Monthly Archives: October 2016

Creative progress

Remember those old projects I mentioned yesterday? Well a bit of progress has been made. I’m not sure this looks anything like Edinburgh, but a city skyline is emerging.

These four will be flowers on the bigger project to remember visits to the Battlefields of WW1. I saw a similar idea on some quilts made by Canadian women when I was there this year.

This pattern is called Log Cabin and is one of my favourites. The kit came from a heritage centre on the Isle of Man when we were there last Spring, so it’s been quite a quick piece of work to get it to this stage already compared with some unfinished projects I found.

Imagining the Reformation

Today I’m Katherina von Bora, picking over herrings for my family. When I do this I remember our escape from the monastery in the barrels of fish. The smell was awful. It was hard not to retch. I kept thinking we were not going to be fishers of men but very fishy women.
But of course after our escape the joke was on me. The other women were able to find homes, marriages, families. I was the one left over. I often wondered if the smell had clung to me. There were a few who sniffed around for a while. I rejected them, like the builder rejects the less favoured stones.
After I married Sir Doctor Luther I ran the household efficiently and even the clinic, so he had no worries. Cattle were tended to, beer was brewed, the Bible was read to the children.
They grew up and our lives together became both a pattern for other families and food for gossips. I got up early, read my Bible and kept my opinions to myself, unless he asked me directly which wasn’t that often. There was plenty to do: more children to raise meant building work on the house to make room for us all. There were morning prayers and evening prayers to supervise for the household when he was away or at the university.
After his death I went to pieces. I missed him more than I can express. Mourning is exhausting and much about the household organisation just slipped from my grasp. I didn’t know who to turn to and I made some decisions that didn’t turn out too well. But I never neglected my Bible. Although much about me has been forgotten, I remained true to Christ. I stuck to him like a burr to cloth, or like the smell of herrings sticks to a woman in a barrel of fish.

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.

Ready, steady, create!

Last night a bit of painting in my new Gudrun colouring book.

Also laid this out on the dining room floor. One day it will be a quilt to remember our visit to the Battlefields and the WW1 Centenary.

Below is an old project I found from over a decade ago. I think it started out as Edinburgh. I may get it finished: a city skyline.

Meanwhile this is the kitchen table. Several old projects have come to light. One from as far back as my au-pair days in Paris: that’s 36 years ago. The tulip bulbs also need planting this week at the latest.

On our hearts and on our homes

The blessing of God.

Coming back

Coming back is always difficult. We had stood at Tyne Cot in a circle by the names of Harry and Ronald Moorhouse, killed in action on 7th October 1917, and I had called out every 7th person round the circle. This was to represent the one in seven who, having served in WW1 didn’t return at the wars end.
I reminded them of what Mr Yonge said when the war memorial was dedicated in 1920 heard not say much, burnt out as he was from the emotional draining of the war years but he reminded those present of the vision of peace and justice they had struggled to uphold.
There are many things that separate us from the generation of 100 years ago, just as there were many ways in which they differed from each other: volunteers and conscripts, combatants and noncombattants, pacifists and conscientious objectors.
We are a digital generation: blogs replacing letters from the front line. Even so human emotions link us together. The group had reflected on the lives of some of those ‘shot at dawn’ earlier in the day in Poperinge. We were tired and still a long way from home when we boarded our ferry at Zebrugge to Hull.
So what will we remember about our journey together? Some cited the visits to trenches still visible a hundred years after the conflict. There was the misty morning at La Boiselle crater and later at the Thiepval Memorial: the mist itself making its contribution to the emotions of the day. As the landscape emerged from the fog so the cemeteries if the old front line of The Somme Battlefield began to be seen more clearly, each one marking the sacrifice of another hundred or thousand young men.
There was the rebuilt city of Ypres and the tunnels dug under the city of Arras. There were the small personal items in a display case: a bible, a letter, a photograph. There were the old rusting remains of ordinance piled up alongside manglewurzels at the edges of fields. There was name after name on gravestones and on walls and sprinkled amongst the hundreds of thousands that tiny few, the 42 we looked for and acknowledge as our own.
I never knew them in life, the Silcoates Pals, not like John Yonge did who taught 39 of them, but their photographs and stories have been a big part of our remembering in these centenary years. We will return to remember again next year with another group of students.
For those who think we have spent too long on such remembering, I have said before that it is a serious and challenging task. We hold it in common with so many other people. Daily other human beings join the ranks of those remembering others killed in war. We cannot shirk the task. Just as the Psalmist recalls the trees clapping their hand and the valleys singing, so we too know that cities can wail and fields can weep.
Meanwhile, the sun rises on another day.

In our life and our believing
The love of God

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)

Four seasons

We go to the Battlefields in Autumn
When the leaves are falling,
Piling up in drifts,
Squashed onto stones.
Red, orange, yellow;
Dull down to brown as we advance.

Imagine if we went in summer:
How the earth would be baked and cracked,
How the grass would be waving, high,
Scattered with blue and red;
The poppy and the cornflower
Side by side.

As for spring: what if it was spring?
Time of new growth and promise:
Ideal season for an offensive.
Maybe there would be blossom,
Or bulbs bursting like shells
On a gradually greening landscape.

What about winter, the bare time:
Frost on boughs and grass and stones.
Even snow covering the ditches and mounds,
Berries bleeding blood red through the white.
Bones still rattling in the graves.

But every year we make this pilgrimage
In Autumn, colourful season
Of variety and fruitfulness
And we remember the name soaked ground
And how a generation was swallowed up
To wait the final trumpet
And the last call.

In our coming and our going
The Peace of God.

Autumn on Vimy Ridge

As the coach winds its way along the road of the Canadian Memorial Park at Vimy, Northern France, you might think you could start counting the trees, one for every Canadian lost here in WW1. But of course you can’t. The shell holes still mark the ground and the lines of the trenches are still visible between the trees.
Today the Canadian Memorial of white limestone is shrouded in mist, as it rises from the ridge into the autumn air, its whiteness still and stark against the misty sky. The features of the statues on the memorial make grief in stone. Here and there eternal stone carve leaves mingle with the squashed maple leaves of this year’s fall making the memories of a century ago and the current pilgrimages blend together. The figures of Truth, Faith and Justice look down on us.

We are here
to remember,
to discover,
to learn,
to become peacemakers
and builders of justice,
to serve God and each other.
And we are ready to serve God today.

(I am currently on a visit to the Battlefields of the Western Front with 40 others from Silcoates school)

Adventures on Twitter

Since my walk on the Cleveland Way in August I’ve been more active on Twitter. I have found some fun things, often with a serious intention like conservation with @Spokesbird or @LostWombats, from Australia. There are accounts I follow about British Wildlife, a keen interest of mine since childhood, and climate change.
Feminism has been my lifeblood since puberty so it’s been good to follow @Dangerouswomenproject.org as well as particular women like @JoanneChocolat and my former research supervisor, Dorothy Bishop (who always fed the body and the mind).

I follow a number of different voluntary organisations: For example, Scope I used to work for, but also UNICEF who we have supported at school.
People of faith of many different paths are kindly following @silcoateschapel, a small corner of dissenting Christianity in Yorkshire.
All this has helped me to feel more connected again after a period of feeling isolated as a result of the recent review process by my local Synod.
One of the most recent examples of this sense of new connection had come through joining the Finnish churches movement Bellsforaleppo.org.
Since the beginning of term, now 7 weeks ago, we have been thinking about the people of Syria, particularly children in besieged cities and towns and in refugee camps. The young people have many questions and lot of compassion so ringing our small bell in solidarity with people in Aleppo was quickly taken up.
We have now been ringing for a few days and many conversations have also followed from this involvement. We also have a lot more followers on Twitter and from many different places. We must remain focused on our aim of supporting Aleppo through our prayers and actions. But another challenge is I need to learn Finnish.

In our life and our believing
The love of God

Ring for Aleppo

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Audio…

Some churches in Finland have been ringing their bells in solidarity with Aleppo. We only have one bell but we are joining in today. Each hour we will ring our bell in solidarity with people in Aleppo.

Here is our Senior Chapel Steward, Tim, ringing for Aleppo this morning. He has been ringing our chapel bell since he joined the school 7 years ago.

God bless Aleppo.

Keep her people safe:

Give them peace.

Notes from Chapel

a blog from Silcoates Chapel