{"id":12570,"date":"2025-09-30T13:19:20","date_gmt":"2025-09-30T12:19:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.leedsjp.org.uk\/?p=12570"},"modified":"2026-09-01T18:10:51","modified_gmt":"2026-09-01T17:10:51","slug":"30-sep-a-religious-but-soggy-experience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/c4652100.myzen.co.uk\/jp2026\/2025\/09\/30\/30-sep-a-religious-but-soggy-experience\/","title":{"rendered":"30 Sep – A religious (but soggy) experience"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\nBy Joe Burns, Commission member<\/em>

A few weeks ago I wrote an article to promote a mini-pilgrimage of Hope, in celebration of ten years since the publication of Laudato Si. I remarked at the time on the lack of water in the canal, due to the prolonged dry spell.

Well, no such problem when we actually did the pilgrimage on Saturday 20th September as it rained the whole way.

\n\"20250920_132008\"\nOur numbers were depleted for various reasons. However, we gathered under a tree in the canal basin to say a prayer and to be welcomed by John Battle, Chair of the Leeds Diocese J&P Commission, who reminded us of some of the key messages of Laudato Si. Then we set off along the canal towpath. It is a remarkably peaceful way to get to Kirkstall, despite being so close to the city. Because of the rain, our surroundings seemed especially green and heightened our perceptions of God\u2019s creation around us.\u00a0

\n\"20250920_141452\"\nThe family of swans that Paul and I saw on our first visit were still there \u2013 and it was good to see them in a canal that looked as though a barge could travel along it. Despite the rain there were lots of conversations as we walked along and it seemed that in no time at all we were leaving the canal and crossing the Leeds and Bradford road to get our first glimpse of the abbey.

\n\"20250920_152406\"\nOnce in the abbey we headed to the church and gathered in the vicinity of where the high altar would have been. We were joined at the abbey by a few more people who had been unable to make the walk itself. We held a short prayer service before retiring to the caf\u00e9 for a hot drink before setting off on our homeward journeys.

\n\"20250920_155002\"\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13721,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[28,5],"tags":[350,477,25,478],"class_list":["post-12570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-catholic-social-thought","category-climate-change","tag-hope","tag-kirkstall-abbey","tag-laudato-si","tag-pilgrimage"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c4652100.myzen.co.uk\/jp2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c4652100.myzen.co.uk\/jp2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c4652100.myzen.co.uk\/jp2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c4652100.myzen.co.uk\/jp2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c4652100.myzen.co.uk\/jp2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12570"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/c4652100.myzen.co.uk\/jp2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12570\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19921,"href":"https:\/\/c4652100.myzen.co.uk\/jp2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12570\/revisions\/19921"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c4652100.myzen.co.uk\/jp2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c4652100.myzen.co.uk\/jp2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c4652100.myzen.co.uk\/jp2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c4652100.myzen.co.uk\/jp2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}