Norfolk Pilgrim

While the sacristan was about her duties, I slipped into Horstead Church pleased for the opportunity to bend the knee, "where prayer has been valid", and to gaze at the Jesse window .  P leased, but enormously sad!  All Saints' was clean and ready for use - thanks to the team who look after this holy place. Sadly, it has not been open for private prayer, nor for public worship since the first lockdown in March 2020!  How sad that there should be no Christmas service this year!  Looking  back to Christmases past, I remember happy times and kind faces. And an instant I am  deep in in Psalm 55 country -   " sweet fellowship   at the house of God, as we walked about     among the worshipers." One cannot help wondering if this church will ever open its doors again! 

  Go up to a high mountain herald of good tidings to the Broads,  Say to the villages of Broadland ...........

 On the eve of the feast of St. Andrew  an afternoon ramble through field and fen to visit the church of St. Peter, Belaugh. Perched high on a natural mound, looking south across marsh and river.  Did i imagine I had overheard a conversation between the two fishermen Peter and Andrew?  "Fishers of men! Some joke! Neither of us could have imagined where it would lead us!" Passing the boatyard on the way home, I think about Peter and Andrew's chippy friend. I imagine him keeping their fishing boats in good order!  Now, there's a metaphor for the Church he founded with his  "follow me" and "I will make you fishers of men - fishing boat.  Not a cruise ship, nor a battle ship, a fishing boat. Like Andrew and Peter we look towards the Chippy of Nazareth to keep the ship of the church in good order. Did I imagine the fishermen addressing me wondering, "How's the fishing been in recent weeks?"? 

 The Feast of Christ the King                                      Today's destination my parish church St. John the Baptist, Coltishall Christians have been gathering on this hill for 1000 years or more. Later in the day folk will be gathering here electronically  . That's alright if you like that sort of thing but it feels like a poor substitute to me.  I'd really like to get inside the building and consider the east window but entery is denied. Centre stage is Christ the King Among the saints who bend the knee in the right hand panel is St. Edmund the King whose martyrdom we celebrated last week.  As I renew my allegiance to Christ the King on this Stir up Sunday I ponder the cost of discipleship...........  and find myself thinking about Ditrich Bonhoffer.

 Sunday 15th November                                                 Today's pilgrimage destination?     The weather was foul, I did get out for a walk but decided to go to church on-line. The choice is endless. So churches  live streaming services! Actually, the world is my oyster. Why don't I go home?  I came to adult Christian faith in Colombo.  The Diocese has just celebrated its 175th Anniversary. I would have loved to join them for the service of thanksgiving. So I did!                                                 

Remembrance Sunday -                                                     All churches closed for public worship but ceremonies at War Memorials permitted. To-day's pilgrimage destinations chose themselves. We gathered at Horstead for two minutes silence at 11a.m.  On the other side of the crossroads is the "Recruiting Sergeant"!                                                                                                                     ...

In the normal course of things in the Coltishall Group of Parishes, All Saint's Sunday would be celebrated with  Holy Communion at All Saints, Horstead. Not so this year! Horstead Church has yet to open after #Lockdown 1.0.  So this year Horstead folk joined the saints across the River Bure at Coltishall for their 11 a.m. service. Hot footing it from Coltishall,  we arrived in Horstead churchyard by 12.15 p.m.. The church sits on a slight rise above the river as it has done for 1000 years or so. The rusting gates were given in memory of two saintly, pioneering Anglo-Catholic priests of the 19th Century,  Lincoln Wainwright and Gamber Lowe. "For all the saints who from their labours rest" there's have been a fair few buried in this churchyard over the years.  On this All Saints day with half a mind to All Souls, we were here to pay our respects to family and Church family members who now worship on another shore. Among them My in-laws, Bob and Kaye My very first...

  Green Pilgrimage   dead buried ?  F ake news! Alleluia!  Founded in 2011, the GPN has a vision - "pilgrims on all continents, and the pilgrim cities that receive them, becoming models of care for the environment and leaving a positive footprint on the earth." A need that has become ever more pressing as the Global Warming and Species Extinction have become more apparent. So what's behind the story?  It would be easy to blame the E.U.!  But the truth is the E.U. have been a force for good since they picked up the idea iand developed  Green Pilgrimage Interreg Europe  and the European Green Pilgrimage Network . The U.K. leaves the E.U. at the end of January 2021.  So, U.K. beneficiaries can wave goodbye to E.U. grants.  The friendships  forged through the European Green Pilgrimage Network will endure and we will continue to value our rediscoverd common history. Pilgrims from the U.K. will continue to walk the Camino de Santigo,...

  Holy Cross ? I happened across a Relic of the True Cross as I sauntered about the Anglican Shrine at Walsingham. Back in the day pilgrims may have combined a pilgrimage to the Walsingham with a visit to the Bromholm Priory - one of the buildings that Cromwell knocked about a bit. As you can see from the pics I took on pilgrimage in 2014. Paston Footprints have done a brilliant job of reimagining the priory before its destruction Find myself reflecting on the Dream of the Rood,  the Ruthwell Cross and the last pilgrimage I made to Ruthwell  in 2015.

Eleanor Parker sums up the significance of burial mounds (and supposed burial mounds ) on page 91 of her "Dragon Lords - The History and Legends of Viking England" ( I.R. Tauris 2018. ISBN 978 1 78453 786 9).  In Norse literature, they are "the location of encounters with the otherworld, with supernatural beings and with the dead. For Anglo-Saxons, they were seen "as meeting places and as landmarks, as the home of dragons and demons and the site of hidden treasure." "Dragon Lords" and Austin Mason and Tom Williamson's  Ritual Landscape in Pagan and Early Christian England   have been in the background of my thinking as I creep towards Walsingham, developing layers of interpretation for the   Walsingham Way  website .   Making a pilgrim journey at a snails' pace gives time to see what has been under ones nose for ever. Among the things that have caught my eye on the way from Burgh Castle to Norwich, the Norfolk Saints Way  and then on to...

Christine de Pizan. British Library . Harley 4431, f.259v. The writing is on the wall! Thanks to the Graffito writer of Acle. His words  record the Plague that ran rampant through the population of Norfolk in the 14th Century - The Black Death.  To get its meaning your Latin would need to be better than mine . Helpfully, Simon Knott provides a translation on his  Norfolk Churches website:  Oh lamentable death, how many dost thou cast into the pit! Anon the infants fade away, and of the aged death makes an end. Now these, now those, thou ravagest, O death on every side; Those that wear horns or veils, fate spareth not. Therefore, while in the world the brute beast plague rages hour by hour, With prayer and with remembrance deplore death's deadliness. The fashionable and literate lady in the illustration wears a horned veiled head dress.   The Black Death was one of those great disrupters  that mark the watersheds of history. Not so much causing c...

I am interested in Norfolk's high places. Many of them marked by heritage churches. St. Peter's Belaugh is on my home turf . Since working on the Walsingham Way   - plotting an off road pilgrim route from the east coast through Norwich to Walsingham, - I keep finding more.  Most recently, I have been at Swanton Morley.  All Saints Church is set on a spur overlooking the river below.  Pictures of churches tend to focus on the building  rather than its place in the landscape.   Maps don't always help,  Ordinance Survey contours don't always do justices to a sites unique setting. LIDAR maps can sometimes be better!   Photos seem to give the best sense of the topography.  Towards that end, I am hoping others will join me to produce a collection of churches in high places. I would be interested to know how much interest there might be in this.   Where a collection could best be gathered is a moot question.  Flickr or a F...

It was another Sunday in lockdown. On Sundays I go to church! Our church buildings are holy places, if only because of their use by generation after generation.  Sadly, they are not yet all open after lockdown, not even for private prayer but the churchyards are open. All Saints, Horstead was this Sunday's church of choice. Simon Knott wrote a nice piece about the church on his Norfolk Churches website. I came with a bunch of memories, memories that triggered Psalm 42 in my heart and mind. "As the deer longs for flowing streams...."  Oh! The river flows quietly beyond the churchyard and God's here sure enough. It is the later verses that come first to mind: Wandering through grass among the graves. I remember my brothers and sisters in Christ who have gone before me.  For most of the 1980s I was Rector here.  Names and stories come to mind. They died and were buried in the Christian faith.  It is true that we are mortal, "The days of man are lik...

¶  From a History of the County of Suffolk: Volume 2 There was an old religious house on the Suffolk side of Thetford founded by Uvius, the first abbot of Bury St. Edmunds in the days of Cnut. It was said to have been founded in memory of the English and Danes who fell in a great battle near by between King Edmund and the Danish leaders Ubba and Hingwar. It was served by canons who officiated in the church of St. George as a cell of St. Edmunds. About the year 1160, in the days of Abbot Hugh, Toleard and Andrew, the two surviving religious of this cell, depressed with poverty, visited the abbot and expressed their strong desire to withdraw. At their suggestion the abbot and convent of St. Edmunds resolved to admit to the Thetford house certain Benedictine nuns who were then living at Ling, Norfolk. The bishop of Norwich, the archdeacon of Canterbury, and the sheriffs of Norfolk and Suffolk gave these ladies and their prioress Cecilia an excellent character, and the change was...

Ascension Day is a major feast day. I go to church on major feast days. Just because the churches are closed in lockdown is not sufficient reason to break my rule. Today it was St. Peter's, Belaugh. I chose a high place for Ascension Day. As disapproving Puritan described it as  -   " The Steeple house [of Belaugh St Peter, stands high, perked like one of the idolatrous high places of  Israel "  Quite likely, if the founders establish a Christian church on what had been a pagan place of worship. I like it that I came by boat. I think St. Peter might have liked it too! Maybe the Broads should be twinned with Galilee. I imagine a 'chippy' Jesus mending boats in the boatyard beside this river. And I think Peter would chuckle at the amusing notice! No fishing! Snippets of pslams and hymns come to my mind as I climb the pilgrim path " Who can ascend the hill of the Lord, who can stand in his holy place. He that hath clean hands and a pure he...

I was in Abersoch, on the Llyn Peninsular, with my mum, her sisters and my cousins. During the Buzz bomb campaign, beginning June 44,  we all lived in that corridor along which the VIs flew towards London. They dropped where ever the fuel ran out. It was best not to be standing underneath. What did you do in the war grandad ?  Built sandcastles.  This photo was marked on the back by my mum. "Abersoch 1944" From left to right, " Val Sharp (her dad was with 8th Army as a medic - Uncle Norman was a dentst);  a stranger is next; then Michael Goodchild,  Caro Morris now Musson, (her dad. Uncle Morris was commanding a Corvette in the Atlantic) ; John Goodchild (I don't know where Uncle Ernest Goodchild was)  and there's me, Richard Woodham. If mum's got the date right, and it is 1944, then I was only 18 months at the time of this pic. My memory is a little hazy. I think Mother and I lived with Aunty Joan Sharp and Val, Aunty Hilly Morris and Caro ...