Do it yourself
I paid a visit to Winchester yesterday. It is a lovely little city, with a gem of a cathedral at its heart and the famous Round Table on display in the Great Hall of the former castle. In the museum there are all sorts of artifacts, including mementos of the city’s pilgrimage heyday, when people would come from near and far to worship at the shrine which housed the relics of St Swithun. Like many other pilgrims, they wore the traditional scallop shell. You can see one on the right below, with tiny holes pierced to mount it as a badge. The one on the left, though, tells a different story. Someone who could not find, or afford the real thing fashioned their own from materials found to hand.
Maybe this represents the most genuine kind of spiritual endeavour – neither smart nor neat, but genuine and bearing the mark of humanity.
