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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Janet Lees, Day 4 to Stoke.