Category Archives: walk

Prayer in a meadow

Here’s a meadow, here’s a may tree
Here’s the roots, twisted, brown.
Here I sit by the may tree
Here’s the meadow, all around.
Hear the birds singing skywards,
Walking forwards in the sun,
See the blue sky stretched above us,
See the Creator’s love abound.
There’s not much signal in this meadow,
Of the sort on which we rely,
But everywhere there is a signal
Of how the love of God comes near
Touches us in dark and night.
Keep on walking across the meadow,
Keep on walking into light.

When I heard about the bomb attack in Manchester I was on Retreat at Stanbrook Abbey, Wass, North Yorkshire, where there’s not much signal. In some ways it is a world away those events. Shock and disbelief are understandable emotions: not having words to express how we feel.
Wherever we are now, keep walking in the light.

In our life and our believing
The love of God

By the rivers of Babylon

By the rivers of Babylon
We sat down and remembered
Zion,
How can we sing God’s song in a strange land?

By a small stream trickling off the Derbyshire moors, I sat down, and remembered.
I remembered the story of the One who lived and loved and lost and lived again.
I remembered the route, or some of it, that I had taken to follow that Way.
I remembered my companions, the living and the dead.
I remembered the communities with which I had retold the story and tried to follow the Way, the living and the dead.
I heard the water moving over the rocks, singing its own song, to an age old tune.
I heard the birds singing their song in the trees and I heard the breeze moving through the branches.
I remembered that if Christ’s disciples are silent then these rocks, this water, this air will all sing aloud and praise God;
And the fire will be lit again in my heart, and I too will praise God.
I will continue on the living Way, whether the land is strange or well known.
I will remembered the songs and stories that have sustained us.
I will listen and give voice to new songs and stories as they come to me in the air.

In our life and our believing
The love of God

Etherow Park Lodge

Also know as Bill Sowerbutts garden…

If Swallows Wood is a bluebell cathedral then this is more a quiet monastery with its many rooms and cloisters. Here you find both natives and newcomers quietly standing sentinel or rocking slightly in their tops in the gentle breeze.
Yes, there are bluebells here, but fewer and in small groups, still and silent, not so stirred up. They are found both in shade and full sun today. As are primrose and ransome also side by side. Rhododendron that flashy incomer is also coming into flower.
Trees too are native like the massive beech, horse chestnut in spike, and new additions like the swamp cypress. They grow here in monastic companionship and in their turn drip bits and pieces that make the floor springy to step on.
There’s evidence of husbandry, an old coppice beech hedge now out growing its earlier training and some felled trees, I am assuming diseased in some way or even dead.
The pond is quiet and ‘peace comes dropping slow’ as it reflects back the trees and the sky and quietly praises the Creator.

In our coming and our going
The peace of God

Swallows wood

Somedays, Swallows wood is under the flight path. It’s also on someone’s plan for a long delayed bypass. Today I can hear the birds and the breezes.
Last year’s leaves still lie where they fell. The breeze stirs them up from time to time making a sound like tiny pattering footsteps. But this year’s branches are well on with their greening.
Approaching the Bluebell Cathedral there are some cowslip and wood sorrel to light the way. A few bluebells come out as a welcoming party. Near the West Door, I meet a couple who say ‘We’ve never been here before’ and ‘It’s awesome’ and ‘You don’t see this in many places nowadays’.
So make the most of today’s main service: choral birdsong with bluebells.
I enter the nave, a path into the heart of the sanctuary. The bluebells get thicker in the chancel. Thickest still by the high altar, where you can also hear the local lambs.
All on an April Sunday, sitting here in the bluebell cathedral, listening to lambs and birds, I thought of the love of God, the green blade, and the rising.

In our life and our believing
The love of God

Muddled daze

‘The fig tree you cursed has died’

I don’t know about you but this bit of Holy Week is something of a muddled daze. I take my remembered bible along with me and bits pop out of it from time to time: widows with mites, parables and questions from all comers and the whiff of heavy perfume following us everywhere.
I once used the Kenning ‘fig tree curser’ in an RB session, to describe Jesus in Holy Week. The recipient of the card, a computer user, was baffled as it was not a curser he’d heard of. Such can be the fun and chaos of RB that makes it ideal for muddled daze.

Anxious days make me muddled.
Searching for peace neath vine and fig tree
I find the one you cursed has died;
one of the most puzzling events of this whole week.
Setting out on another ordinary day,
not whole, but quite weak,
I can only listen to the stories,
keep time with the footsteps,
and breathe in the wasted scent.

Lord have mercy
Christ have mercy
Lord have mercy

Walking back……

On my way back from the village (now there’s a fruitful word of RB for you) a child waved to me from the doorway of a house. ‘Hello’, he said: ‘This is my Tigger.’ He held up a faded stuffed orange creature which might once have had stripes. ‘That’s a lovely Tigger,’ I replied and waved back.
And then I realised I’d misplaced my Tigger. If anyone comes across it in these muddled days, please do send it back. ‘Let the children come to me. The kindom of God belongs to them’.

on a cold and frosty morning

Today I went for a walk with Preschool. There were about 18 of us and we put on our coats and wellies and went out to look for frost and ice, or which we found some patches. We also found some frozen leaves that were quite crisp, and a pond covered in the green algae. I know it was green algae because one four year old boy told me what it was. We sang a well known song, but we kept changing the words depending on our experiences. Rather than going ’round the mulberry bush’ we went ’round the pond’ and ‘looked at the algae’ and so on. The other pond was still and clear and just like a mirror reflecting back the winter branches. Altogether our walk took about 20 minutes. It reminded me of the ideas about Forest Church I read last year. This was a good short act of adoration and exploration. I look forward to more similar opportunities in the days ahead.

December 21st, O Dayspring

Go through the park, on into the town….

Before the light comes we are just shapes
In the darkness, feeling our way.
A wet nose touches my hand
To confirm this as a common path
For early morning companions.
Bare winter boughs are reflected
In leaf littered pond water.
The park gates keep the traffic out
As I step from one world to another.
In the underpass the same graffiti
Urges on one team or another.
The empty cardboard boxes
Have no occupant today.

The people of darkness are needing a friend….

Come then Dayspring,
Brightest of all lights.
Come to the park and the underpass.
Come to the commuters on the 8.08.
Come to our anxious minds and crowded lives.
Come to platforms both busy and bare.
Come through the grey and heavy air.

The light of the world is risen again….

The sky is touched by the first signs.
The bare branches whisper and sigh
Recognising the moment of miracle
And all the birds in every corner sing
To God, creator of the Universe:
Even so, come then Lord Jesus.

The sun still shines on it never goes down….

In our life and our believing

The love of God

Today’s reflection includes lines in italics from the hymn Colours of Day, 572 in Rejoice and Sing, by Sue McClellan, John Paculabo and Keith Rycroft.

…these roads we never planned to take

This year I will be travelling as a Seeker with the Lay Community of St Benedict. My journey into Benedictine Spirituality began when in my middle 20’s I first visited the Abbey of St Mary’s West Malling, in Kent, which is a Benedictine community. There I was introduced to the Rule and the Hours and they became part of my journey, sometimes close, sometimes more distant companions.
I first read about the Lay Community of St Benedict in the summer when I was walking on the Cleveland Way. It started to pop up on my Twitter feed. Before that I’d taken a retreat in May with another Benedictine Community at Stanbrook Abbey in Wass, and felt a homecoming there. I therefore decided to explore this invitation to be a Seeker and began at the end of November (around my birthday).
The Lay Community is diverse and widespread, I am told. Here begins a year to discern whether my unlikely path merges with theirs. As a result of ‘joining up’ I now receive their regular verses for meditation. Today’s blog title is from the first one and the words are by Peter Millar of the Iona Community, so that is familiar company so far.
There are many roads in my life I never planned to take and I acknowledge the surprising wisdom I have so often encountered on these unlooked for paths. This week I have been ministered to by people of all ages and I have shared in that ministry with them as we fill our Advent cupboard and share our Advent worship, tell our personal stories and listen to each other, as we travel on together on roads we never planned to take.

In our coming and our going
The Peace of God

Messy life

On my walk today I saw Jamie, about 3 years old, his parents and his little brother. Jamie was jumping in puddles and showing his brother how to do it. He picked up a pebble and threw it into the next puddle showing him how to make the ripples that scattered the reflection of the sky and trees in the world mirror. Then he crouched down and got ready for the mega jump. He launched himself into the next puddle and the muddy water flew everywhere.
His mother said ‘No, Jamie’ as the drops cascaded round us all, and apologised to me.
‘It’s OK ‘ I said ‘it looks fun’ and it did. It was certainly messy. It reminded me, we each have a messy life. Celebrate it today.

Views of the Somme

A kestrel’s eye view of the Somme,
Hovering above the front line,
The brown fields with their tell-tale chalk marks,
a hundred years of burial and reburial,
Of neat white stones in lines
Known only unto God.

A squirrel’s eye view of the Somme,
Climbing trees at Beaumont -Hammel
Pines at different heroic angles
Craters to hide in,
Trenches that snake to a line ahead
A break in the wire and a dead tree.

A human eye view of the Somme:
Can there be such a thing?
When inconceivable numbers
don’t add up
And incompressible plans are carved
Into the landscape.
A crater like a pit
a monument so huge,
A list of names so long,
Acts of unbelievable courage.
What is human about any of this?

The human view only really strikes you
When a boy takes a football shirt or scarf,
Precious emblem of allegiance,
And in a group of trees,
At the end of a track
Uses it to remember another never met.

On our school and on our working
The help of God

(today we took part in a ceremony to remember 100 years since the Battle of the Somme at the Thiepval Memorial)

Notes from Chapel

a blog from Silcoates Chapel