Month: May 2020

Accompanied by angels

On Day 35 of the End to End in 2019 I walked along the Severn Way via Worcester Cathedral. I was not the first person to walk to Worcester. A memorial stone in the Cathedral remembers a 15th century pilgrim who called in. It is a fine place and contains the burial place of King John, that most unfortunate of monarchs: he lost his crown in the wash. There’s also a memorial to Woodbine Willie, that well regarded WW1 Army Chaplain who wrote:

Awake, awake to love and work,
the lark is in the sky!
the fields are wet with diamond dew….

I expect he was thinking about the River Severn which carries on past Worcester, except on the days when it comes into Worcester: when it floods. The cricket ground, alive with small boys learning the craft in 2019, was underwater in February 2020.

He survived WW1 but died in 1929 after a further decade of work in grieving post war Britain. He certainly knew about the demands of ministry:

To give and give and give again,
What God has given thee.
To spend thyself nor count the cost,
to serve right gloriously…

(from the final verse of the same hymn)

Whilst over a century old, the words still resonate. There are many in 2020 who have given themselves without thought for the personal cost. I don’t know what pilgrimage was like in previous ages, but I do know it continues today. It is as much a state of mind as a bodily thing. I read how Ivor Gurney, the poet of the Severn Meadows, used to enjoy looking at an old map of Gloucester when he was held in the asylum where he later died, going over the routes he held in his memory. I pray that we all have routes to remember and routes to plan.

May the good angel of the Lord accompany you
(Prayer for Pilgrims seen in Worcester Cathedral)

From the remembered gospel
Jesus sent out 72 others saying ‘See that road, follow it. Don’t take a lot of stuff’.

We journey with you, Jesus,
following old routes, making new ones.
May your angels keep us company:
friends on the phone,
colleagues in the workplace at a safe distance,
volunteers in our neighbourhood.
With numbers going up everyday,
we are mindful of the human cost of this pandemic.
[pause to think of them]
From the Church Militant to the Church Triumphant,
help us to leave behind the stuff we don’t need,
to keep the faith in our century,
to serve others as you served.

JAL: 10.05.2020 in Longdendale.

Orchids

Day 34 of the End to End was, due to weather related issues, along the A38 to Kempsey. It therefore seems a perfect time to write about orchids.

Wild orchids are amongst my favourite British flowers and my LEJOG route  was packed with orchids (even along the A38). This had been true since Devon at least and would remain so right up to the final day in Caithness. Different species of course and indeed one of the joys of the walk was coming across orchids, often species I’d not seen before, in the most unexpected of places. The orchids themselves varied from isolated spikes to whole meadows full at one time. Beside any path for the next 750 miles or so, there would be orchids.

Some of my friends thought I became a bit obsessed photographing orchids. With my trusty camera phone in my hand I’d crawl and crouch and collect photos by the dozen, or hundred even. Of the 11,000 photos of the LEJOG more than quite a few are of orchids. But they are fascinating plants even though I’m no expert. As diverse and as beautiful as they can be unexpected.

But was it all just a distraction keeping more from more important thoughts? No, I don’t think so. Biodiversity is vital to life on our planet. When, by our human activities we limit that diversity then we threaten our own existence as much as we threaten that of any other species. There was a lot of talk about Action for the Climate in 2019, much of which is now over taken by COVID19 talk. But the two are linked as reduced emissions illustrate.

And COVID19 talk is of course also a cloak for other important concerns. Take any subject in Britain today and you will find opinion pretty much polarised: democracy, racism, VE celebrations, PPE and care homes or whatever you choose. We should keep churches open, we should keep them closed. Foodbanks are vital, foodbanks should be closed down. Older people are valuable (they hold important memories of WW2), older people are expendable (let them die of COVID19 in care homes). We’ve already forgotten the real lessons of WW2 anyway.

If you examine any of these issues you will see the split for yourself and it is always a split that exposes the vulnerable ones in our society to further vulnerability. Stay strong is the potent message. The land of the strong and the fit is the new version of Hope and Glory. On one side the message is there’s a difficult call to make between bodily health and economic health. For this read: the rich are bothered that they too might loose money. On the other side there is the call to respect vulnerable people and not just reel off figures and statistics as if counting sweeties.

As the survivors of WW2 die in dozens, killed by the COVID19 bungling of a government that says it values them the most (even if they have to walk laps to keep the NHS going), what dies with them is the story of the real rise of fascism in Europe in the 1930s. I’ve tried to be an ambassador for the stories of real ordinary people caught up in for example the Holocaust (thanks to the Holocaust Education Trust) but ultimately we are going to have to do more than tell stories if we are really to check the poisonous effects of our current obsessions with ourselves, our money and our strength and our Glory.

From the remembered gospel
Consider, if you will the orchid, it neither sews nor spins, but I tell you that Solomon, in all his wisdom, never got it so right as one of these barometers of the health of our shared planet.

We are all gloriously connected, Cosmic One, through you, God of all.
On my knees before even the smallest parts of your creation,
I see all the interlocking complexity of life in a blade of grass.
May we who espouse the side of the poor and vulnerable,
Just like your Son, walk decently, with integrity,
and may the paths of peace we take extend to all
a shared way of hope and love,
that leaves none behind and overcomes even death itself.

JAL: 09.05.2020 in Longdendale.

 

 

 

Have you got a light?

Day 33 of the End to End fell on the Feast Day for Julian of Norwich.  Most days fall on a day to remember someone or another but I’ve had a particular love of Julian of Norwich for forty years or so. It was a welcome revelation to me that a woman might have lived alone in the fourteenth century and written a book. Of course, our lives are very different, but in my own life, it is her and other women like her who have held the light for me as I’ve taken my own path.

It didn’t surprise me that she might have some visions and try to make sense of them. It didn’t surprise me that she should think of God as Mother or see God in the smallest things. But it did help me. My own protestant upbringing had not been severe or austere but there had been few people with whom I could discuss spiritual things. Meeting Julian helped me to know there were other women like me.

Day 33 of the walk followed the path that Hannah had taken in 2012. Walking in my daughter’s footsteps was important to me. We had both visited Odda’s Chapel on the Severn Way, a small Anglo-Saxon building (built in 1056), not far from the banks of the river or from the flood gates that protect the village of Deerhurst. The path goes through the Severn Meadows so loved by Ivor Gurney (his memorial was in Gloucester Cathedral).

I walked onto Tewkesbury Abbey, which was a Benedictine Foundation. I had visited it with my Dad in 2012 on a very hot day. But in 2019 it was a wet one. At the beginning of 2020 Tewkesbury and much of the Severn Meadows was flooded again and it would not have been able to walk on the Severn Way anywhere between here and Ironbridge. As it was in 2019, it was like swimming through tall wet grass much of the way to Upton on Severn.

It is said that Julian of Norwich survived the Black Death that had had such a devastating effect of the population of Europe in the fourteenth century. Of course the diseases and our response are not the same seven centuries later. But her message of ‘All shall be well’ is both comfort and challenge in all times including ours. I like to think she might have said ‘Have you got a light, boy?’ After all, she was from Norwich.

From the remembered Revelations of Divine Love, the earliest surviving book written by a woman in English:
‘I held a hazelnut in the palm of my hand and I saw that it was all that is made, and that God made it and loved it’.

Nut-making One, beautiful are all your works and wonderful to behold.
Nut-loving One, we too are held in the palm of your hand.
Nut-nurturing One, may we too grow to be sheltering and fruitful.
May all be well: may all things be well.

JAL: 08.05.2020 in Longdendale.

Starting again

Day 32 of the End to End in 2019 was the beginning of the second section. In our planning of the walk we had decided this early on in order to change our accommodation style. Up to the end of part 1 we had used static accommodation set at reasonable intervals along the walk; caravans, lodges, hostels and so on. But I had planned to camp some of it and if Bambi couldn’t do it then we needed a temporary replacement.

Enter Bambo! This was a bright red VW Campervan we hired from Glossop. We found it on line and decided we’d try it for 20 days. As members of the Camping and Caravan Club we had access to their wide network of sites and we only needed four to fill the gap between Gloucester and Wigan.

Everyone admired Bambo. A smart shiny reasonably new red Campervan with a pop top, Bambo was the darling of the campsite. We were not used to be the recipients of van envy.

I started walking again in the car park in Gloucester where we had encountered the shower of rain a few days earlier. I was soon back on the Severn Way and up over the hill to the Red Lion at Wainlode. Much of this was similar to the route walked by Hannah in 2012. It was good to be walking again and enjoying the scenery and the flowers.

In 2020 we look forward to these longer walks in the future. We are fortunate to be able to walk locally on the Transpennine Trail and for forty days from March to May I watched the Spring develop on our doorstep. You can view the photos, all taken from similar local parts of Longdendale, here:

From the remembered gospel
Jesus said ‘Spread out! Go everywhere! Tell them everything!’

Cosmic God, there’s a wonder in everywhere:
In our lock down confinement, we struggle with the urge to be out there.
It’s difficult to put the needs of others before our own economic security.
On blue sky days it’s hard to resolve to put the planet before planes
or choose between the fast track or emission levels.
As the full moon rises again on our much emptier streets,
may we be watchful, waiting for the moment,
eager but not egocentric,
mindful that joy comes in the morning,
the right morning, the morning for starting again.
Meanwhile may we be ever ready, to serve God and each other.

JAL 07.05.2020 in Longdendale.

Light shower

Day 31 of the End to End went as far as Gloucester. This would be over 300 miles from Land’s End and the end of the first section of the walk. What better place to mark this achievement than at Gloucester Cathedral. One of the great Gothic Cathedrals of England it has a long and complex history, more than its fair share of monuments and a quiet cool atmosphere.  It’s no museum: home to a thriving forward thinking community in 2016 it became the oldest building in the world to be adapted to generate power using a solar installation.

Inside it was the light that struck me. Each Cathedral I’ve ever visited, whether ancient or modern, has something to say about light. Hardly surprising as it is a key theme in the Christian gospel. Even so, as human beings, we will probably never quite capture the whole message light has for us, even though we try very often and in many ways.

Here in Gloucester Cathedral the light message comes in stone and glass and space with the whole cosmos streaming in to make reminder of the incarnation of the Light. Poets and musicians are also reflected as those who have illuminated the subject. Ivor Gurney was a chorister here and is remembered: ‘Do not forget me quite, O Severn Meadows’.

One year on, in the Spring of 2020, we had a couple of showery days, light obscured by clouds leaping back out again as they pass. The roll of those who have died of COVID19 mounts daily and more and more people find themselves in the dark wondering if the light will ever come back. They lament the distance the virus has put between them and those they mourn. In some cultures politicians have words and rites for mourning that they weave between statistics. Not ours it seems. There’s a real separation of Church and State as the press conferences roll on and on and death is only mentioned clinically. If you have been affected by these issues and need more support, ring a helpline, is the well rehearsed tag.

Outside Gloucester Cathedral in 2019 was dark enough. A spring thunderstorm had blown in and the pavements bore testimony to the old rhyme. It’s no wonder Dr Foster never returned. But we would, in five days time. Until then a brief rest with the memory of the light and the meadows of the Severn.

From the remembered gospel
The Light shines in the darkness and the darkness has never got the better of it.

Light Bringer, mourn with us.
In the darkest spaces, may the gentle glow come again.
As the statistics roll across the screen,
help us to breathe our humanity into each number and name.
May we do whatever it takes to bring a sliver of light to lock down:
an apple cake on the doorstep, a kiss through the window.
Kindle in us that hunger for your justice
that lights your kindom and never goes out.

JAL: 02.05.2020 in Longdendale.
[You may notice I always use the word kindom rather than kingdom. It’s not a typos. I prefer the former as a word reflecting a gender equal space]

 

Spotting stuff

Day 30 of the End to End was the beginning of week 5 and as I was passing the Slimbridge WWT I went in. this is one of the places I had always hoped to visit and, having missed out on it in 2012 when we came past with Hannah, this time I was determined to have a look. It did not disappoint.

Although there had been so much to see since leaving Land’s End the advantage of Slimbridge was it was signposted, so you knew what you were looking at. My own natural history knowledge is like a series of islands in a vast see called Attenborough Ocean or something similar. There’s a reasonable sized island of butterflies and another of moths with a few small crags of other insects. There’s quite a large island for native wild flowers and another of trees with some crags for other plants and even a few for fungi. There’s one or two small islands for birds but I’m not so good at putting names to birds. There are also some small islands for mammals and amphibians. Even worms, sea anemones and other creatures get the odd rock pool in my natural history archipelago but some others have not yet emerged and wait to be named and remembered. I try to add a few new names each year and if I can commit them to memory.

At Slimbridge there were also birds I’ve not often seen in the wild, like the Kingfishers. I have seen them before, but not from a hide which meant I could sit and watch them doing their thing for a while. I also heard a cuckoo. Again, I’ve heard them before, but this was peak bird day for me and I loved it. My prayer from Day 30 in 2019 is still appropriate one year later:

As the birds call to each other at the end of the day, flocking to a safe roost.
So we gather close to you, our God.
Like a mother bird you shelter us.
May we mirror your care in the way we care for others,
Particularly our care for vulnerable people.

Fast forward to 1st May 2020 and we decided to walk to Swallows Wood together, which is a beautiful place in Longdendale and although not yet at peak bluebell is just delightful right now. Things may not be signposted as at Slimbridge but there are plenty of things to spot. Choosing a damp morning proved sensible and we saw no one else in the woods.

I love to spot things. It was a huge part of the End to End for me to see the myriad species; plants and creatures in all their diversity the length of Britain.  Whatever day it is, where ever you are, try to spot something, whether above or below you, in front our behind, or beside you. It may be something you see everyday, something you’ve seen before or something new. Examine it as carefully as you can with whatever senses you have. It will be marvellous, I’ve no doubt.

Remembering Psalm 104
The birds nest beside the wetlands and sing among the branches of the trees.
Here is one of the LEJOG prayers from 2019 that has been popular with other pray-ers.
Blessing for a Walk
From the hills,
may the Creator watch you;
By still waters,
may the Shepherd guide you;
On the streets,
may Wisdom call you;
And may the Holy Three
watch, guide and call you,
Today and every day.

JAL 01.05.2020 in Longdendale.