Bored to Death

A reflection on sermons from Mike Handley

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St.James, Bawsey

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Streams of cars speed down Kings Lynn’s Queen Elizabeth Way everyday. High above the traffic a ruined church has paid witness for a thousand years and more. For decades it has been drawing me like a magnet. So on a sunny Spring day I finally found my way up the hill. Church Farm, Bawsey is managed under a Higher Level Stewardship scheme and provides parking and permissive footpaths.  You can approach the farm from the Gayton Road turning left into Church Lane just beyond the crematorium. Maps showing the paths and parking are available online on the Natural England website ( cwr.naturalengland.org.uk ). They are also displayed at strategic places around the farm .  I had intended to walk from Norfolk Wildlife Trust’s Roydon Common, via the Grimston Warren reserve but that was closed as the work there continues. They are converting it from commercial forestry back to its original lowland heath. I followed a path to the edge of the warren through recently restored pasture...
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Buckenham Rook Roost

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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...
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First Day of the Rest of My Life

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 I have not posted much of late. I have been struggling. Between completing the pioneering work on a possible Withburga Way between Holkham and Dereham in the summer of 2022 and today my health has gone downhill in alarming way. I'll never walk the route in a couple of days, nor yet in 3.  I'll never walk it.  The rapid onset Pulmonary Fibrosis has left me struggling for breath putting my boots on let alone walking.  Yesterday, I went to St. Benet's Abbey , ate my picnic lunch in the car park and set myself the challenge of walking from the car park to the Abbey ruins. It is 0.35 miles and uphill all the way from from the Gate House to the old rugged cross that marks the site of the high altar at the summit. The hill looked quite daunting -  "Who can ascend the hill of the Lord?" I sang under by breath. Stopping often to catch my breath, slowly one foot in front of the other, I got closer to the summit. There before the cross, wind in my hair, it felt as i...
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