Lourdes/ACROSS

24 February 2008

Lourdes/ACROSS

I get a great deal of satisfaction writing about my E2E challenge via this blog for you to read. The other satisfaction is that I have the means to divert slightly to subjects that close to my heart, the Ecoflow was a prime example. Alison Pride, email address, alisonp42@googlemail.com. I am now going to do that again.

The place I love to be at more than anywhere else in the whole wide world is Lourdes. http://www.lourdes-france.com The people I love to go there with are the good people of ACROSS. http://across-uk.org/ I have asked that my ashes are taken there with ACROSS and cast in the river so I can pass the grotto for one more last time. I am now going to share with you a piece I wrote about ACROSS, I called this piece “Across Jumbulance Pilgrimage to Lourdes. The 5 Experiences”.


Across Jumbulance Pilgrimage To LourdesThe 5 Experiences


Everyone that travels to Lourdes with ACROSS, and goes on board the Jumbulance is as important as the next person, why? Because on every pilgrimage that leaves from Scotland, UK, to travel to Lourdes, carrying its cargo of 10 sick/disabled people (VIP’s as we are known) of mixed gender, 9 carers, 2 drivers, 1 doctor, 1 priest, and 3 preferable 4 nurses – depending on the degree of infirmity of VIP's and abilities of carers on board. Making a final total of 24 souls per trip, are as special and unique as the last Pilgramage and next.

You may well be asking why would anyone want the Lourdes experience by travelling with ACROSS?

I cannot answer the above question, only you can upon your return. But I can tell you what you will miss if you don’t. You see, I am one of the disabled people who have travelled to Lourdes, by ACROSS, over many years, many times.

The first experience you will have when you board the Jumbulance is the feeling of the love of the welcome you will receive from the whole group. That feeling will never leave you even when you are back home and in your usual routine of life. You will feel that love every time you think of the Jumbulance, every time you look at a photograph of the trip and every time you make contact with anyone of the new friends you have made on your trip or anyone who have had any connection with Across Jumbulance. You will never forget it.

The second experience you will have is the living the Lourdes experience. Whether you have religion or not, I am sure that at some point your heart will want to sing the hymns during one of the daily masses we have at different locations we visit in and around Lourdes. At a daily Mass your heart will probably want to read a lesson from the bible, your heart will want to just be quiet.

The third experience will be of being at the grotto in Lourdes. Your eyes will look in wonder at the place where Bernadette saw the Virgin Mary. The will hear the silence as people file pass the Groto, where the spring water is still coming out of the ground. You will want to light a candle for someone dear to you and leave it at the grotto with hundreds of others. You will walk in candle light processions with thousands of people, some disabled, some not, from hundreds of countries and Christian donations. You will pray, you will listen, you will be at peace, and you will be in awe of what you are seeing.

The fourth experience is you will laugh, sing and enjoy the social evening out in the town of Lourdes. Sit outside a café watch the life of Lourdes passing you by while drinking the local wine, eating the local food. You will experience the drive through the Pyrenees Mountains, stopping for lunch in one of the small villages we pass through. You will experience the joys of not only being on a pilgrimage, but also being on a holiday, making new friends. You will experience so much laughter that week that your ribs will hurt with the joy of the laughter.

The fifth and last experience is you will feel full up to the brim with the Across Lourdes experience, but you will feel the experience of anti climax and the missing of the group that has broken up upon our return back home. You will know you have had the Lourdes Across Jumbulance experience.

Why not contact ACROSS, they would love to hear from you, and experence the 5 Experences yourself. I am glad I did as my wall full of photographs of my trips with ACROSS will show.