Category: psalms

Day 73 of the End to End in 2019 was one where Bob and I walked together all day, as it was possible to use the train for both the beginning and end of the walk. We were walking through a history of the black stuff: coal.

It was the stuff that made the industrial revolution and powered that empire we hear so much about these days, that destroyed the lungs and lives of so many, either directly or indirectly, and lead to the massive expectations in us all to have the lights on and the standard of living we want at the flick of a finger regardless of the lives of those who pay the price now.

Coal is made of plants that would have been green millions and millions of years ago. Today the old coal heaps around Kirkconnel are going back to green, sculpted for nature and wind power generation. Wild flowers spring up still.  We made our way across these hills towards New Cumnock.

It’s not new. It was formed as a separate parish when it was split off from Cumnock several centuries ago. If anywhere needs new normal in Britain today it’s places like this. There’s a miners memorial in every town and usually a small museum or community centre telling the stories of rise and decline, recalling the lives of ordinary people, the Board of the Co-op and the local school. There were a lot of places up for sale; the garage, an old industrial building and so on. I can’t imagine that lock down 2020 has been kind to places like this.

In 2019 I remembered Psalm 40: it’s not a bad choice in 20202 either.

I waited patiently for God, who turned to me, hearing my cry.
He lifted me out of the horrible pit of mud and mire and set my feet on rock, giving me a firm place to stand,
And putting a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to God.

I’m not known as a patient person, but they do get a lot of mentions in the bible. I doubt lock down has made anyone more patient, especially if recent seaside scenes are anything to go by.

Solid Rock One, Holy High Hill Maker,
you count time in millions of years not just a few weeks.
As we rush onto new normal,
may we give a thought to the old ways, and see them for what they were:
expedient, sometimes exploitative,
destructive of humans and the planet.
I want to praise you from firm ground,
but much of what is around me is barren.
May new life come to deserted places:
where for sale signs dominate may things open up again,
where old industry has stolen lives and land
may new ideas flourish and turn the landscape green.
Make us in to the human beings that will work for the good of others:
let us leave our bad habits for museums to remember,
as we weave the kindom together.

JAL: 26.06.2020 in Longdendale.

 

What a difference a year makes! Day 71 of the End to End in 2019 was wet with low cloud and thunder and lightening in the Southern Uplands. One year on in South Yorkshire we had one of our hottest walking days ever.

I described Day 71 of LEJOG as a day of two halves because we waited for the weather to clear a bit in the morning before walking in the afternoon. I took a path alongside the River Nith in the Drumlanrig Estate. It was beautifully shaded woodland and water dripped from leaves and branches.

One year later we decided to try a section of the TPT we hadn’t walked before in South Yorkshire. The Longdendale section just right past our home and that has been one of the things to motivate us to complete the rest of the route. Before Lock Down we’d been west to Southport in various sections over the winter months. Our original plan for the Spring had been a walk to London via the Grand Union Canal, but that’s still one hold. We therefore thought we’d try some further bits of TPT and went east for the first time for three months today.

Starting at Wombwell I began to walk back towards Oxspring, where Bob parked the car and started his half of the route. Bob has actually completed the whole TPT by bike in 2013 as part of one of his sabbaticals.

Today was a very hot day, as I already mentioned. Temperatures of 30 degrees were forecast. We took lots of water of course. One of the things about the hot day was there were a great many butterflies out as well as many wild flowers to enjoy. Hot and tired we made it back to Oxspring in a bit under 5 hours.

Walking is still a great thing to do together. It was a wonderful route, with lots of shade along the line of the old railways. Penistone was a good place to get some ice cream at the end.

(the marks on this bridge of the Nith were left after a tragic accident in the 19th century)

Although I don’t like walking in rain, I’m not that keen on high temperatures either! Last year on LEJOG no day was as hot as today, I’m glad to say. Although we didn’t originally plan to walk the TPT it has proved to be a good option. Today it was not really busy at all and we’ll see what kind of plan we might make for the rest of the summer as we go from West to East if we can.

From the remembered bible, part of Psalm 139
If I flew away beyond the east or lived in the farthest place in the west, you would be there to lead me and help me.

As I walk this repurposed route,
I am grateful for care and support from fellow travellers.
My feet ache after the longest hottest walk in a while
and I  seek a welcome place to rest.
The benches that regularly pop up along the trail are especially welcome.
God grant a quiet night…

JAL: 24.06.2020 on the TPT.

 

 

Day 66 of the End to End in 2019 took me west from Gretna. This was a departure from Hannah’s 2012 route as she went up the M74 corridor to Glasgow. I was going the long way round through Dumfries and Galloway for entirely my own reasons. The first section was along the coast and past some of the places marked on the OS map that required some explanation. That explanation was to be found at the Devil’s Porridge Museum.

It turns out that the landscape hereabouts has been extensively influenced by the munitions industry since WW1. Several large camps were built here, and as far as Longtown in Cumbria, to both store the munitions and house workers. The town of Eastrigg was built and it’s streets named for different parts of the Commonwealth, a heritage the town tries to explain through the museum. Some of this infrastructure was reused and expanded again in WW2.

Of the women who worked at the munitions works in WW1 (and the ordinary workforce were mainly women) 62% were aged 18 or younger and 80% were single. These women did dangerous work: the factory manager may have been awarded honours but the young women risked their lives and health daily.  Their stories are amongst the less regarded ones: no one makes statues to women like these. Devil’s Porridge was the name given to the noxious mixture which was made in the factories.

Thankfully we were provided with lentil soup. We were getting into Robert the Bruce country and what with him, Robert Burns who we’d also encounter from time to time, and Robert/Bob my walking supporter it was clear to me that the Roberts were taking over the world.

The day’s walk ended at Annan and I’d already come a full 15 miles since Carlisle. From my reflections in 2019:

An unmetrical version of Psalm 18

God is my rock, rock, rock
And my castle.
God us my strength, strength, strength
I trust God:
My body armour and the source of life in me,
God is my high tower.

There are many high towers in the local landscape which were used for defense. They crop up in Celtic spirituality as an image of the strong presence of God, as defender and refuge.

We remember the unremembered: the unremarkable ones,
those whom history has forgotten or written out,
those not accorded voice or value,
erased or expendable people.
Timeless  One, you recall us to our task,
of truth telling: may the names written on your heart
be recalled again and celebrated in the land.

JAL: 18.06.2020 in Longdendale.

Day 62 of the End to End in 2019 was the last day of section 2 of LEJOG. After this there was a week’s break until resuming on day 63 for part 3. The town we were heading for was Penrith which has quite a few roundabouts. The way into town overlapped with some sections marked as Lady Anne’s Way. More information about that here: https://www.ladyannesway.co.uk/

It wasn’t until January of 2020 when I really understood who Lady Anne was. She was Lady Anne Clifford and in January 2020 I was staying in Beamsley Hospital, a Landmark Trust house in North Yorkshire, that had been a project of her mother. It was Lady Anne Clifford that completed the hospital in her memory and then built her own in Appleby. These were places for poor women to live in safety and security, a kind of secular monasticism but with some religious aspects. The Beamsley women followed a rule for example and the central part of the building was, and still is, a chapel, but they were not professed.

Apart from Greggs in Penrith, the most memorable bit of Day 62 was the very long hill out of the town, with distant views of Blencathra. There was cake near the end and a final night at the old barn near Sedbergh before our week’s break.

The break had been dictated by my agreeing to take part in a summer school for ministers in the East Midlands. That was something I’d first done 19 years earlier and a revisit seemed overdue. I don’t think I could have done the whole LEJOG without a break, like Bob did and Hannah more or less (she just had 24 hours off to go and collect her A level results). I wasn’t in a hurry anyway, and as we got nearer the end I was in even less of a hurry.

So Penrith with its blend of showers and sunshine, sausage rolls and plague stone (photo above) was as good a place as any to break the route. We would be back.

From the remembered gospel: Jesus sent out 72 with instructions for their mission and when they came back….

From Psalm 121: I look up at the hills, I can’t stop myself, knowing that all your support is centred on me, day and night.

Stepping out, many routes,
Stepping on, green shoots,
Stepping One, stepping together,
One way or another, getting there.

JAL: 07.06.2020 in Longdendale.

Day 52 of the End to End in 2019 finished in Garstang, the first Fair Trade Town in England. The Fair Trade Town Movement began in Garstang in 2001 and in under 20 years it has been embraced by 20 countries. I’d certainly like to see it become one of the New Normal things about our society post COVID19. There is an initiative called Fair Trade Nation and Wales became the first in 2008. In order to be a Fair Trade Nation we need to

• 75% of the population should purchase a Fair Trade product every year.

• 40% of people regularly buy Fair Trade products.

• All local authorities have active Fair Trade groups working towards Fair Trade status.

• 55% local authority areas with Fair Trade status with 10% annual increase in following years

Learn more about it all here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairtrade_Town

Fair Trade is important to us. In our village we try to buy Fair Trade but it is not so readily stocked in the small shops. We try to buy locally produced items too, and have some delivered from the nearby town as one delivery a week is ‘greener’ than a car drive to a large supermarket.

Being fair is important, in all aspects of life. People should be treated fairly whoever they are. There’s no point in having empty phrases to unite people if they are not lived out in practice.

My reflection on Day 52 last year was based on Psalm 1: Happy are those who reject bad advice, who do not follow the wrong way or join those who say they have no use for God. Instead, they find joy in obedience of God, and they study God’s Way day and night. They are like trees that grow beside a stream, that bear fruit at the right time, and whose leaves do not dry up.
As with a lot of what I wrote then, it seems just as relevant now.

Like well-watered trees, may we thrive in God’s commonwealth,
where trade is fair and equal treatment is the norm for everyone.
Then obedience would come naturally as we’d turn our faces to the sun
and bear fruits in our lives of joy and peace.
May it be so.

JAL: 28.05.2020 in Longdendale.

Day 49 of the End to End in 2019 was after a rest day (hence the gap) and on the way from Wigan towards Preston. There’s no doubt I notice big differences this year from last year. Many folks have remarked how this walk could not have happened this year and that’s probably true so far. But a walk like LEJOG is always there and can be done many ways. Will I do it again? Who knows.

One of the things about being on a walk for four months in that you miss things (although of course you see others). It’s easy to get in the zone and ignore what’s going on elsewhere.  Some stuff takes a long time to process. Yesterday, for example, I had a paper published on line about work I did before I retired. You can read it here: https://sacredtexts.hcommons.org/using-the-remembered-bible/

One day we will look back on this period of lock down and think about it differently. For now we make our way through it as best we can, looking out for the signs of how far we have to go, any alternative routes, and distracting happenings on the way.

I was walking along the Leeds and Liverpool Canal in 2019 (some folks call this the Liverpool and Leeds Canal), which certainly takes the long route to Leeds (or Liverpool). Originally designed to take in lots of places that wanted goods taken between Leeds and Liverpool that’s not surprising. But actually we often take roundabout routes. It’s not until later that we see this more clearly.

That day ended at the Boatyard Bus Cafe near Adlington: a bus repurposed into a cafe. What will we repurpose  un-needed aircraft in to? Many steam engines were broken up when the steam age ended. Will we find aircraft graveyards and will heritage flying become a different thing? Or do we just all expect to be able to get back on a cheap flight to somewhere else anytime soon? I passed two repurposed airfields on the walk: one had been turned into a retail park and the other was used to store whisky.

There are many ways we could go from here. As I think about my paper on remembering the bible I know that my own ministry has not been the sort of path taken by many. Whilst I think I did the right thing, it’s easy to have doubts or feel isolated when others seem to just keep plodding the same route and give no sign of looking up or much indication that they’ll try out the ideas that you report as successfully tested. I can talk about Remembering the Bible (RB) or write about it, but really it’s a thing you do together. I’m a bit tired of the ‘that’s nice dear’ responses of too many folk I encounter.

Most days walking included doubts. Most days not walking do too. Last year’s reflection was on Psalm 139, so good any day:

From Psalm 139
Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.

All knowing God, who sees what we do in public and in secret,
Help us to face up to our responsibilities as residents of this planet.
It matters what we do with its resources and the rubbish we generate.
Hold us to account.

To which I’d add this year:

It matters what we do in private and in public.
Your kindom is a place of honesty and openness and justice.
It may cost us dearly, but lead us clearly,
that we may follow as nearly as we can.

Grant all a quiet night

JAL: 25.05.2020 in Longdendale.

Day 48 of the End to End in 2019 took me to Wigan Pier via Scotsman’s Flash. The flashes, strung out alongside the Leeds and Liverpool Canal are wild life havens these days and there were plenty of waterfowl, insects and wild flowers. The Goat Willow was letting off fluff everywhere making quite deep piles beside the path, a phenomenon that has been repeated this year recently on my walks in Derbyshire.

Another thing that resonates with last year is child poverty. We seem to be living in Orwellian Days where doublespeak breaks out in every briefing, where two legs are good but headless is better, where the lock down rules apply to everyone except to some people, where leaders are hard to distinguish  and leadership is an absent joke.

But alongside all of this distracting nonsense children continue to live in increasing poverty that none of them have chosen.  Just so you know there are some serious moment on LEJOG, I wrote this reflection on Psalm 137 a year ago today:

From Psalm 137
By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion.
There on the poplars we hung our harps,
for there our captors asked us for songs,
our tormentors demanded songs of joy;
they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”

The exiles are expected to sing happy songs in the place of their captivity. They remember the songs but don’t have the heart for them.
We do not always feel like singing happy songs.
As the years go by the divisions in our society seem to be as deep as ever:
Children grow up in poverty,
More families rely on food banks.
I cannot sing happy songs about these things.

My mood today is much the same. I did used to sing a lot on LEJOG, making up stuff as I went along.  I’m certainly singing a lot less at the moment.

Wigan will be as closed to day as most other parts of the NW of England. The Orwell, the pub landmark by the canal, will be closed, as will many of the shops and all the pubs, cafes and restaurants. As people walk by on the tow path, it may be easy to overlook the fact that the community is struggling with some of the worst poverty rates in the area, and certainly with poverty that we should all be ashamed of, and carry on to the next landmark. But today my lament is for Wigan and for the Orwellian fact that we are being encouraged to lie and cheat our way out of this pandemic as if that was our new moral compass, bright and shiny and ready for the new direction. I’m not prepared to go that way: poverty will never be good, abject poverty will never be better.

From The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell. “A human being is primarily a bag for putting food into; the other functions and faculties may be more godlike, but in point of time they come afterwards”.
(I’ll be honest, I didn’t remember this, I looked it up)

I lament with all those who are on God’s side.
I remember the starving of the poor,
the callousness of food vouchers for poor families,
the shame of longer and longer food bank lines,
the humiliation of not being able to feed your own children.
I will not sing a happy song: grant justice God of all!
When all are fed justly, may we also all sing again.

JAL: 23.05.2020 in Longdendale

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.

Day 21 of the End to End in 2019 included quite a bit of up hill walking on a warm day. I was going over the Quantocks, a designated area of outstanding natural beauty and it was lovely. At the bottom of the hill was a small well dedicated to St Agnes with a medieval well house. Finding little gems like this on the route always lifted my spirits even if the route was up hill.

It was also poorly signed. I had decided to take the MacMillan Way West, which is one of many new walking routes that you’ll find here and there. This one goes eastwards and is designed for those who want a good walk but also want to raise money for a popular charity. With charities of all sizes struggling with fund raising this year, we might all find ourselves on the MacMillan Way or equivalent next year.

Sometimes you have to ask the way. A helpful mountain bike rider put me back on track. Sometimes a companion appears at just the right moment to confirm your route: Bob walked towards me across a field. But sometimes you just feel as if this up hill journey is never coming to an end.

At such times I’d make up my Psalm snippets, sections of Psalms from my remembered bible, and add to them as I went along. I’d admire the things around me, like the green leaves lavishly using sunlight to make energy and I’d take the next step or the next breath. Sometimes it’s all you can do, like this:

As the deer searches for cool water,

On a day as hot as this
I too seek the cool shade
And welcome the one who brings me water.
The doe and I continue our searching:
Although the path is poorly marked
I find the right direction.

From the remembered gospel
Jesus said ‘Meet me in Galilee’.

It was all up hill to Galilee, or seemed so at the time.
Yet there they were, meeting him again as if it were only yesterday.

Everyday God, meeting us in the up and the down,
keep us on track when the route seems to be endlessly hard.
Acknowledging your creative hand in the silent activity of the landscape,
and your companionable presence in the way finders and guides,
may we continue to tread gently on the earth.

JAL: 22.04.2020 in Longdendale