Walking with Chesterton | K. V. Turley | CWR
Once a year, a group of admirers of G.K. Chesterton make a 30-mile pilgrimage from the site of his birth to his grave. This year’s trek included several Chestertonian touches.
Just before 8 am, on July 30, 2014, I made my way to a church in Kensington, London. As I drew nearer I saw smoke rising, and, nearer still, found a young man puffing on a fat cigar. It was then I knew I had arrived at the right place.
I had come to join the Catholic G.K. Chesterton Society’s annual pilgrimage, now in its fourth year. This consisted of a trek from the center of London, beginning at the church Chesterton was baptized in, to the place he now lies buried, some 30 or so miles away in the country town of Beaconsfield. The young man greeted me with a smile as I sat down and waited for others to join us. That said, there was no telling who was going to turn up. On its inaugural outing, the walk consisted of only two people, one of whom was the organizer, Stuart McCullough. So, if nothing else, having spoken to him earlier that week, I was expecting at least one other to arrive. He had better, I thought, as he had the route map.
London at that time of a summer’s day is particularly fine, but that morning the street we waited on was bathed in a gentle sunlight, and, it was through this, with a broad smile on his face, that our leader was to stride. Stuart is a Chestertonian character in his own right. He is as good-natured as he is unflappable, as humorous as he is determined. When not organizing excursions such as this, he is to be found running, with his wife, Clare, the Good Counsel Network, a charity for women who find themselves pregnant with few options available if plenty of “wolves” circulating. It is a venture few would have dreamed possible. And yet, starting with just a few hundred pounds, the McCulloughs have established a permanent presence in central London that has offered, and offers still, hope to many.
Stuart may be a serious man in many respects, but like many in the pro-life cause he wears it lightly. And so, as one might expect, the Catholic G.K. Chesterton Society is all a bit of a joke. When first come across, the expectation is of meetings and chairmen, conferences and annual dinners—not a bit of it. Its sole purpose is the yearly pilgrimage. The society has no members as such, no permanent abode; it is invisible except for the band of pilgrims assembling yearly on a London street, a band with no banners, with most of those assembled strangers to one another, and with a lone map—not only do I think Chesterton would have approved, I think he would have laughed out loud.
Just after 8 am we set off.
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