Category: saints

Windy and wild

Day 114 of the End to End in 2019 began 28 miles from John O’Groats and 4 days to walk there. The weather had other ideas. At first not too bad, just a bit windy as witnessed by the rotating arms of the nearby Baillie wind farm.

I made a short detour to St Trostan’s grave yard to see an early water stoop in the wall there. The name Trostan might have originally been Drostan and he may have come from Ireland. Names change as people move about. I wonder if these wandering Irish saints in their small boats were welcome?

After St Trostan’s it started raining harder and got windier. The walking became more difficult and I had to stop and start several time, getting soaked, cold and struggling to stay upright. Not every traveller has the choice of whether to set out or not. Twenty something miles may not seem far but for some it can be the difference of a whole lifetime.

One of the places on my route was Janetstown. How glad I was to get there and sit in the bus shelter for a bit. When you walk LEJOG you remember small gratitudes. Eventually I was walking down into Thurso, even though the ‘No Loitering’ notice at the station didn’t look all that inviting. I walked through the town and finished my day’s walking just a short distance east of the main bridge over the river where there was another well placed bench.

From the remembered gospel: Jesus said to the storm: ‘Peace, be still’.

From the post in 2019, the Scottish Pilgrim’s Prayer

The keeping of God be upon you in every pass,
The shielding of Christ be upon you in every path,
The bathing of the Spirit be upon you in every stream,
In every land and sea by which you go.

May those who travel by land or by sea today
find the welcome and peace they seek.

JAL: 09.08.2020 in Longdendale.

Avoidance

Day 96 of the End to End in 2019 resumed on the Great Glen Way after a break on 20th July for our wedding anniversary. We had spent a pleasant day touring round the Highlands, stopping for views and bagpipers. Yesterday was equally our anniversary, this time 29 years instead of 28, although we spent a quiet day in Longdendale, a different valley.

On LEJOG there were things I would try to avoid: steep routes of long duration, walking along major roads and bad weather. None of these things could be avoided completely of course, and one or two had already crept into this narrative. But an amber weather warning seemed worth avoiding so we decided to combine to reasonable short days into one long day and not walk through the storm.

The first section to Fort Augusts was along the Caledonian Canal and ended with fish and chips for an early lunch or late 11s. We were now getting into Monster country, where every item you can think of, and some you can’t, either resembles a Loch Ness monster, is emblazoned with the Loch New Monster or just named after it. Of course this is all in the name of local economics and seems to work well enough. I do wonder how that Nessie themed world is faring in 2020.

The afternoon section of the walk to Invermoriston included two things I try to avoid: a steep uphill start and a section on the road just before the end. Like I said, they cannot always be avoided. I ended the day by St Columba’s Well at Invermoriston. Legend has it that St Columba defeated the Loch Ness Monster. Seems to have worked: I’ve not seen it all day.

As an adult there are things I avoid: the depiction of violence, especially sexual violence, on film for example. There are plenty of conflicts I have walked away from, to avoid a conflict I didn’t think I would win. I have retired to a quiet corner of Derbyshire and as yet, what with COVID19 have yet to re-engage with the local situation very much.

We all have things we avoid. Changing our minds is something we might sometimes find difficult, if the decision has been profoundly linked to our identity in the first place. It’s like altering a part of ourselves. That’s why a lot of the words about ‘turning to Christ’ are about making a new identity. But we do change, over time, as we age, as we face new situations and challenges, as we lose some relationships and make new ones.  It’s probably something we can’t avoid.

Be a bright flame before me, O God
a guiding star above me.
Be a smooth path below me,
a kindly shepherd behind me
today, tonight, and for ever.
(St Columba’s Prayer)

Path smoother, as I make my way with you,
fearing the worst yet yearning to step into the future,
please be my Flame-Star-Shepherd One,
whatever the monsters which lurk in the unknown.

JAL: 21.07.2020 in Longdendale.

Many threads

Day 55 of the End to End in 2019 continued along the Lancaster Canal. This canal provided the longest canal side route of the whole LEJOG. As I look back at it this was a day with many threads, but actually they all are. I am continually surprised by how things I wrote about a year ago on a long walk pop up one year on in lock down. I’m grateful to those people who read it for the comments they send.

There’s an odd thread in a field alongside the canal just as we turn towards the coast. On the map there’s mention of St Patrick’s Well. So I looked over the hedge. There were cattle and hedges. Then a moving slinky shape emerged from the hedge and lopped across the field: it was a fox. Like many encounters of LEJOG it was very brief and I’ve none of the photographic evidence you get on Springwatch, but it was a lovely moment.

St Patrick’s well remained covered in brambles, if it is still there at all. Tradition has it that Patrick was British and originated around Banna on Hadrian’s Wall. Perhaps his father was a Christian in the Roman Army. I like this story and use it in my still unfinished novel which threads its way through the origins of early Northern British Christianity. Here my path crossed with Patrick’s again.

The day’s walk finished early at Carnforth Station, made over to the film set, lasting memory to a short clip, but warm and dry on a grey day. Trains till stop there, however briefly.

A version of ‘St Patrick’s Breastplate‘ from my as yet uncompleted novel ‘Surplus to Requirements‘.

The One I follow is always with me:

In front, behind, underneath and above me.

The One I follow is in me,

At my left and right side, lying down or sitting up.

When I’m standing here,

The One I follow is inside everyone else who is thinking of me,

Everyone who is talking about me.

That’s the one I follow: the Always-Everywhere-One’.

JAL: 31.05.2020

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.