people. Anxious people.\u00a0 It wasn’t the kind of school I’d necessarily want every school … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1805,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"kt_blocks_editor_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[87,554,55],"tags":[224],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thomascreedy.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1803"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thomascreedy.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thomascreedy.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thomascreedy.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thomascreedy.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1803"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thomascreedy.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1803\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1807,"href":"https:\/\/www.thomascreedy.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1803\/revisions\/1807"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thomascreedy.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thomascreedy.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thomascreedy.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thomascreedy.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}