St.John of the Cross and the Broads National Park

Yes, I know he never came here but.........    I have been revisiting the arguments of the Reformation. The echos of the bad tempered arguments are visible in -  broken 7 sacrament fonts, a few remaining pieces of medieval glass,  rood screens where the saints faces have been scratched out and empty niches once occupied by the images of saints.


And then there is Lollards' Pit


 In some ways St.John of the Cross was a Reformer too and he got a lot of grief because of it!  When I think about him as a bare foot friar,  I am reminded that John Wycliffe had four such friars supporting him when he appeared before the Bishop of London.

 I find it a very odd thing that the Norfolk Saints Way on its way into Norwich Cathedral has Lollards' Pit as a way station. I wander what the Lollards might have thought about 21st Century pilgrims!  In their day they were dead against it.
St.John of the Cross is more nuanced. He has this to say about pilgrimages and images :- 
he that makes a pilgrimage does well if he makes it at a time when no others are doing so, even though the time be unusual. I should never advise him to make a pilgrimage when a great multitude is doing so; for, as a rule, on these occasions, people return in a state of greater distraction than when they went. And many set out on these pilgrimages and make them for recreation rather than for devotion. Where there is devotion and faith, then, any image will suffice; but, if there is none, none will suffice. Our Saviour was a very living image in the world; and yet those that had no faith, even though they went about with Him and saw His wondrous works, derived no benefit from them.
Wandering Broadland paths might not appear to be anything like the Ascent of Mount Carmel, but the marshes, broads and rivers are my wilderness and under wide skies I find my spirit raised.

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