A week on from Holy Saturday and we’re not out of the woods yet, and probably won’t be for some time. Here is the link to the talk I gave a week ago at the Lay Community of St Benedict, the sequel to the one I posted yesterday and about the same length. The theme is Isaiah 55, verse 1, Come to the water.
Now to return to day 17 of LEJOG. We were still in Devon and for the morning part of the walk I was joined by my friend Rosie. My mum and her mum were best friends, working as nurses in the NHS in the 1950s. We don’t see each other often, usually when we are coming by on the End to End! Gentle walking of the sort that occupied most days is delightful but you never know when you might encounter a bit of adventure peril.
I’m sure you know the sort of thing I mean. It crops up from time to time as a warning on the rating of a film or TV series. WARNING: contains scenes of mild adventure peril. Well, LEJOG is like that too. It all started with my foolish intention to bag all of the Lee’s if I could. This was down to a daft remembrance of a family of friends I know who have the surname Lee (a common one after all). I was at West Lee at this point, a farm alongside a not too busy road. Shortly afterwards, I came across Middle Lee, another farm alongside the same stretch of road. It only took the emergence of a footpath sign to East Lee to tip me over the edge and I was off on this unplanned side adventure. To be fair, the path did cut off a small corner so it seemed a good idea at the time.
That was until I emerged into a boggy, muddy area, fed by a small spring I think, churned up by cattle, which I had to cross to get to the gate I needed to go through. It was that sort of sucky mud that will have your boots if you give into it. With the help of a few stones to step onto, a few branches to hold onto and a deep breath, I was through the mud and the gate and out onto the path again. Phew!
My heart had been racing and I calmed down as I walked through a green meadow. It’s the sort of adrenaline surge that propels you on for the few miles and probably makes you think you can traverse any boggy, muddy patch for the next 100 days. So much for mild adventure peril.
It’s not anything like the same league as the anxiety that currently stalks the world. A particularly crass set of TV interviews over the last few days has contrasted a pair of royals with a single mum in a tower block to illustrate the question: how were people coping with their mental health? It doesn’t take a genius to work out that the poor and vulnerable are going to suffer more than the rich in their castles. Nor does it take much to realise that we will all react to protect ourselves and our families, trying to build up some sort of insurance for next time, the next threat or peril there is. The origin of the word adventure is ‘a thing about to happen’, something that by change or luck might happen in the future.
But poverty is no adventure, and justice is not built by chance or luck.
From the remembered gospel
Jesus said to Peter, ‘Feed my sheep’.
Calling One, you call us onwards to build justice:
in these uncertain days we attempt to keep our heads down,
trying to avoid risk even as we see injustice exposed.
In all our adventures, may we always strive for justice
and pray your kindom come
on earth as in heaven.
Amen
JAL: 18.04.2020 in Longdendale.