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Walsingham Way

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A Candlemas Pilgrimage

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 Turning left off the Hautbois Road  A path leads past Golden Gates Pond.  Ahead, the tower of  Great Hautbois Church is a silhouette glimpsed through winter trees. Beneath the tower  - Snowdrops,  Candlemas Bells.  We've come to St. Mary's Church to ponder  the Feast of the Presentation.  Did Mary travel to Jerusalem's temple to offer her own her flesh and blood, her baby Jesus to  his Heavenly Father?  Or was it to bring God to his Temple? Whatever was going on she is at the heart of the mystery. Simeon had it right.  The boy child is the light that enlightens the Gentiles but the 2 turtle doves were just a down-payment. More would be given.   Candlemas - one last look back to Christmas before turning our faces towards Passiontide and Good Friday.  And a sword certainly pieced Mary's soul when she stood by the cross.  In real time, fast military jets manoeuvre overhead and a war torn world comes into shar...
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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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Can these bones live ?

 Well! Here am I enabling Easter Sunday at a church where 40 years ago I was rector! Quietly preparing things in church on Saturday night, I had time to reflect on the passage of time. There are a handful of people from the old days, like me older but not necessarily wiser, still part of the church community.  Not all the gaps left by those who have died have been filled. Any replacements are new arrivals in the village.  It appears that none of the baptisms or confirmations in the last 40 years have resulted in new church members.  For me, getting excited in advance of today's service,  the most shocking deficit was the lack of Easter Flowers. From forty years ago there used to be great competition between flower arrangers; and I can still tell you which was Dolly Clarke's window and that Mrs Pettit decorated the font. This Easter Sunday there are silk flowers. That's all!
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