Begin with something to make the soup base. The way I prefer to do this is with chopped onions and a little garlic. Fry these gently in a small amount of vegetable oil until they are soft and golden. Then add the chopped vegetables you are going to use in this week’s super soup. This can be anything at all – although watery things like lettuce and cucumber are not so good in this kind of soup (but can be fine in lighter summer soups). Remember that what you choose will affect the look of the eventual soup. Carrot makes most things orange, or brown if with something green. Some people like brown soup. Potato will thicken most things but other vegetables will have a similar affect, like sweet potatoes, squash or similar. Stir the chopped vegetables around a bit. Consider the seasoning options. Ground turmeric is nice and goes well with some ginger to make a warming soup that is bright and encouraging. Ground coriander also goes well, and fresh coriander can add a green finish to a soup if you add it at the end. Cumin seeds or ground cumin give a lovely flavour but experiment with things a bit and see what you like. This can be fun but bear in mind that not all members of your community will agree. Add vegetable stock or water and simmer for 20 minutes or so until the vegetables are soft but not soggy. I usually use a blender to finish the soup because I like a thick velvety texture. Some prefer not to do this or to leave some chunks in for guessing games.
Soup in Longdendale
I have been performing this litany once a week since October. Due to the cost of living crisis we can get free vegetables from supermarkets who can’t sell all their vegetables. With these free vegetables we can make free soup to serve people who can’t afford to buy vegetables. We serve it at a small village church that is heated by the giving of people who can only just about afford to keep warm to people who can’t afford to turn on their heating. Some people call this progress. Others call it charity. I call it a disgrace.
But I’m loathe to waste good vegetables or have people go cold and hungry. Unfortunately Benedict doesn’t really do this kind of politics in his Rule. He does commend kitchen service (Chapter 35).
From my remembered
bible: Hurry up and help us God!
Soup makers creed:
I believe in God, creator, ingredients maker of all things
heavenly and earthy,
And in Jesus Christ, food multiplyer, crowd feeder,
Born of the homemaker Mary of Nazareth, getting by on the
basics.
Dear Benedict: One thing that has characterised this phase of my life is being on the move. I keep walking, even if it may not be as much as in 2019, when I completed the End to End. Each day includes, where possible, the little end to end. To embark on pilgrimage, first go up the High Street as if it’s sacred ground: the butcher’s is closed, the baker get’s up at 3 am, they still sell candles in a couple of shops. In a holy valley like Longdendale, what ever the weather, something is trickling down one gulley or another, from the top reservoir to the bottom. But here like other places in England, there’s a partial drought and the behaviour of reservoirs is not a good image for how to treat real people when it comes to economics.
This week has been another of my roving weeks. When on the move I take a few things with me: my phone stands in for many things, but also a paper map for backup, and my remembered bible and remembered rule. Days away from home are different from days at home. Here I’m sat down writing. There I’m on the move, observing and reflecting. A balance between these is my current pilgrim life.
My adventures took me to Angelsey, Yns Mon, across the Menai Bridge where only bicycles can overtake bicycles. I visited four small churches on the island, sometimes on islands next to the island. These probably all began life as hermit cells and are not often used today, though each is still a part of a local group of churches.
St Tysilio’s Church on church Island, Menai.
St Tysilio’s near Menai Bridge is on Church Island which is joined to the main island by causeway. Lit by candlelight, an open door explained that it was founded in 630AD. These are churches of the Celtic version of the faith that was circulating in the West well before Augustine, a Benedictine, turned up in Canterbury (597AD). Simple, less heirarchical and misinformed (according to Rome) about the date of Easter, these small hermitages have been visited by local people for centuries. The early Celtic saints were often on the move and Tysilio is said to have died in Brittany, where the great western seaway took him.
Inside St Tysilio’s Church Menai.
The Church in the Sea is also linked by a causeway to the main island, but is only accessible at low tide, the journey made over a trail of rocks.
St Cwyfan’s Church in the Sea, near Aberffraw
A simple building, services are still held during the summer. Through the window I could see the font surrounded by sea shells, sign of the pilgrim’s baptismal vows renewed.
Sea shells surround the font at the Church in the Sea.
Lligwy Chapel, built in the 12th century, is now a ruin, its community having moved away. There’s no note of it being dedicated to any saint, but all saints came here and in the 16th century at least some were buried here. It stands within a circle of boulders in a meadow not far from an ancient settlement that dates to the Roman occupation and a Neolithic burial mound, all of which indicates this ground has been considered holy since at least 2,500 BC.
Ruins of Lligwy Chapel.Lligwy Neolithic Burial Chamber.
The final one of the four is dedicated to St Seiriol and is a small well chamber alongside the ruins of the Augustinian Abbey at Penmon, proof that one St Augustine did finally catch up with the inhabitants of Angelsey. But it was the other St Augustine, this time from Hippo who’s writings date to about 400 AD. St Seiriol is remembered as one of the early Welsh Fathers, and his occupation of the site dates to the 6th century.
Abbey window at Penmon.
The Penmon cross now housed in the Abbey, 9th century, is incised with simple Celtic patterns.
Penmon Cross, 9th Century.
I’ll end my pilgrimage at St Seiriol’s Well, which is behind the Abbey. This well probably has, like most holy wells in Wales, pre Christian origins. Wells have been sites of pilgrimage for generations and the water here still runs clear.
St Seiriol’s Well, Penmon
I love to visit the homes of the saints, ancient and modern. Each spot reminds me that at sometime someone else sat here and prayed. I join in the timeless action.
From my remembered bible: The swallow makes its nest near your altar.
Note that swallows are migratory birds even now leaving Britain until next spring.
May my prayer migrate as I pray for the migrating ones, all who are travelling beyond borders.
From A Friend of Scholastica and a Member of the Lay Community of St Benedict.
Although I started writing to you nearly two years ago, there were bits of your Rule that I missed out. I’m now returning to chapter 2 which is quite long so this is only about the first paragraph. It’s about leadership and especially the qualities of a good leader.
The Ruthwell Cross, an Anglo-Saxon sculpture remembering the ways of the Cross-Wise One
With Queen Elizabeth II having died three days ago, there’s a lot of talk around about leadership and especially about hers. This makes it timely to talk about the kind of leadership proposed in your Rule. Commentators agree that it wasn’t the kind of leadership that would have been familiar to folks in 6th century Europe. Look at it carefully and we can see it’s not the kind of leadership familiar to people in 21st century Britain either.
Community leaders are ‘believed to hold the place of Christ’. That takes me to the Jesus of the gospels, our human entry point into seeing God at work in the world. It’s a fair step from 1st century wandering Aramaic preacher to 21st century leader, on either the local or global stage. We talk about Christian values but often shy away from the radical nature of their demands.
Stone cross in field boundary, probably dating from 6-7th century, Cornwall.
Jesus was not upholding the status quo of the religious institutions of his day. He did not point to local or global political leaders as heralding the reign of God but to another kin-dom based on the activity of the seeds of small plants. Most of what is remembered of what he said (and it would have had to have been remembered before it was written down) turns the human ideas of that day and this upside down. He was regularly criticised for hanging out with the wrong people, often those on the margins of the the society of which he was a part.
We on the other hand take a pick and mix approach, choosing the bits we like and leaving the rest under the carpet. Former Primer Ministers may praise the late Queen’s honesty and humility and conveniently overlook their own lack of either of this qualities, for example. Or the new Home Secretary might say too many people claim state benefits in support of income whilst herself earning a six figure sum. These ways of speaking and acting are not, it seems to me, at all Christ-like.
Seen in Caithness, 2003
The leaders of the community you describe do not get praise heaped upon them, but neither do they get trolled. They are not expected to make a fuss but just get on with the role God has called them to. There is some similarity between this interpretation and the life of the late Queen Elizabeth, except for the reported 500 million pound fortune and the multiple large mansions. A Queen is after all a queen and inherits all the baggage of state and history into the bargain.
The monastic leader is not in this league, although eventually of course there were monastic leaders who got the wrong interpretation of leadership roles in the past, accumulated too much wealth or abused power in other ways. Some of these have been unmasked and the abuse of religious power was one of the things that contributed to the Reformation in Europe. Unfortunately too much of the Church is still rich making it difficult for some to see it as on their side of those on the social margins. It may be understandable to think that the worship of the Triune God requires our best; huge wealthy buildings and posh clothes, but there’s nothing in the gospels to suggest this and everything to indicate it wasn’t the way Jesus lived his life.
Closer view of the Ruthwell Cross, Dumfries and Galloway
When leaders are ‘believed to hold the place of Christ’ we might imagine him washing people’s feet, touching lepers, eating with excluded people and the like. These are not just things he did for photo opportunities. He actually lived like that: no home base, no comfortable existence. Most of our leaders, local and global, would not embrace such conditions.
It is said of the late Queen Elizabeth that when Pope Francis asked her to pray for him, she said she would. It’s the very least we can do and it’s an important beginning. If we want to see a greater Christ-likeness in our leaders then we must pray for them.
From my remembered gospel: The kin-dom of God is like …..
Pray for me as I pray for you.
From a Friend of Scholastic and the Member of the Lay community of St Benedict.
I know that summer is nearing it’s end when the valley becomes full of fluff and geese calling. The fluff comes from the thistles and willow herb so abundant here. As the deep purple of the heather wanes, the fluffy seed heads of these proliferant plants explode and set the next generation free on the wind. The geese are also getting restive. Morning and evening they call, their own Lauds and Compline ringing out across the valley as they encourage their companions. It will soon be time for a long flight.
Willowherb in Longdendale
There’s always something on the move in the valley, from tiny bugs to large lorries, some more welcome than others. In chapter 61 of your Rule you explain the welcome that other monastics might expect when visiting a community. In your time too, people were on the move, looking for a place to put down roots and live alongside like-minded people. Although you earlier express your dissatisfaction with gyrovagues (those that wander about) in chapter 61 you seem more accepting that folks will wander about, and more ready to welcome those who do, providing they are not too disruptive.
I try not to be too disruptive……
As one of the more disruptive ones, that made me laugh. Summer, is for me a time of wandering (but then Spring, Autumn and Winter may be as well!). Like the geese I tend to keep my liturgy simple, morning and evening, thanks, reflection and commitment to the valley and the day. I visit my favourite places, watch the sun cross the sky or some other weather, plant my feet on familiar paths. I have snippets of psalms to accompany me and I know the Watching One is awake in the hills (Psalm 121).
A friend reused this old lamps from Bambi to make plant pots.
From time to time I stop on someone’s doorstep: the community foodbank perhaps, to take a turn in deliveries whilst someone else is on holiday. After finding some treasure in a skip I delivered that to my friend who has a reuse, recycle and repurpose shop in the high street. Once a month I join a small group of repairers who try to puzzle out how to extend the life of items bought in by other villagers to the Repair Cafe. So far I’ve eaten more cake than repaired things.
Cake at the Repair Cafe
How disruptive was I? Well, you’ll have to ask the others about that. Meanwhile, I’ll keep company with the geese.
From my remembered bible: The Watching One is always awake.
Watch me as I wander.
From a Friend of Scholastica and a Member of the Lay Community of St Benedict.
In the hot summer of 2022 I’m reblogging the cooler summer of 2019, especially the churches I visited on my End to End. We take up the route at Truro Cathedral, where this sign urged me onwards.
Sign at Truro Cathedral.
Probus Parish Church was not far further on and you can see my boots reflected in the figures of the Remembrance Campaign for 2018: There but not there. The thing we most remember about Probus is the fish and chip shop (of course). They gave a generous donation to Hannah’s walk ten years ago when we walked through in the rain. The chips are also good.
Reflecting in Probus Parish Church
St Mewan Parish church, the next day, was also very welcoming with free drinks and chocolate biscuits. It’s not far from the great cathedral-like bio-domes of the Eden Project. You do get a reduction on the entrance price at the Eden Project for arriving on foot.
Welcome!
Next it was up and over Bodmin Moor. The Doniert Stone is worth a look. Thought to date from the 9th century it commemorates Doniert, the last king of Cornwall. There are many stone monuments, from the Neolithic onwards, on Bodmin Moor.
Doniert’s Stone, 9th century.
Walking onto Launceston where the Parish Church is quite large and dedicated to Mary Magdalene, seen here sleeping on the back wall. She is remembered in a poem by Charles Causley, Cornish poet from the town. He recalls an old custom of flipping a penny onto her back as you pass by.
Mary Magdalene sleeping at Launceston.
On the way out of Launceston, this well house is one of several I visited on the End to End. Water holds a special place in our lives and is often celebrated in our landscape. This is to be particularly remembered in times of drought like the current one in 2022.
Old Cornish well house near St Stephen’s.
That’s it from Cornwall – next episode I get to Devon!
From my remembered bible: Look for the road that leads to life.
Mary, Mary Magdalene lying on the wall, I throw a pebble on your back, Will it lie or fall?
Welcome to a bit of a summer blog about the churches I visited on my End to End in 2019 that was inspired by a recent conversation on Twitter. The actual blog on the 2019 End to End started in April of that year and took 117 days for a distance of 1110 miles. At that time most Parish churches in England were open, though I can’t say what you will find now. Some other churches were open from to time time, depending on local conditions and events, like flower festivals and the like. There will be several parts to this blog because there were a lot of churches and because I started at Land’s End we have the South West up first. In part 1 I’ll cover Land’s End to Truro.
St Sennen, founded 520AD
St Sennen church under blue sky, April 2019
Founded before Columba landed on Iona or Augustine made it to Kent, the early date of this foundation is probably accounted for by missionaries between West Ireland and Brittany. There are a lot of unusual saints names in Western Cornwall for this reason. The church yard and surrounding path include several early stone slab crosses.
Early stone slab cross near St Sennen
2. Borah Chapel, 1878
West Cornwall is also full of chapels, often in very small villages. not all of these survive as places of worship but, like this one at Borah, have been converted to other, often domestic use. Interesting because many of the nonconformist denominations began as worshipping communities in people’s homes. The tradition has come full circle in some places, like Borah.
Borah Chapel, now a house.
3. St Michael’s Mount
Not actually visited in 2019, I have crossed the causeway several times over the years. Named for the Archangel himself (rather than a brand of underwear), it’s an interesting spot, under the care of the National Trust.
Across the bay to St Micheal’s Mount
4. Marazion Methodist Church
This village is on the SW Coast path opposite St Michael’s Mount. The church has a history of of hospitality and shelter. We once left our tandem there and they kindly kept an eye on it.
Marazion
5. St Hilary Parish Church
This is a fascinating place, with early stone slab crosses in the churchyard and inside the remains of a Roman stone inscription. The interior is also decorated with painting by local people of the early Cornish Saints.
St Hilary Parish Church
6. Gwennap Pit
Associated with early Methodism, this is an open air place of worship, visit by John Wesley. There is also a small Methodist Chapel on the site. Wesley is said to have preached at Gwennap Pit 18 times between 1762 and 1789.
Gwennap Pit
6. St Kea Parish Church
Another delightful Parish Church named for a local Cornish Saint, the small village of St Kea is just off the A39 on the way to Truro. We had a picnic in the churchyard.
St Kea Parish Church
7. Truro Cathedral
The first Cathedral on my LEJOG route was at Truro. It has a small pigrim chapel inside the main door, otherwise you’ll need to pay the entrance fee for the main part of the building. The style is Victorian Gothic and it was built between 1880 and 1910.
Truro Anglican Cathedral
From my remembered bible: Come and be a living stone!
One more step along the world I go……
Janet Lees, one time End to Ender, now living in Longdendale.
I am writing to you. It’s one of my occupations. I’m not sure if it’s one of my roles but that’s what I’m going to write to you about today. The bible reading/remembering today was the story of Martha and Mary. Well, actually a small bit of it. Like most of the gospel we only get small snippets of information into the daily life of Jesus and those who followed.
Everyone in a family has their roles, so too anyone in a community and your Rule has loads on that. But most of all you say it’s not competitive. For example, when the Deans are chosen in chapter 21, it’s for wisdom not rank. Yet as humans we are obsessed with competition. So too with interpreting Martha and Mary. In Luke’s words even Jesus gets hung up on it: Mary has chosen the better part.
At Talbert House, Poperinge
I’m suspicious about the gospels (or any religious text really). Luke is seen as a ‘good editor’ for women so why did he write this nasty little snippet in which Martha understandably gets upset when tired and Mary gets commended for the better part which ‘won’t be take away from her’ but ultimately is (i.e. women are stripped of their right to equal discipleship by the Church)? There are a few options but most have the get out clause: sexists society, sexist Jesus.
John comes in later with a different snippet on the family: Lazarus dead, Mary grieving and Martha announcing Jesus as ‘The One’. Different tensions, different words, but still the roles get taken away. Whatever way you look at it, Martha and Mary do not come out of the written gospels with their roles as equal disciples with the named male disciples in tact, at least according to traidtional Church Theology.
Today I played the unassailable role of organist at the small church in the village. Anyone can preach (today my husband) but not everyone can play the organ. Most of the year now it stands in the corner gathering dust. I can play it. I learnt years ago and it still gives me a huge lift in my mood to sit there and thunder out a good tune (even if I do it rather poorly). So you’d think I’d be happy, and certainly as small communities go this is a delightful one.
This morning’s instrument
But I’m still left with my Martha and Mary questions and much besides about roles in any community. There have been and will be many wise ones who will not be appointed to appropriate roles because someone else will get the job due to bribery, favouritism, phobias and other corruptions. Even in the death defying communities that the church is supposed to be, the status quo will predominate. Someone will be slow to embrace change and that will trip us all up.
In my rememberings of Martha and Mary they were carers for Lazarus, the non speaking member of the family who died in unspoken circumstances: the one who gets called out from his own tomb by the Tomb Quitter. These two sisters knew each other well and if 1st century caring is anything like 21st century caring they were both exhausted. One makes and bakes, another sits and listens: roles should be made for us but in family, or community, life is not always like that. Even Jesus struggles to hold the tension together, making promises about discipleship that the Church will eventually fail to honour for centuries.
There was a moment in my organing this morning when I pulled out the trumpet stop in the middle of a verse and blasted it out, because it had all got too comfortable. We were singing ‘Jesus Christ is waiting’ and that moment where it says in the lyrics ‘I am angry too’ we all sounded too nice. This was my ‘hymn of the pandemic’ and I’m still angry, so I let an 8 foot trumpet rip for a couple of lines and felt better. It’s probably a sign that I am completely unsuited to any role in community.
Pulling out the stops
From my remembered bible: ‘I am like a green olive tree’ (Psalm 52: they are known for longevity in harsh climates).
I am angry too!
From a Friend of Scholastic and a Member of the Lay Community of St Benedict.
Yesterday we gave our toy bricks away. Some of them I’d had since a child and some were from my daughters childhood, but they never date. We passed them onto a child, aged 9, who arrived from Ukraine on Tuesday, a country that will require substantial rebuilding.
Building blocks….
Look around our world and you see a lot of that: there’s a lot needs rebuilding. I expect you found that too. Its wasn’t all picturesque ruins even then. I’m not sure there’s really any such thing. After all the ruin of anything has a complex story to tell as evident for example in the Grenfell inquiry.
Remembering Grenfell
Walking along the canals of Britain I’ve seen many extremes. Some things are rebuilt, some are pulled down, some places are rewilded, some are chopped down. There are disused things, like railway lines, that are reused for traffic free paths, while other sections got swallowed up when the M1 was built. A railway route existed between London and the North of England. It was called the Great Central Railway but it was closed so now HS2 starts the process all over again.
Take notice….
All of this made me thing of chapter 57 about Artisans in the monastic community. These were skilled people who could make stuff but the point was they had put that skill at the disposal of the community. Therefore it was directed by the leadership of the community and any benefit accrued was for the community. The artisan was expected to be humble.
It sounds quite sensible until inequalities start to creep in. The leadership might keep more of the artisans products than they should for themselves and the profits are not all given back to the community for decisions about what to do next, for example. The artisans may be encouraged to be humble but what about if their gifts are misused or they are taken for granted. The chapter is not just of concern to the artisans who’s work is under consideration, but for everyone who is concerned for a fair community.
Such are the challenges in community. After all, as we regularly hear these days, it only takes one bad apple. We can rebuild stuff, we can rewild places, but we have to see it as a benefit to everyone. It seems that some businesses that contribute most to human induced climate change wish to be excused some of the responsibilities or receive greater compensation. It’s as if they don’t believe that having a thriving planet is in everyone’s interest.
Building is therefore a complex subject. You go as far as to suggest that monastic artisans should under cut the market price compared with prices outside the monastery. But what if those outside do not have the same support as the monastic artisans and have more overheads from high rents or a profit driven supply chain? If these artisans are under cut by the monastery then they may be driven out of business and into poverty. Not for the first time I find your rule lacking in an understanding of justice, but maybe market forces didn’t seem as complex in your day.
Any worker should do what they can to retain their integrity, but that can include calling out unjust situations or unsafe conditions. ‘Artisans are doormats’ is not an attractive slogan in a monastic community or anywhere, particularly when we regularly see the product of unsafe working or unjust labour laws.
At school I was told by the class bully in a pottery lesson that I should smash up the clay figure I’d made as it was ‘too good’ and that was somehow ‘unfair’ to everyone else (including him of course). I didn’t. I still have it to remind me of some of the challenges of being an artisan in a community.
Child’s play…..
From my remembered bible: a wise person builds on rock
May we have the integrity to build justly.
From a Friend of Scholastica and a Member of the Lay Community of St Benedict.
Back from our long Spring/Summer Walk I think I better get back to writing to you, about your Rule and living with it in the 21st century. Two human beings many centuries apart, I wonder what we would make of each others lives? You a monastic, me a lay Benedictine in a very different world, both of us wondering about how to be human in community.
Human?
At the moment our society is going through a very divisive phase. There are many different attempts to glorify ‘us’ and demonise ‘them’ when in fact of course we’re all members of one race: the human race. Such attempts have been ongoing throughout history. Each Empire has given rise to folks who think they are in some ways superior to another set of people. Within each set rules have developed that segregate, exclude and disadvantage some on the grounds of specific characteristics: for example sex, race, ability, sexuality, gender and income.
Walking seems like a simple thing. The majority of the population can do it and it’s a form of movement seen us defining human evolution, until of course you can’t do it or not very well when all sort of obstacles and challenges appear and you are no longer in the mainstream. At that point discrimination steps in and all the ‘non-walkers’ or ‘poor-walkers’ are excluded from quite large parts of life because of their lack of bipedal motion or their difficulty with it. It’s just one example. One that from a position of current privilege (I can walk) I have experienced the world recently having walked to London and back.
A Camino: walking to London and back….
Along the way I meet many other folks and interacting with them found of course that I had more in common with some than others. It was ever thus. Religion is one thing that currently gets bad press. ‘I’m not religious’ countless people tell me. Some add a story of having fallen out of the church or feeling they got pushed out. Mostly religion comes out of it poorly. It was experienced as a set of dogmatic rules and a straight jacket to behaviour that was applied without care or concern by a hierarchy of leaders who were later found, too often, to be suspect at least and dangerous at worst. So much for religion then.
But religious or not, many people share stories and embedded in most of these is a thorny issue of identity. ‘I used to be…’ is a commonly encountered beginning. The one thing we still are, and cannot relegate to the past, is human. So what is it to be human and be united by our attempts to find identity in humanity?
Your Rule offers a group of human who want to live in community a way of living together to discover more about this. But it wouldn’t suit everyone of the humans I know. The idea of rules is coming into question everyday. What is legal or illegal? Can a person legally be illegal? I wonder what it is we don’t like about ourselves that means we want to define people like this.
In a week of weeks this business of being human came up in many forms. A small group of people, whether legal or not, were to be put on a plane, whether they wanted to be on it or not, and taken to another country, whether they wanted to go there or not because another group of people, human like them but not subject to the same rules, had decided, without asking even more people, that it was a good idea, whether legal or not.
Some of the other people who said they didn’t support it were religious leaders. It lead to a further ramping up of the debate about whether being religious and political was tenable or not. Now you need to know that some significant aspects of my faith formation happened in South Africa between 1984 and 1994, a time when the religious and political things was a major issue in that country. Religious leaders had said that discrimination on the grounds of race (and more specifically a way of governing called Apartheid) was morally repugnant and could not be defended on religious grounds. That it had been so defended by a white minority for a long time is a matter of record. It was, to some extent, down to the way people interpreted the bible, a religious things, but it was mostly about being human.
Earlier in the year, one of the leading opponents of that struggle against Apartheid died (I wrote about him then). ‘The Arch’, Desmond Tutu was quite a human but as a religious man he didn’t shy away from the link between religion and politics, and neither do I. ‘When White people came to Africa’, he, a Black African, used to say, ‘They had the Bible and we had the land. They said “Let us pray” and when we opened our eyes, we had the Bible and they had the land’.
More walking…
It was my time in South Africa that influenced my interpretation of the bible the most. It has been living in Britain in the 21st century that has challenged me to use those interpretative skills the most, including amongst my religious siblings in an out of community. Our shared humanity is not negotiable when it comes to being religious. At the centre of it is One Human who I choose to follow. On the walk someone asked me about that.
A fellow traveller, he described himself as a Pagan and told me he’d been very moved by the companionship and community he’d experienced when taking part in the Camino, that 800 kms centuries old walk across the north of Spain known as the Way of St James. I was walking a few hundred kms on a route of canal towpaths and disused railways in England at the time, but it was my Camino. He asked me what I thought the essence of Christian faith was. For me that comes from me remembered bible: Jesus said ‘Love one another’. He also ‘Follow me’.
He told me he could understand the first but he wasn’t sure about the second point. Why follow? On a towpath or disused railway line this may seem redundant advice. The path has one direction and away we go. But life is not all canal towpaths or disused railway lines, as this week has amply illustrated. How we will decide our direction? What will be our moral compass?
Will it be the further accumulation of wealth and status? Will it be how to bend to rules to suit ourselves and disadvantage some other people? How could it be arranged that my direction is inclusive and encouraging to others such that we travel as fellow humans, thriving in each others company whoever we are.
Wobbly walking…
Some say it’s like that on the Camino. I’ve never been so I can’t comment. But I have been End to End and on a lot of other paths. I have considered how to stop planes from taking off and what to do about food poverty in a rich country. I have though about other human beings, both known and unknown and whilst I’ve not always made the right decision I’m still following the Human One. I’m grateful to all those who keep me company, religious or not.
From my remembered gospel: Jesus said ‘Follow me’.
I journey this day in the name of the Human One
From a Friend of Scholastica and a Member of the Lay Community of St Benedict.
