Norfolk Pilgrim

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 m

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