Norfolk Pilgrim

At a mid-point of a walk from St. Andrew, Wickhampton towards the Berney Arms and windmill, I stopped to take stock. It is amazing what a little perspective can do! I am so frustrated at the failure of people to see and celebrate the value of our Broads National Park heritage landscape, I could scream! But out here it would be lost on the wind and the limitless sky. Instead I turn my binoculars onto a group of curlew poking in the marshy earth with beautifully curved bills and wonder. "Consider the birds........ Across the marsh, beyond the station, was my terminus. The Berney Arms mill, sadly the pub remains closed. The lyrics of Slim Dusty Pub with no Beer come to mind - nothing so lonesome morbid or drear. More seriously, I wondered what I could possibly do to raise the profile of the church in the landscape with those who hold stewardship for the National Park. There maybe opportunities to celebrate the church in the landscape as part of the up-coming Water,...

Elizabth Kubler Ross's reearch into death and dying  (e.g. lifeafterdeath ) records how going down a tunnel to a place of light is a common place experience I have lost the memory but my children retell the story I told to them as I recovered consciousness: "I was going down (the River Bure ?  Acle Straiht? ) to Great Yarmouth, got to the Berney Arms and decided to turn back! I learned that when my heart stopped Paul,Gary and the lady from St. John's Ambulence worked on me untill the ambulence men restarted my heart! Is Great Yarmouth a place of light? Is it heaven or hell? I'm sorry not to remember anything but I have a sense that in many ways it would have been OK to go all the way to  Yarmouth ( and to the God who is like an endless sea?) Excited to find myself alive at 3a.m. this morning I decided to say Morning Prayer . How the words burned with meaning as I recited Psalm 71! Forsake me not, O God, when I am old and grey-headed,  • till I...