Norfolk Pilgrim

Incongruous  - is a word that covers it!  Seen from afar it looked like a small rural bus stop miles from the nearest road. The open fronted shelter stands beside the Hereward Way  long distance footpath  where it wends its way through a Thetford Forest fire break. This was my destination. I’d come to visit it and take in the carved  wooden plaque on the rear wall. Its subject?  The Tree of Life!  What a place to pause for thought! A small notice explains that the artwork and shelter belong to the Via Beata and names the artist as Cathy Stables. The Via Beata  - it translates as Way of Blessing -  is a project that aims to establish a path from Lowestoft Ness in the east to St. David’s Head in the west and  punctuate it with works of art that turn hearts and minds to the things of God.   In 2009 I had walked part of the Via from the first way station at Banham to Quidenham.  That was before any art work ha...

I'm told that Thomas Aquinas held that animals have no souls. St. Francis for his part could talk of sister/brother dog and I have had so many canine friends that I'm in no doubt that, if it is a soul that makes one a person, dogs have souls. I'm sure about that. Of course its true of horses too! And probably in a different way cats! Well anyhow I've often thought it would be interesting to hear a discussion between Francis and Aquinas. So if my recent near death experience had a downside I suppose it was putting off to a later date the much looked forward to debate. Then in what did not feel at all like a dream although it might have been. Perhaps a vision of the night (whatever one of those is!)  this: I was with two other children of men who I knew to be Francis and Aquinas in a wide meadow - the Elysian Fields ? - and with us were  all the dogs I have ever known. Not just my friends: Spot my godfather's dog with whom the 8 yearold me went rabbiting; Toby m...

West of Sheringham, on the North Norfolk Coastal Path, there’s a hill with amazing views.   From the top, next to the old Coast Guard lookout, one can see as far as the eye can see and sometimes a little further!   On a sunny autumn afternoon it was the first hill I’d climbed in weeks. Putting one foot in front of the other and fighting for my breath, I thought of the last hill I remember climbing.   One’s summer’s evening I’d taken the rocky path from Castleton, in Derbyshire’s Peak District, up through a darkening Cave Dale and on to sunlit heights. From the hillside I’d watched a shepherd tending his flock in the fields below.   It is very much 23 rd Psalm country!   Little did I guess I’d soon find myself   passing through valley of the shadow of death !   A cardiac arrest started me out on a journey through first aid, to a hospital bed   and onto a life saving operation.   Overall, the experience has felt less like ...

Three and a half weeks after bypass surgery and  five and a half weeks after a cardiac arrest I'm beginning to get some perspective. So much good will from so many people! Standing in my Christian culture I'd call it prayer! It feels like I'v been upheld by a great cloud of prayer! But the prayer has not been limited to fully paid up Christians, the good will transcends all the barriers and definitions! Maybe Carl Rogers has a phrase I can borrow - Unconditional Positive Regard ! Yes, that does it! And I think the effect on me as a human being has been the sort of effect that Rogers imagined. I have a sense of myself as a more fully functioning human being:   1 . Open to experience: both positive and negative emotions accepted. Negative feelings are not denied, but worked through (rather than resort to ego defence mechanisms). 2 . Existential living: in touch with different experiences as they occur in life, avoiding prejudging and preconceptions. Being abl...

His name is not important. He came to children's church when I was Vicar of Old Lakenham. Then we would see each other week by week, at Assembly, at Edith Cavell School. It was the head teacher's suggestion that he and I had some one to one time. She knew I had some play therapy experience, and although I wasn't being supervised at the time, what was suggested was hardly therapy.  So they set us up in a small annex of a classroom with a window in the door for safeguarding purposes. Over a period of weeks, aided and abetted by me, the lad imagined and assembled a village out of discarded boxes and old cardboard. I thought it was going really well and never did understand what triggered the crisis. I never saw it coming. In rage my builder began to destroy the village! I stood up and remonstrated!   Wrong move! Up he jumped, onto some spare desks. He was as far away from me as he could get! Dancing around on top of the desks! Darting one way then another! ...

 The notes from Papworth warn that some sleeplessness can be expected after heart surgery. It feels to me as if I have caught something of the Psalmist  Psalm 66 5 My soul is satisfied as with a rich feast, *    and my mouth praises you with joyful lips 6 when I think of you on my bed,    and meditate on you in the watches of the night; 7 for you have been my help,    and in the shadow of your wings I sing for joy. 8 My soul clings to you;    your right hand upholds me.

 Back home from Papworth with these coronary artery bypass grafts.   Following a cardiac arrest on Friday 28th Septem ber   I awoke to find an otter in the dyke and a kingfisher diving for his breakfast. My thoughts went to G erard Manly Hopkins Texts have sparked and flashed with meaning and  high intensity as I have said my office. Yesterday I was reading Paul's Letter to the Phil ip pians 1: " For to me, living is Christ and dying is gain. If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labour for me " There's still work for me to do then! Today, in a collect, I was praying, " graft in our hearts the love of your name " 

Back in 2008 when I visited the tomb of Lazarus - I had some holy thoughts!  See /norfolkpilgrim.blogspot.co.uk/2008/05/kissing-lazarus.html Lazarus's friend, Jesus, gave him a fresh lease of life when he fell dangerously/terminally ill (John 11).  My friends Gary and Paul have just done the same for me! Keeping me going with CPR until the paramedics arrived, after a cardiac arrest. How important that visit  to Larnaka has turned out to be! Lazarus is my new patron!

 Its Morning Prayer again and the words flash about me with  an intensity to  wonder at. The opening canticle had me singing:  Bless the Lord,  O my soul, • and all that is within me bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, • and forget not all his benefits; Who forgives all your sins • and heals all your infirmities; Who redeems your life from the Pit • and crowns you with faithful love  and compassion; Who satisfies you with good things, • so that your youth is renewed like an eagle’ The plan is for me to have a heart bypass operation . i.e. for them to renew my plumbing! Hope the outcome is my youth renewed like an eagle

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...

A week and a day after a cardiac arrest the Norfolk Pilgrim is sitting up and taking notice in the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital Like the boy Lazarus, whose friend Jesus raised him to live the rest of his life, his friends kept him going until the paramedics could set his ticker going again! Many of his posts have been about walks on the edge. This past week has got him nearer to the edge than ever before! Many of the earlier posts in this blog began life as articles in the Norwich Diocese magazine Across the See . His aim is to use this place to log his insights as he continues to tread the pilgrim path on the edge

An advert for the  annual Norfolk Churches Trust bike ride reminded me what a joy church crawling by bike can be.  Swapping feet for wheels I set out under a summer sky. East of  Beeston, St. Laurence  I found myself meandering down  quiet lanes towards St. Michael and All  Angels,Barton Turf . When I got there I found an open door, a warm welcome to visitors ( make yourself a cup of coffee ) and a vibrant stillness. Its 15 th century rood screen has St. Michael and the nine orders of angels. Wandering in the churchyard before taking my leave I saw that the local church has a care for other feathered friends too! There’s an owl box high in an old oak tree! My next church destination would be   St. Michael, Irstead.  But on the way , I popped into the White Horse at Neatistead for refreshments and explored the edge of Barton Broad. At Heron’s Carr  there’s boardwalk that gives wheelchair access through the woody marsh and o...

 Evensong at St. Benet's The whole Company of Heaven Sang out Peace There was fire and wind The Spirit brooded over the waters

The Broads are my local wilderness.  I love the landscape, the wildlife and the slow waters. Under the wide skies I can be at one with nature; re-imagine Jesus’ lakeside ministry; slow down and escape from our 24/7 lifestyle; all that’s needed to catch up with a 3 mile an hour God. Long ago, on an island where three rivers meet, hermits established a community. Following the example of Egyptian monks, the tidal marsh and reed beds was their green desert !  In time the community became a Benedictine  monastery and, until Henry VIII’s reforms, St. Benet’s Abbey was a powerful centre for the Christian faith.  Still the abbey has a powerful attraction. Wandering on foot or by boat, I find my eyes searching for the familiar outlines of its ruined gate-house and scanning higher ground to catch sight of church towers on the horizon.  Higher than most is the one they call The Cathedral of the Broads - St. Helen’s, Ranworth Visitors are invited to ...

Traffic! It felt I’d been tailgated every mile of the way - aggressive drivers in my rear view mirror and almost in my boot, pushing me to go faster! Finally, at journeys end I parked by Moreston Creek and let the tension drain out of me.  It is a sort of lands end!  The North Pole is 2222 miles away and , apart from Blakeney Point, there’s nothing in between but sea and ice! I thought I’d join holiday makers as they went out to see the seals but when I’d arrived early the ferry still sat firmly on the bottom.  Round about it long billed waders delved the rich mud and  a Little Egret stalked its prey in the shallows pools.  The liquid trill of a Curlew’s call carried on the and on high Larks sang their hearts out! Soon a  trickle,  had turned into a stream of water pushing into the creek , lifting the grounded vessels and turning their bows to the flood. With that the ferrymen quickly got their passengers aboard and we were manoeuvring betw...

Ely was as much a holy island as Lindisfarne or Iona   in Saxon times. To this day   the cathedral stands on its little hill above the flat black fens, but since the meres and marshes were drained, on an island no more! I had come to Ely in search of St. Withburg.   In the 10 th century monks stole her body from Dereham churchyard and   enshrined her relics in the abbey church next to those of her royal and saintly sisters – Etheldreda and Sexburgh .   Etheldreda founded   the monastery in the 7 th century and when she died   Sexburgh became abbess. The tides of time have washed away most traces of the holy sisters. HenryVIII’s commissioners made a thorough job of destroying their shrines. And, with the passing of the monasteries, the abbey church became the Cathedral for the Diocese of Ely. I did find one direct link to the foundation years, parts of a memorial that once marked the grave of Ovin, Etheldreda’s steward. Dug up by chance ...

Beneath a winter sky the sun sinks slowly in the west . Wrapped against the cold -  and rapt by the beauty - I pondered on the generations before me who had stood and watched as day turned to night. Millions of sunsets and millions upon millions of the Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve .  I found myself signing with the Psalmist: You appointed the moon to mark the seasons and the sun knows the time of its setting, You make darkness that it may be night in which the beasts of the forest creep forth (Psalm 104) Across the darkening marsh the whistles and murmuring of widgeon quietened, a thin mist rose and deer emerge from the woodland  to graze beneath a reddening sky.  All this was but the overture to the evening’s main event. I had come to see a wild life spectacular which is repeated every night during the winter period and the station platform was the grandstand from which to view it. From far and wide streamed “ in a countless host” each as black a clergyma...

 In September I was down in Cornwall for a week and made a flying visit to pay my respects to Winwaloe at Gunwallow and the Church of the Storms , Selevan at St Levan and incorprated a visit to the Minack Theatre.  Fiddler on the Roof  beside the seaside?!  Extra-ordinary! Made me think about the place of faith in our Global Village! On a dafter note I wondered if Selevan preached to the fish down in Cornwall I should have a go at preaching to the seals when I got back home.

Decades ago I made some  clever cogs comment that's in a way has come back to haunt me! In the middle of the well manicured Vicarage lawn, overnight, a dandelion had the cheek to raise its golden head. John, the vicar,  spotted it as we came out of morning prayer! I, his curate, spoke up for the interloper! "The beauty! The wonder! God's Providence! " If truth be known it was just a glib comment. John remembered the exchange I forgot! It took me years  to hear and respond  the Master's command to consider the flowers of the field . Visiting my old friend I noticed that his garden, for all his fullness of years, is still well tended and well stocked Taking leave of him I caught sight of a bunch of cyclamen nestled in a rockery by the back gate and thought of the wild cyclamen growing on Nazareth's hills. Something to consider - ehh!? There's something here about what grows wild in Galilee and is  cultivated in Surrey!

Great day out Tope Fishing with www.norfolkfishingtrips.co.uk last Tuesday.  Many thanks to the skipper Adam and crew Tammy.  Unlike Mr Robson Green I hooked, played and boated the beast without an expletive. Oh! O.K.! One or two  "Why bless me"s! Duly measured weighed and tagged, the fish was slipped back into the sea and swam off with vigour.  Afterwards I fell to thinking about the effort of winding the fish in. The fishing gear had been provided on the boat. All of the best quality. What we today call a reel Izaak Walton, he of the Complete Angler, called a pulley.   George Herbert, one of his fishing chums ( he also fished with John Donne and the Kenna who appears in the Complete Angler was Thomas Ken's half-sister!) wrote : The Pulley VV Hen God at first made man, Having a glass e of blessings standing by; Let us (said he) poure on him all we can: Let the worlds riches, which dispersed lie, Contract into a span. ...