Category: remembered bible

During the break between the two halves of the End to End in 2019 I was contributing some sessions on Remembering the Bible (RB) to the East Midlands Ministers Summer School. It was a risk. It was 19 years since I first visited and began the series of interactions with ministers that were part of Word of Mouth (www.ionabooks.com) and East Midlands were the first Synod to invite me back.

During the week I took some risks. One was climbing a slippery wobbly stile on an afternoon walk. I fell. I got a bruised arm in the process but I would still be able to go back to LEJOG at the end of the week.

In fact, we take risks every day. Some are everyday risks which we know, due to our social conditioning, are OK in our context: we can drink the water from the tap for example.  In 2020 we have to re-evaluate what we understand about taking risks. Perhaps we always did, but then again maybe we didn’t say so much about the subject except in some specific contexts, like rape  for example.

I took a risk when I stepped on the slippery wobbly stile which I should have known about having fallen off a slippery wobbly one a few years earlier. But none of us has ever lived in a post-COVID19 world before. The risks we decide to take will affect other people and the risks they take. That’s how society works.

I read a blog about one persons’ view of what the church should have been doing during the lock down other than arguing about access to shut churches and if what a few people did with bread and wine was in some way ‘valid’ or not. It suggested we should have been doing other things, one of which was ‘giving an account of the hope that is in us’. This LEJOG reblog is an attempt at that. It is a reflection on a set of reflections: 117 days of them. A sea-saw of emotions that took me up the country, past fish and chip shops and ice cream stalls, counting butterflies and remembering psalms: there was a hope in me. It was often very, very, very small. Sometimes it got bigger.

A year ago, the second half of the walk still lay before me. It was a risk: there was hope, but the relationship between them was very complicated.

From the remembered bible: Be still and know that I am God.

Still one, with me still,
hopeful one, in my hope,
risk-living one, in my risk:
be in the slipping and the falling,
the tripping and the gripping:
May we rise with you.

JAL: 13.06.2020 in Longdendale.

Day 60 of the End to End in 2019 was a damp day in Cumbria. It was preceded by 59 other days of walking and would eventually be followed by a further 57 days of walking. Initially we’d estimated 120 days for LEJOG but actually it only took 117.

Day 60 was a day of junctions and intersections, some of the most unexpected kinds. One of those intersections was with the C2C. This demanding long distance walking route from one side of England to the other is not one I’ve contemplated. It seemed long and very physically demanding (says she who was walking LEJOG at the time) so I’d opted for other routes: Hadrian’s Wall path was my preferred way across the North of England. I met folks on the section of C2C I encountered and most admitted it was gruelling, each section quite long. Whilst our way to doing LEJOG was to break it up into small doable sections and have some support and assistance on hand if needed. Maybe the C2C could be done like that too but I’ve not investigated it.

Hannah had walked this section in 2012 so I knew there were lots of references to stone age remains in the landscape. Surprising though it may seem, our forebears have lived in these hills for a very long time. There were other stone things to see: the limestone pavements with their worn and fractured surfaces for example. That reminded me of geography trips I used to help out on when I was working as a school Chaplain.

There were also large boulders in the landscape. Later we got close to one called the Googleby Stone at Shap, near the tiny Keld Chapel. I’d visited the Chapel before, possibly in 2012 when Hannah was walking LEJOG. Its simple interior is the kind of place my forebears would have used. I was reminded of the story of Ruth and Naomi: Wherever you go I will go.

Our ways do overlap, sometimes planned, sometimes unexpected. So too our thoughts and prayers make an overlapping web, and our stories weave in and out of each other’s lives. Though distant, we are connected; close enough, we are meshed together.

From the remembered bible, Ruth 1
Wherever you go I will go.
Your people will be my people.
Your God will be my God.

Connecting One, weaver of memories,
author of stories, originator of thoughts,
carver of stones, marker of routes,
confirmer of origins and focus of goals:
I am still walking.
Your company makes me who and what I am.
Your people are my people.
You are my God.

JAL: 05.06.2020 in Longdendale.

Day 59 of the End to End in 2019 spanned two millenia at least and included a visit to Tebay services on the M6 on foot. A notice on a gate in the Howgill fells prohibited my access to an excavation of a site to feature on ‘Digging for Britain’. People have been using this communications corridor for a long time. Now the M6 and West Coast Main Line tried to out run each other on the other side of the valley, whilst I walked along the quieter back road.

Tebay is our favourite services on the British motorway system and we’ve been here many times before. Hannah was the first member of the family to walk in on her LEJOG in 2012. I was taking something of a similar route so we stopped off too and got some ice cream, of course.

There were also two poorly marked bridleways before the end of the day, one of which took me back to the line of the old Roman Road. Fast forward to 2020 and for the majority the demand for access to all areas is usually granted: you can get in and out most of the time. Lock down made a difference keeping us all inside until rules started to be broken, regulations lifted and once again some were left behind in the access race. That this should also have happened in the House of Parliament was, to say the least, ironic.

I’m sure if I’d worked during the lock down I’d have a very different view of the pandemic. But as the advice was for only essential travel, I didn’t. I continued to walk as much as I could but I saw far fewer people and I was only too aware of the quieter roads and skies. I made use of local delivery services for some provisions and I missed some of the small local shops in the village high street being open. But I never had to wear full PPE to sweat out a long shift day after day.

Just as when walking LEJOG, a sort of routine has developed. This time walking is alternated with writing, gardening, sewing and cooking. Praying weaves in and out of these activities much as it used to, but with different concerns at the forefront. That’s one area to which we all have continued access.

From the remembered bible: Jesus said ‘When you pray, try doing it like this…’

Prayer Teacher, alert and ready for the zoom equivalent of daily devotions,
I thank you, for the time, the space and the tranquillity
that this small space gives me.
Street Dancer, alongside the kneeling and those kneeled upon,
there in the tear gas and hail of rubber bullets:
may we pray here in solidarity and love with the most vulnerable.
May the Holy Spirit weave between us all,
including the socially distanced ones and the isolated ones,
and unite us, in the quest for universal access to justice.

JAL: 04.06.2020 in Longdendale.

Day 58 of the End to End in 2019 was the official half way day. Somewhere on a rural road in the Howgill fells, reclining on a bench, I was officially half way. During the walk I followed in Quaker footsteps, enlarging on some of the names and places I mentioned yesterday connected with this area, most particularly Brigflatt Meeting House which dates from 1675.

However, the most important thing about Day 58 was that I had three lots of ice cream in the day. Now that’s what I call the new normal. There are things I forgot about LEJOG but it’s not usually ice cream. There had been a few 3 ice cream days, but not for a while. However, I can’t remember if there were ever days in which more than  3 ice creams were consumed.

Farming ice cream has been a great spin off for walkers like me. Surplus milk which no longer demands a fair price in the shops, gains value when made into ice cream. Of course it means a lot of investment and it also creates a few jobs and in addition is very tasty. So here’s to ice cream: the New Normal. Or will that just melt away, back to the old useless normal, like virtual voting for those unable to access the Houses of Parliament?

I remembered visiting the House of Lords in 1993 for a meeting of the Association of Spina Bifida and Hydrocephalus. Baroness Masham told us some interesting stories about the accessibility of the House from the point of view of a wheelchair user. She was determined but there are other ways of doing New Normal.

Normal is actually a fairly unhelpful word some of the time. I’m not normal and probably never have been, for lots of reasons. Too often normal is used as a means of exclusion and marginalisation. What you set up as normal defines what is pushed out and marginalised and that in turn can evoke resentment, frustration and anger. It’s not a society I want to be part of.

I want to be part of an inclusive, diverse and accepting society in which each person is valued and given opportunity to thrive, nurtured by the community together, whatever their differences. But I fear, we’re not yet half way.

From the remembered bible
Blessed are those considered different and who accept that differences of others; may they be welcome everywhere as models of the kindom.

Of course some will say I am making the bible up again (sigh), but I think that’s better than holding it up outside a church for a photo opportunity.

Crucified Christ, visited with violence, body torn, bleeding, dying,
you hung on for us,
each agonising breath its own torture:
may we hang on for and with each other,
naming the need to breathe as basic as justice,
crying out for the traumatised ones.
Only your love can make the new normal
the place where difference flourishes.

JAL: 03.06.2020 in Longdendale.

Day 57 of the End to End in 2019 was the half way point in distance. It was in the Cumbrian hills and a good place to revisit radical steps. A Roman milestone in a churchyard, a flight of steps in a small market town, footpaths, bridleways and small rural roads: each one tells a story. The first, how routes make an Empire, the second how steps challenge an administration, the rest confirmation that ways around and across and how we travel them are still important, economically, politically and poetically.

We were staying at a large barn outside Sedbergh. We later found out that George Fox had visited the farm of which the barn was a part. George Fox and Margaret Fell were the founders of the Quakers, in the 17th century in the North of England. There are plenty of Quaker landmarks in these parts.

Quakers believe the equality of all people, as radical a belief in the 21st century as it was in the 17th. Their main activities are in human rights, social justice, freedom of conscience and peace. But they are not mouthy people preferring the worship in silence. At the time of WW1, when the conscription act was passed in 1916, they negotiated an exemption for Quaker men. It didn’t quite work out as they had planned. Having claimed it for themselves, others, quite rightly, then asked for it too, both on religious and political grounds. In addition it is estimated that about one third of Quaker men did fight under arms (many more were non-combattants). One was Arnold Wynne who moved from a pre-war pacifist position, to die on the first day of the Battle of Arras in 1917. In all I have found out about him, I’ve not managed to piece together that transition. But he would not be the first to find that the rules made for him no longer applied, for whatever reason. Perhaps he thought being exempt unfair.

The Quakers are just some of those who have taken, and still take, radical steps. I’m sure you could name others in the age of global upheaval and challenge. It’s not unusual for anyone designated radical to attract criticism or contempt or even violence. Those who guard the status quo do so diligently.

From the remembered bible:
‘Who’s head is on the coin?’ Jesus asked.
‘It is Ceasar’s’, was the reply.
‘If it belongs to Ceasar, give it to him, but give God what belongs to God’ Jesus said.

There are no coins showing your head, God of all,
making it easy for us to omit to give you anything at all.
Remembering those who have taken radical steps
for equality and human rights, social justice and peace,
recall us to your way.
May you Spirit help us interpret the times,
firing us up to challenge in equality and injustice,
equipping us to work for peace.
Anger may give us away, we may loose sight of the goal,
the steps may be hard and the way long,
we may be nowhere near half way,
but in your company we will keep the faith:
may your kindom come.

JAL: 02.06.2020

Day 56 of the End to End in 2019 was my last on the Lancaster Canal. This was the last canal in England for me and I wouldn’t walk alongside a canal again until the Great Glen.

The Lancaster Canal in its present form is interesting for its un-naviagable Northern Reaches. Tewitfield is the terminal  junction for boats. Beyond that you can walk although the route encounters plenty of challenges. The main one is of course the M6. We were able to see it up close, and this would continue the rest of the way to the Scottish border. I went under a bridge, I followed a foot path and I spotted various culverts, all signs of the M6 effect.  There was a large sign saying M6 on the other side of a fence. I see it whenever we go North on that motorway. Now we were standing along side it, on the safe side of the fence.

The safe side of the fence, is a comforting concept. It’s not one I’ve been very good at in my life. Indeed ‘fence sitting’, a common occupation in churches, is always one I’ve found as uncomfortable as any posture I’ve encountered. We are called to be active interpreters of scripture and our times, and in any context this doesn’t usually point to fence sitting.

For some time now one subject has been on my mind: the rise of human intolerance. I still meet people who tell me they’re not political and I understand that it is a difficult mix, but I cannot except that the bible and politics are not related. I follow a radical Jesus. I met this Jesus in Apartheid South Africa in the 1980s. I rediscovered this Jesus in the UK on my return and I have made it my choice to listen out for and follow a call to be along side those on the margins of society, wherever and whoever they are. Sometimes this has lead to some seemingly incongruous choices like the one to do RB in an Independent School (see https://sacredtexts.hcommons.org/using-the-remembered-bible/ )

It was a place in which children and young people needed to be able to encounter the radical nature of the gospel, not it soporific alternatives. Along the Northern Reaches of the Lancaster Canal, with traffic pouring past behind the fence, a walker is faced with choices. But once a walker, always a walker. And once a follower of Jesus, that Jesus who demonstrates a preferential concern for the marginalised ones, always that follower.

From the remembered gospel: Jesus said ‘Follow me’.

I follow you, Calling One;
through the political ins and outs of your day and mine,
along the highways and by ways of ecological change and choice,
through the cities streets where hope and despair live side by side,
across the meadows and hills of isolated rural poverty and distress.
I see the fences, cutting us off from each other.
I listen again; some fences need cutting, bringing down:
human beings belong together.
May your kindom come, may justice and peace reign.
I will continue to follow you, Jesus.

JAL: 01.06.2020 in Longdendale.

Day 54 of the End to End in 2019 I crossed the Lune Aqueduct on the Lancaster Canal and I was quite literally up in the air as it’s graceful stone arches transported me across the River Lune at a height of 19 metres.  It was completed in 1797 and is now Grade 1 listed. The Lune Aqueduct is one of the jewels of our canal system and definitely worth a visit. When you can look down on the birds in flight then things are looking up.

Due to the patterns of the Christian Year, this day in 2019 was Ascension Day so being up in the air was fitting in that way too. I was doing a bit of RB in my head as I walked along. Those who followed Jesus all that way wanted to know ‘Is it time yet?’ much like small children on a long car journey.

We all want an answer to the unanswerable question: ‘Is it time yet?’. As a response to the uncertainty of the times they were living with, they went on to elect someone else to the group of 12: Matthias. Not all that revolutionary as he was a bloke, if a fairly ordinary one, but they were just getting on with getting on, building up a team, being God’s people on the ground.

Back in 2019 I was getting on with walking LEJOG. I still had 63 days to go and was not yet half way. Forward to 2020 and we’ve been in lock down 10 weeks, which is already 10 weeks too many for some, and the country is even more divided than it was when all this started. Not just Brexit, as if that weren’t enough, but now all sorts of anger about the pandemic and whose lives matter most. So things are still up in the air and the question ‘Is it time yet?’ is still timely.

When Matthias was elected to the 12, Justus wasn’t (in fact this chap seems to have had 3 names: Joseph, who was called Barsabbas, also known as Justus). I wonder what happened to Justus? Did he breathe a sigh of relief and get on with his life, go off in a sulk or start a Fresh Expression?

Most things have a sell by date these days. But some thing don’t. Following the Way has no ‘to do by’ date. Things may be up in the air, but our feet are on the ground and here we stay. It is time for us to be God’s people today.

From the remembered bible in Acts 1
Is it time yet?

This prayer is from LEJOG 2019:
Timeless God, we who are obsessed with time need your calm reassurance.
Help us to wait expectantly,
Neither anxious or too laid back.
Your promises are reliable
And you will not restrict the potential of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

JAL: 30.05.2020 in Longdendale.

Day 53 of the End to End in 2019 was on the Lancaster Canal from Garstang to Gallgate which was bridge 62 to bridge 88. Canals in England most often have numbered bridges (although the Bridgewater Canal has named bridges). Bob and I found the bridge numbering system quite useful as we could text each other to say which bridge we were at. This would help us to know roughly how far apart we were if he was walking towards me, for example. Of course the bridges aren’t equally spaced but it was helpful.

Sometimes an aquaduct would also be numbered as a bridge. The Lancaster Canal has few locks, except the Glasson branch which goes down to Glasson docks.  An early end to the walking day left time for a visit to Knott End, opposite Fleetwood where we found a welcoming cafe. There’s a ferry at Knott End and the cafe is by the slipway, so no bridge there then.

Bridges are mostly noted for being crossed rather than counted. Maybe we might count bridges we’ve yet to cross. Coming out of lock down from COVID19 is about crossing a lot of bridges in due course, some of which may seem bigger than others depending on the people preparing to do the crossing. Different vulnerabilities and anxieties may contribute to how it feels to prepare to cross the bridge.

There were a great many bridges on LEJOG overall, some big, some bigger. They were crossed in various types of weather, some sunny, some downpours. A bridge is also used as a metaphor for reconciliation: coming together in the middle of a bridge seen as a way of bringing different people together. Whether we are bridge counters, crossers or reconcilers, may the way continue for us, safely and peacefully.

From the remembered gospel: Jesus said ‘I am the true and living way leading to the Father’. I think of Jesus as a sort of bridge in this saying, linking us with the Eternal God.

Bridge builder, may we learn to be reconcilers,
counting the bridges that bring us together,
helping each other to cross over,
not at any price, but mindful of what it cost you
to be a true and living way.

JAL: 29.05.2020 in Longdendale.