On Day 8 of the #GrandWalkOut we are notching up the counties. Today we move from Staffordshire to Warwickshire and even a touch of Leicestershire at one point. Various place claim to be the heart of England but the countryside we are now walking through is like this for miles.
The heart of England…
Walking is good for your heart and is a heartfelt thing. Not just physical it touches our mental and spiritual well being too. Bob started today at Hopwas and walked to Alvercote Marina. I started at Alvercote Marina and walked to Bridge 48 near Grendon. There are no seats along the Coventry Canal which is, I think, an oversight. But there were barges selling craft items which was nice.
Bridge 48 on the Coventry Canal
We met up again at Atherstone, which boasts a market in the heart of the town that dates from Anglo-Saxon times. We picked up our clean washing from the laundry service.
Atherstone market
How would you describe the heart of St Benedict’s Rule? Would it be the daily pattern of worship and work, or the stability of life lived in the same community or would it be Benedict’s instructions to welcome strangers ‘as Christ’. Different people might see the heart of the Rule in different terms. Life in community calls different people to co-operate in building community mindful of the challenges such a group might face, how they might see things differently.
Female orange tip butterfly
The stalls in the market place sell different things. The town doesn’t need a market in which all the stalls are the same. The community thrives on the variety of market stalls. So too with creating community together. It works best when we do it wholeheartedly however different we may be.
Cross-roads
Tonight we meet some LCSB members from the Midlands and shared a meal, which is an enjoyable part of community.
From the remembered bible : Look after your heart: everything flows from it.
From my heart to yours.
From a Friend of Scholastica and a Member of the Lay Community of St Benedict.
Yesterday was a rest day. However I was using the new camera and came across many waterfowl do I thought I should post some.
Today was Day 7 and we’ve been walking a week. Bob started at Fradley Junction on the Coventry Canal and I went to Hopwas, hoping to see some bluebells. There were loads. The lovely church yard at St Chad’s was in full bloom.
I then walked along the Coventry Canal towards Bob and met him after a few miles. It was a lovely day for butterflies as well as more waterfowl. Does anyone know why there are small doors in some bridges on the Coventry Canal?
A door in a bridge…
Sparrows weren’t worth much in Jesus’ day. So much human behaviour today suggests our contempt for other species, it seems little has changed. In God’s economy sparrows get top rating.
The underwing of an orange tip butterfly
In Benedict’s Rule the community was urged not to look for rank or importance in age or office. It seems we struggle with such ideas even several hundred years later. Human beings are still busy with their status. Walking on a canal tow path there’s no rank. We do it slowly and eventually we hope we will arrive in London. Some way to go yet. Tonight we stay at a small glamping pod on a farm in Warwickshire: very comfy.
Pods in a row…
From my remembered bible: How much are sparrows worth?
May I value them all
From a Friend of Scholastica and a member of the Lay Community of St Benedict.
Dear 6 of the #GrandWalkOut and we seem to be getting the hang of it. I walked from Bridge 83 to Bridge 74 on the Trent and Mersey Canal. Bob started at bridge 74 and walked to Bridge 50 which is Fradley Junction. I then drove there to meet him.
Celendines
Another lovely day and Trent and Mersey Canal is a long one. There are many fascinating signs of progress along the way from the salt spa to the farm shop. I keep counting bridges and look out for interesting flora and fauna. This will be our last Trent and Mersey day this trip as we turn onto the Coventry Canal next.
Milepost
As I walk I think about the Rule of St Benedict, still followed by many around the world today. I wonder what Benedict and Scholastica, his sister, would think of as progress?
Is it progress for monastic communitites to get bigger and bigger or for billionaires who support hate speech to buy social media platforms? These days most of the monastic communitites I visit are not all that big and support themselves through small sustainable enterprises. I thought of a name for a social media platform called Natter, but maybe someone else already started that.
Local industry
I ate ice cream made by local suppliers and chatted to a canal user about walking long distances, how it grounds you (his words) and helps you to get things back into perspective. I certainly find it helps, this strange mix of pilgrimage and tourism.
Swans
As I wander onto the next place I admire the activity going on around me and pray we may co-operate to ensure the planet remains sustainable for generation after generation.
From my remembered bible: Let your servant go on in peace.
Rebalance me.
From a Friend of Scholastica and a Member of the Lay Community of St Benedict.
It’s Day 5 of the #GrandWalkOut and we’re well into Staffordshire. Bob took the train from Stone back to Stoke and then walked to Stone. I did the shopping in Stone and then started walking at bridge 93.
A bridge…
It’s pretty obvious to me that I’m not as fit this Spring as I was in 2019 when I started the End to End. I had Covid19 a month ago, having managed to avoid it for quite a long time. Although I have now recovered, I’m still tired and limiting my walking to about 6 miles or so per day at the moment.
Cowslips
The Trent and Mersey Canal was one of the first built, with work starting in 1776. Back by Josiah Wedgewood amongst others, it served his pottery works in Stoke. It’s beautiful to walk along today with wild flowers along the edges and swans nesting in the reeds.
Swans
At Aston Lock I was half way along the length of the Trent and Mersey, with 46 miles either side of me. Whilst I have been to the Preston Brook end of the canal (in 2019), I’ve yet to make it to Shardlow (and won’t get there this time either).
Halfway
In the end I managed 10 bridges to Sandon. Counting bridges is a handy activity on canals. Each has their own character.
The Covid19 Pandemic has put fitness under scrutiny across the globe. It comes in many forms. Much of the Rule of St Benedict is about fitness, not just what the members of the community needed to stay fit and healthy, which was one of Benedict’s concerns. But also fitness for different roles in the community. Each role is carefully described, from the one who opens the door (the Porterer), to the one who keeps the stores (Cellarer) and the various types of leaders. He was trying to ensure that only those fit for each office was given the job so that each community could thrive. It’s still an important aspect of fitness to consider today.
Butterbur
As I plod on a few more bridges, my fitness is probably improving. Flat Canal walking is not too demanding, and there’s always the motivational ice cream at the end of the day.
From my remembered bible: Let us run the race….
Walk on.
From a Friend of Scholastica and a Member of the Lay Community of St Benedict.
Day 4 of the #GrandWalkOut has us moving on from our 1st temporary base in Congleton. I dropped Bob at Kidsgrove and I went on to Stoke. To some this route may seem odd, but it’s straight down the canal, which is rarely straight. To others it will seem like a potter, a dawdle, a mouch.
Heron
Once at Stoke I pottered back up the canal. I remember its distinctive mile posts from 2019, when I was further up.
I walked to the junction at Eturia where the Trent and Mersey Canal meets the Caledon Canal. This spot is an interesting industrial junction. There’s also plenty of waterfowl enjoying the Spring season.
Goose
Interesting sights include various shapes of old kilns, evidence of the potteries industries over several hundred years. Some works remain open for visitors. It’s still possible to ‘go down to the house of the potter’.
When Jeremiah made his visit he was using the potter’s activities to illustrate the way God shapes people. The Rule of St Benedict is also about shaping communities of people.
So what shapes us and how does it happen? Our whole life times are a shaping experience. It never stops. Whether that shaping is a positive action that leads to flourishing as individuals and communities or results in negative attitudes and actions towards ourselves and others depends on the way we choose.
Going down the tube….
Benedict said his Rule was not meant to be too difficult. As we try to live by it hundreds of years later we do have to contextualise it and ask how it can shape us positively in our world today.
This walk is not meant to be too difficult either. Each of us walks at our own pace and for a reasonable distance. We may walk, dawdle or potter. Four days done we have pottered through some of the potteries.
Lunch, from bowls…
From my remembered bible: Go down to the house of the potter.
Shape me!
From a Friend of Scholastica and a Member of the Lay Community of St Benedict.
Day 3 of our #GrandWalkOut and we’re still on our first canal: the Macclesfield Canal.
I started at Congleton and walked to Ackers Crossing. Bob started at Ackers Crossing and walked to Kidsgrove. His destination meant we had completed the Macclesfield Canal and were now heading down the Trent and Mersey Canal.
Crossing the End to End route…
We also crossed the route of our daughter Hannah’s End to End (she walked it in 2012) just north of Kidsgrove at the Red Bull pub.
Bob at Kidsgrove station
There were a number of other firsts today. My first heron on the canal. I always look for these beautiful sentinels. Most importantly though, our first ice cream of the walk: a Snugberys at Little Moreton Hall, which is an incredible building.
Little Moreton Hall
In the Rule, St Benedict urges the community to put prayer first, which is good advice. It comes in many forms and it’s good to try several. I was pleased to hear worship in Ukrainian and English from the Catholic Ukrainian Cathedral of the Holy Family in Exile on Radio 4 this morning. It was the first time I’d heard their particular liturgy. But also because, before it became the Ukrainian Cathedral the building was the Kings Weigh Church. A church of the Congregational Union of England and Wales at the time, it was here in 1917 that Constance Coltman became the first woman to be ordained in England. When I last visited, Dr Orchard’s coat hook was still visible in the vestry (he was one of the ordaining ministers, and later became a Catholic).
The Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral of the Holy Family in Exile, London
I begin with prayer. Not a lengthy liturgy but a simple opening of heart, and I return to it many times during the day, from first step to last.
From my remembered bible: In the beginning…. (also part of the Ukrainian Easter liturgy)
Open my heart.
From Friend of Scholastica and a Member of the Lay Community of St Benedict.
Janet Lees, Day 3 of the #GrandWalkOut from Congleton to Kidsgrove.
Day 2 of the #GrandWalkOut had Bob returning to Macclesfield to walk to Congleton via canal with his brother.
What’s what in Congleton
I opted for a more gentle circular walk around Congleton, starting by the River Dane. I don’t know much about the story of Congleton but I saw plenty of things that made me wonder at it, including an abandoned paddle boat cum bar, and a sad lost shoe.
Abandoned
In St Peter’s Church yard there were signs of the Easter story remembered last week. The crucifixion and the empty tomb were both represented.
Good Friday Empty tomb in St Peter’s churchyard
Each of us has a story and the families, communities and places we are linked to also have stories. We are surrounded by these story layers.
The Rule of St Benedict can be read as a story, the story of the development of monasticism. In the Lay Community we are constantly asking how this story is relevant to us living in the world today. Benedict didn’t claim to be the first or even that his community was perfect. But he did try to encourage a way of communal life that was do-able, where people could thrive. This must surely be the story we want to be part of, both our successes and our failures.
A bridge over the Macclesfield Canal
The canals were a large part of the story of industrial Britain. Then they were largely abandoned for rail and road transport, to later be rediscovered and reused. Every community goes through such phases and rediscovering new purpose on old foundations is a worthwhile communal enterprise. The Easter story is about new life and is foremost in our minds in the 50 glorious days after Easter Sunday.
A lane…
From the remembered bible: we build on rock.
Tell me the old, old story.
From a Friend of Scholastica and a Member of the Lay Community of St Benedict.
Janet Lees, Day 2 of the #GrandWalkOut, Congleton.
From today the blog will look at little different. This is the beginning of a walk I am calling the #GrandWalkOut. It is a walk to London via canals.
It therefore begins on our nearest canal at Marple. I dropped Bob there as he was taking the first leg today as far as Bollington.
The first day of a long walk is a bit ‘wait and see’. It actually turned into the longest walk I’d done since having Covid19. It was beautiful to be back out in the Spring sunshine, ducklings bobbing alongside, the edges of the path decorated with Spring flowers.
I drove onto Macclesfield to pick up an LCSB friend and then back to Bollington where I parked to car (for Bob to find later) and set off on foot with my friend down the Macclesfield Canal.
The walk was followed by first class Benedictine Hospitality in Macclesfield. As a Lay Community we say we try to ‘re-imagine’ the Rule for the 21st century. But some bits are more straightforward than others. Sharing a meal is an obvious place to start. We were the welcomed strangers. It’s good to be reminded that this is what is expected of us.
From the remembered bible: Jesus said ‘I’m coming to your house for tea’.
Thanks.
From friend of Scholastica and a member of the Lay Community of St Benedict.
Maybe stranger things have happened than Jesus rising from the dead, but for me that’s the new beginning. We celebrated together as a Lay Community this weekend and we said a lot of Alleluias.
Easter fire, 2022.
It was a strange time to celebrate. It seems that the Easter message is still misunderstood even in the UK which claims a long back story with Christianity (it was probably brought here by the Romans in the first century). But this Easter the usual nonsense was rolled out to deter Christians from living life in community according to the faith we share. Foremost amongst these is the nonsense that Christians should not be political.
I’ve no idea what the dominant view was in the 5th and 6th centuries when you were just getting started. But there’s no doubt that the Rule you are remembered for is a political document as is the bible we share. The heart of the Rule is that ‘All guests should be welcomed as Christ’ for ‘When I was a stranger you welcomed me’ (chapter 53). It is this strange business of being a stranger that we stumbled over again this Easter.
A stranger is just someone we don’t know yet. A stranger is a person, a human being just like us. Unfortunately we have developed the unpleasant tendency of ‘othering’ the stranger, ostracising and excluding anyone ‘not like us’. We seem to be at our most vicious when it comes to strangers who arrive in boats and lorries unexpectedly. Aspects of our media and politics have developed very hostile narratives around such strangers.
Strangers on the shore?
In all my travels I have never found myself treated in this way, however unexpectedly I’ve turned up. I have sometimes been told my interpretation of Christianity is ‘too political’ sometimes in the oddest of circumstances. This usually means the hearer disagrees with my interpretation. I don’t think I’ve ever accused anyone of an interpretation that was either ‘too political’ or conversely, ‘not political enough’.
Some of you will be rolling your eyes and saying ‘Yes, but…’ Not buts here. Of course the community could get filled up with strangers, who would then not be strangers. What is it that we can’t share?
Later this week I shall be experimenting with stranger status again as I set off with Bob on another long walk. This one was postponed since 2020 and will take us down to London and back. I will be a gyrovague once more, a rootless stranger looking for a welcome of sorts. Now you are fairly unhappy about gyrovagues in your Rule as I’ve mentioned before, partly to counteract the tendency for people just to roam about. You liked your settled community and wanted others to both enjoy and commit to it as well. But sometimes life causes us to roam and when that happens we desperately need not censure or exclusion, not resettlement camps in far flung places, but welcome.
To London, but not starting from here….
From my remembered bible I was a stranger and you welcomed me.
Welcome us all.
From a Friend of Scholastica and a Member of the Lay Community of St Benedict.
The blog of the walk will be found here from 22nd April 2022, instead of the usual letters to Benedict.
After a week of Covid19, I’m gradually feeling better: tiredness continues. What with other folks I know also testing positive it made me think a bit differently about Holy Week.
Testing, testing ….
It’s hard enough being holy for a week without being wholly weak. But every week includes weakness. You allowed for Alleluias ‘except in Lent’ (chapter 15) and evidently that meant you were more generous with this practice than some instructors. So I’ll just fit in a quick Alleluia for weakness while I’m here.
It’s hard to celebrate weakness in a culture that hard on the soft aspects of being human. Even in this week of weeks the bits that could be seen as weak are edited to distance us from too much weakness.
It’s the bridge that’s weak….
A man arrived at the city gate on a donkey, like many did every week. Rather than see this as ordinary, let alone weak, a great cheering crowd is heard making a fuss about a king coming, however unlikely the beast. Some say the donkey knew: they are knowing creatures.
A knowing look
Tired, weary and as weak as you or me, Jesus climbs off the donkey and disappears into the underbelly of Jerusalem. When he reappears he’s sitting down, not standing, in the temple. Just watching, just waiting, just breathing, he notices ordinary things. There’s an ordinary woman who makes an ordinary offering. Easy to overlook that.
Easy to overlook the poor today even though they are still with us. To overlook the ones on pre-payment meters queuing at local foodbanks for food that doesn’t need cooking. The message seems to be weakness should be ignored. But not by Jesus who remarks that it’s ‘All she had to live on’. It’s still up to us to determine if it’s enough to provide pot noodles or whether we should entice anyone into making a greater fuss alongside the weak.
Enough to live on?
It’s a week in which weakness continued to surface in all kinds of ways. Coming to the end of his temper with things as they were: a fig tree with no fruit, a temple market place with no justice, who wouldn’t loose it, and let it loose to echo down history as weakness or what? I’ll add a quick Alleluia for that too.
In a weak moment he takes the towel and tries to show them what it’s really like being part of a squabbling community in a place of political turmoil. Alleluia for clean feet.
In a weak moment he takes bread, ordinary stuff, and tries to say something about the yeast infused stuff that feeds them and the fermented juice that runs in their veins over hundreds of years of running away. They miss a lot of it, as do we, unhappy about too much weakness. We squabble about who was and who wasn’t there, what was and wasn’t said, what it did or didn’t mean, instead of taking the stuff and sharing it. ‘This is my body’: Alleluia for that.
ready to be bread
The Mount of Olives at night would have been a dark and isolated place. Not a place for sleeping or for lover’s to meet and kiss. Giving all his strength away, as he has been throughout his ministry, he is taken away in weakness. Alleluia for that.
From there on, everything tumbles away until stripped and bleeding, nailed and tormented, all that’s left is weakness. And perhaps that why we want to edit the weak bits, busy concentrating on getting the right ending rather than what it takes to get there. Who wants a weak leader, one with mental health challenges or physical limitations, a mistake-maker, giver-upper? No mask or put on face here. Only the agonised admission: it is finished. Alleluia for that.
Sixth century cross in West Cornwall
My week will have weak bits, tired bits, uncertain and unconvincing bits. The answer will be ‘I don’t know’ several times a day. I’ll step away, avert my eyes, deny and prevaricate. And from time to time, I may just glimpse some holiness in all this and raise my feeble Alleluia.
From my remembered bible: There was silence
Alleluia!
From a Friend of Scholastica and a Member of the Lay community of St Benedict.
