A pilgrimage continued

My dear Friends
On Sunday morning I went to the local Catholic church. I was greeted warmly as I went in. I sat beside a lady who told me that she had been to Israel and would like to go to the Reform Synagogue in Ramsgate. (I meant to tell you that I had attended a service there on the previous evening and it was very moving.)

The Mass was taken by a visiting French priest, now in Algeria. Unlike my church back in Cambridge, there was an organ and a choir and even a pulpit! The first reading was taken from the book of Kings, about Elijah and the presence of God he hears, not in the fire or the thunder but in the 'still small voice.' It is a theme which has run throughout my life, and the voice I heard in a graveyard near the sea which brought me into the Church in 1988/1989.

After the Mass I jumped on a bus, to discover it was going back to Broadstairs. The folk festival was in full swing there and we bowled along and I had a lovely chat to a local man.Once there I spent hours wandering the town, into second hand bookshops, and olde worlde tea shops. I met a delightful English lady there, who is a Buddhist and who is going to dicover why there is no Hebrew writing on the Montefiore Synagogue in the woods in Ramsgate.

Everyone was eating fish and chips.I sat near the sea and from my post could see the Morris men dancing on the pier. Then the Morris ladies danced right beside me. I chatted to a nice Anglican lady from Ramsgate. Sat in a cafe in one of the oldest buildings in Broadstairs and determined to go back. Finally I went right through the town and through the York Gate, which must have been the entrance to the town at one time.1774 was written on it. As I passed through I got the whiff of smugglers and later dicovered that The 39 Steps was written there.
To be continued
Shalom from
Sister Gila