A few weeks ago I began blogging each weekday on preparing spiritually and physically to lead a Pilgrimage which was then sixteen weeks ahead of me. (see the drop down menu in the bar above for Cotswold Pilgrimage details). This is week seven: I am nearly half way there. Most of the blog posts have been more about the spiritual journey than the physical - although I can tell you now that whilst staying with my daughter at her home in Virginia, we have been to the gym precisely six times in ten days. Somewhat of a record for this gym hater - but I have been hooked! Long walks on the treadmill with weights in my hands plus working out on various implements of torture. Wearing the pedometer and ensuring I do a minimum of 10,000 steps a day. Even pushing the buggy to the shopping mall - almost unheard-of in the States!! Many thanks to Golds for giving me a free pass for the duration of my stay. Now it's time for the second phase of this preparation time: going for the long haul. Over the next 8 weeks I need to aim for longer hikes - walking all day sometimes, ensuring the miles can be accomplished. This will be easier in the English countryside, especially as our little Bolt Hole is on the edge of the Cotswold escarpment. So as I go into the second half of this Pilgrimage preparation, phase two if you like, I will be blogging probably two or three times a week; thinking more about going for the long haul physically AND spiritually. And my research and reading will be around the topic of linking different types of prayer with our different personalities.

Going for the long haul - exactly as St Paul wrote. Pressing on towards the goal. Keeping our eyes fixed on the finishing post. My one aspiration is to press on to knowing Christ and attaining the heavenly prize to which He is calling each one of us.

For my determined purpose is that I may know Him - that I may progressively become more deeply and intimately acquainted with Him, perceiving and recognizing and understanding the wonders of His Person more strongly and more clearly .... Not that I have now attained [this ideal], or have already been made perfect, but I press on to lay hold of (grasp) and make my own, that for which Christ Jesus (the Messiah) has laid hold of me and made me His own. I do not consider, brethren, that I have captured and made it my own [yet]; but one thing I do [it is my one aspiration]: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the [supreme and heavenly] prize to which God in Christ Jesus is calling us upward. Phil 3 (Amplified Bible)

Stay tuned - I love interacting with you all!