Month: April 2020

The End to End included plenty of hills. Few of the days had no hills at all. In Cornwall there are quite a lot of hills and as I was heading towards Bodmin Moor, on day 9 the route was certainly up hill (although of course sometimes downhill too). A sign post beside the road said it was 777 miles to John O’Groats, but as I always explain to folks, it depends which route you take. There’s no official route for LEJOG and mine would eventually be quite a bit more than the minimum, which is by road of course.

One year on and the route has got us to Good Friday, traditionally a day of Cross-walks or Walks of Witness. Our walk this year was shorter than previously. We knew of a hill above the small town where we live and went up that to remember the hill where Jesus was crucified and to pray for our town at this time. It was a beautiful Spring day and flowers, birds and insects were all out in profusion.

(photo shows stone cross on the way to the Taphouses)

Earlier on I’d shared my Good Friday talk with the Lay Community of St Benedict. you are welcome to view it here if you wish

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTJ7xUh6aVM&feature=youtu.be

It was good to be able to share stories of the walk with other people and to hear from them about their remembered bibles, particularly their remembered psalms. I love the Bulls of Bashan that appear in psalm 22! For me ‘I look up at the hills: where does my help come from but from God who made heaven and earth’ is hard to beat on any day, but especially on this Hill Day.

(photo above shows the stump of the Redgate Cross, on the edge of Bodmin Moor)

From the remembered gospel
They took him to a hill outside the city, and there they crucified him.

Cosmic God, Creator of heaven and earth,
your hill work is awesome and I admire it on any day.
Thanks for up hill strength and courage
and for downhill trundling and relaxation.
From the hills, may we bless our country together.
In the ups and downs help us remember Jesus who hung on for us.

JAL: 10.04.2020 in Longdendale.

On day 8 of the End to End I visited the Eden Project. It was something I was looking forward to and I wasn’t disappointed. From the twisted paths of the willow labyrinth and bluebells of the woodland area to the fantastic diversity on display in the bio-domes, I could have spent forever there. As it was I only had a morning as I had to walk onto Lostwithiel, the ancient capital of Cornwall. Even so, every hedgerow on my route was alike a garden, every strip of woodland, every river bank or wall as spring continued to encourage me as I walked along.

One year on and this is Maundy Thursday and it’s rather different to the plan. I was going to take my Dad to the Easter Triduum celebrated by the Lay Community of St Benedict in Wales, where I was to speak about my walk. I have made two presentations instead of talks and we will have the Triduum on line: a virtual adventure instead.

Last night I witnessed a kiss. It was a kiss between Father, inside a care home, and Daughter, outside in the garden. The kiss took place through the glass. It made me cry. My dad is in his own home, on his own, about 20 miles from where I live. He rang to thank me for the kippers I sent him. Meanwhile Bob has been trying to help him get onto Zoom so he can join in. No mean feat from here: I now call him the i-dad.

A kiss may seem to be such a small thing, yet it can mean such a lot. To help and heal or hurt and harm: there are many kinds of kisses. The sun kisses the earth and the bee kisses the flower. The rise in domestic violence during COVID19 lock down indicates the increased danger some face when kisses can be a sign of control and coercion.

That Jesus knew about kisses is obvious from the gospel. The kiss in garden would not have been his first kiss. He would have been kissed by his mother and friends and family. Who knows who else would have kissed him: read between the lines. The family at Bethany were his friends, the death of Lazarus made him cry (see https://foowr.org.uk/notesfrombambi/).

From the remembered gospel
They went to the garden. Judas said ‘The one I kiss, that’s him’….

Kissing and kissed, such small actions:
we think of the kisser and the kissed.
The kiss between friends, the greeting of family,
the kiss between lovers, the kiss of peace makers,
the kiss of betrayal, the violent kiss.

Kissed One, we read your lips:
love is written there, love for us.
Kissing and kissed, such small actions.

JAL: 09.04.2020 in Longdendale

‘I’ll have a packet of mixed metaphors please’ . I’m glad to say you can still source these locally. Have a good look round and see what you come up with.

By day 7 of the End to End I had of course been walking for a week. And day 7 itself was one of those days on the LEJOG when you just walk. There’s no major distractions, nothing on your map or in your mind you’re particularly expecting or looking out for. It’s a case of walking, about 10 miles, from one place to the next. Although of course I was walking through a Cornish Spring Day so the whole place was alive with stuff; not quiet or subdued but exploding around me.

Which brings me back to metaphors. Earlier in the week, Bob told me about a radio programme he’d heard concerning metaphors and cancer. It seems that the much rehearsed metaphors of cancer are those of war-like struggle and challenging journey. Furthermore, most people who survive cancer say they didn’t find the war-like struggle ones very helpful and had mixed views about the challenging journey ones. I suspect this is a case of worn out metaphors and it can happen anywhere. It happened in the church sometime back when the old images of God almost universally repeated as ‘Almighty King’ began to pale a bit. As a result alternative metaphors for God, which had always been there, began spinning around more freely.

So refresh the metaphors please, and that’s particularly true for COVID19. It might not have been around long but it’s already got stuck in a metaphor jam, the WW2 version as some commentators have noticed.

At the moment Bob is seeking instructions for making a sour dough starter after his earlier bread making experiments didn’t make much headway. The action of yeast in flour can be a good metaphor for growth. The sight of the gradually emptying reservoir could be a metaphor for …… [fill this in if you like]. On the Isle of Eigg in the Hebrides I came up with the image of the calling cuckoo for the calling Christ. Not everyone liked it because they were overloaded with negative cuckoo images. But the sound of a real cuckoo, as I heard on my walk last year, on a spring day is an alerting magical sound.

This Holy Week, maybe you have preparations to make, some of which may differ from previous celebrations. Perhaps you’re eating kippers rather than roast lamb or making sough dough starters instead of hot cross buns. Look around and smell the season as you remix your metaphors.

From the remembered gospel
Jesus said: ‘A woman took a large amount of flour and mixed it with a small amount of yeast and when it was all leavened…’

I am the mixing woman, introducing the yeast to the flour:
The unseen action of the yeast goes on out of sight.
I am the calling cuckoo, hidden from sight but persistent:
summoning the new life of the season.
I am the cross-wise one, travel with me.
JAL: 08.04.2020 in Longdendale.

Day six of the End to End began in Truro at the Cathedral. Truro was the first city I visited on the walk, and had been a point of the two previous walks by Bob (20030 and Hannah (2012). Indeed most of day 6, I was on the same route as taken by Hannah. At lunchtime I reached the village of Probus, named after an early British saint.

The Probus fish and chip shop had been a welcome sight on Hannah’s walk in 2012, as it had been a rainy day and we’d stopped for the essential food stuff, of course. The shop owner had generously given a £20 donation for Oxfam (Hannah was supporting Oxfam on her walk). In 2019, the bad news was that the fish and chip shop was not open on a Sunday. We went into the pub, the Hawkins Arms, and had ham and eggs and chips instead.

This year there are fewer options. Pubs, cafes and restaurants are closed due to COVID19 and the small village where we live in Derbyshire, though rarely noisy, is much quieter. No fish and chip supper on Fridays for quite some time. We all hope they will open again in due course and we can show our appreciation of the service they give. The national fish and chip shop awards are an annual way of doing just that.

On Tuesday of Holy Week my memory goes back to Jesus in Jerusalem, a crowded city full of pilgrims. He spent a lot of time in the temple; worshipping, praying, taking it all in. He noticed others who were there. A widow put two small coins in the offering plate. Some were scornful, it wasn’t much. Jesus noted that it was all she had to live on.

I wonder who remembered this story and how it got in the gospel? Was it someone who was embarrassed about their mean observation of the widow and never forgot Jesus’ remarks? Was it the widow herself or someone from her family? Who passed the stories on?

To me they are amongst the saints. Remembering and retelling stories that reflect the ways of the kindom are important to our lives in community, just like the shops and cafes and so on give a village its life as places to meet and greet each other. I think of all the fish and chip shops we went in on the End to End from Newlyn to Kilmarnock via Shap and I hope to be able once more, to vote with my feet for the best of the best.

From the remembered gospel
Jesus said: ‘It was all she had to live on…’

For those taking food to their neighbours
or delivering bread and milk with the post;
For those packing food for delivery
by supermarkets or small shops;
For those working with food banks
and fair share charities;
For those working for global food justice
at a time when we are absorbed with our own concerns;
For those planting and growing more food,
and caring for animals, or in food production;
For those feeding folks in care homes and hospitals;
For everyone involved in our daily bread:
It is because of you that we can live on.

Thank you.

JAL: 07.04.2020

Day five of the End to End had me wandering through Cornish countryside encountering saints and enjoying the scenery. I was still less than a week into the walk and I loved it: the regular rhythm of my feet, the changing landscape, the adventures, not to mention the ice cream and fish and chips.

One year on and it’s Monday of Holy Week (note to Michael Gove: that’s because the date of Easter is not fixed), and there’s a national debate about how far is far enough when it comes to walking in a lock down. A walk on the adjacent Trans-Pennine Trail yesterday meant few encounters accept with a small flock of escaped sheep.

Further afield, yesterday’s Palm Sunday was mostly sedentary. It was the view from inside the house as the owner saw the disciples come and collect the donkey. ‘The master needs it’ they shouted as they waved energetically. ‘Yes, fine’ the owner shouted back as they took it away, and later the far off echoes of a shouting crowd filtered back to the closed houses.

Today it’s inside the houses that the action is happening. I have loads of candles given to me over the years. Love them but what to do with them? I’ve been lighting one in the window in the evening. Eventually Bob noticed the smell permeating the room. Just like that night when Mary of Bethany bought out the perfume and tipped it on Jesus’ feet.

‘The poor will always be with you’ Jesus said, when the others in the room criticised her. And they still are, such is our disappointing response to the call of the kindom.

I carried a small wooden cross with me last Holy Week, as a reminder that I was walking through the week of weeks. Places I visited, like St Kea’s church had their own crosses of course, and their own stories. St Kea may have come down from the North of England and travelled across the Levels to Cornwall and onto Brittany and back. Missing out the crossing to Brittany, the route was much like the reverse of the one I would walk.

These days there’s a lot of talk of crossing; of seas, at borders, on roads and paths. Some Christians make the sign of the cross to remember Jesus. It’s not something I do often, but I do look out for the cross wherever I see it, on buildings, in the landscape. It’s a constant reminder of the Cross-wise One and this Cross week, as I keep travelling.

Remembering the gospel
Jesus said; Whenever this story is told in the future it will be done in memory of Her

The Cross-wide one, validates our kindom actions by this short affirmation.
Look there he goes, up the road or path ahead of you.
Keep travelling.

JAL: 05.04.2020 in Longdendale.

The fourth day of LEJOG was memorable not just for walking. It was the day the Evacuee came back, eventually. It did take a bit longer than expected due to high tide at Dawlish but as Hannah said at the time ‘They can’t have random grandparents wandering round the National Rail Network unsupervised’.

He’s now 88 and in self isolation. Some 80 years ago Doug was amongst the generation of children who were moved from home and family to safety at the beginning of WW2. He had two moves. One short lived and not so sucessful. They all went back to London. Then a longer one in 1940 to Troon, near Camborne, in Cornwall which was much better.

It was the beginning of a life times love for that county and a long term relationship with the family that took in him (on the right of photo), his younger brother (now in the USA), and eventually also his mum and baby sister (born in 1940 but died last year).

Before COVID 19 there were quite a few from his generation still telling their stories. But as they are more vulnerable to the virus we don’t know how many we will have by the end of it all. Dad used to tell his evacuee stories at school where I was chaplain. They were never exactly the same. He told me that some of the questions made him chuckle: What kind of car did you have? He didn’t have a car until he was an adult and then it was an old re-purposed London taxi which we called ‘Jimmy’.  For our summer holiday, my grandma (in the photo above) would sit in the front compartment and mum, my brother and I would sit on the back seat. We’d set off for Cornwall at about 3am and we’d ring Chrissie up from Bodmin so she could put the pasties on to cook. It was Chrissie’s son David who welcome Dad last year.

Remembering the Bible is a strategy that often links with personal memories. So today I remember other celebrations of Palm Sunday  (or sometimes Palm Friday or Palm Monday which I always considered to be better than Palm Nothing At All). It was the day we used the processional cross and paraded to Chapel with at least one volunteer dressed as a donkey (one year I had 6 volunteers: some came as chickens, rabbits and even a carrot!). However, you remember it, today is the day to shout out loud – Hosanna, Bless the One who comes in God’s Name!

From the remembered Gospel
They came near to Jerusalem….

Near-to-us God, in this distancing time,
on these isolation days,
we bless you for coming near to us.
Be near all those who are alone:
the anxious,
the vulnerable,
the dying,
those who mourn.
As we approach the Week of Passion,
may our passions still hold to you and your Way,
whether or not we can come physically near each other.

JAL: in a room in Longdendale, Derbyshire.

The Third Day makes many connections. First I didn’t think I could walk three days in a row and secondly it was the Third Day.

To begin with, after many distractions, I left the coast and began to go inland. This was a proper walk. I dawdled about and noticed nature and some daft stuff including a free bike which might have helped. But it was after all, the Third Day.

I tried every shop I came across just because I could. One was a craft shop (impossible to miss that out), one was a post office and in the third shop I was given a free croissant. As welcome as it was unexpected, things were looking up. I’d got free food and it was the Third Day.

There was an intriguing church at St Hilary, just one of very many open Parish churches I would visit on the walk. This one had several old stone crosses in the churchyard, which is a feature of many old Cornish villages and a reminder of the Way of the Saints. Second the inside was skilfully decorated by people of all ages who had been nurtured by the place over the years and made some interesting sculptures, embroideries and paintings there. In this unexpected place made a mark in my memory and resonated with my Remembered Bible. The whole gospel was set out before me in one form or another. It was indeed the Third Day.

This year it is still Lent. A few brave flowers peep out to distract us. Kind people deliver vegetables to our door. Once a week we banish fear from the streets by clapping our clean hands. Although we are still some way off we know the gospel story, so we have already heard the story of the Third Day.

Of course it’s not an easy story, and in these times there are pockets of cells in our bodies it may find hard to permeate. Yesterday two NHS nurses died of COVID-19, courageous women who’s cells were overwhelmed. How I long for the Third Day, for them and for us all.

When we were in South Africa in 1994 (it was the first democratic elections), Lent seemed very long and Passiontide a real ordeal as day after day communities felt the pressure of communal violence and fear. Yet when the Third Day came, it somehow seemed unreal and unreasonable to wear our best clothes. Tomorrow will be Palm Sunday, I made be a little hoarse but I hope I can raise a shout.

From the remembered gospel:
Jesus said to them, remember this, I will be handed over to my enemies, I will suffer, be killed, entombed and buried, but on the Third Day….

Remembering the examples of the Cornish Saints: Buryan, Morwenna, Petroc Michael and Hilary, and all those who walk the Way today,
May we walk carefully, cheerfully and courageously,
Mindful of the company of the Holy Three:
Creator, Companion and Spirit,
To whom be Glory, Glory, Glory now and forever.

JAL: 04.04.2020