Norfolk Pilgrim

“The Nativity - i n the coldest, darkest, dog days of the year something to celebrate! New life! New life from another world! To which we may draw near! “ These words do just as well when applied to Christmas, or the Grey Seals born on our beaches from November to January each year! The parallels continue - “Usually, there’s plenty of room for everyone but at Christmas it’s hard to find a parking place!” Etc.. Horsey had a bumper season last year with over 600 baby seals.  For the  first 3 weeks they remain on the beach fed by their mums. They are very appealing, very photogenic and people love them.   On Boxing day and New Years Day there was parking chaos when thousands of people turned up on the same days. The pub was so crowded that it was a repeat performance of no room in the inn ! If you can find a place, parking is at Horsey Corner with a walk of about 1.5 miles.  Alternatively, it’s 2 miles from Winterton or the National Trust Horsey Mere c...

We joined the coastal footpath just a mile south of Land's End. What a place to have a picnic! How we missed the packaged experience and the retail opportunity!! Eventually, passing amorous seals and flights of gannets fishing close in shore, we came to the  Church of St. Levan. St.Levan, famously, preached to the fishes.  What, I wondered, might I say? Surely I would quote from St. Paul, "In him we live move and have our being."  "God is the sea, then ?" I hear the fish reply reply, "Yes! Yes and no! More than the sea! More like the sea behind the sea!" But I said too much and thought too little! By the side of the church is a legendary stone The saint, so it is said struck it with his staff and split it! Others say,  it was a famous pagan stone known as a place of  fertility and that the round-headed celtic cross erected beside it was to Christianize it! To me the juxtaposition of stone and cross look li...

Fast forward from the year dot   when  legend says Joseph of Arimathea landed here with the boy Jesus - to the 5th century when St. Just established a  church and hermitage on the shores of the River Fal. Ever since then, the Churches mission here has been to preach the Good News of Jesus Christ and to invite men and women, boys and girls to follow him! A 13th century church replaced the original chapel and those who continue the saint's mission keep  an open door and welcome visitors from near and far.  What burdens visitors carry, they may let go  And they can find a new direction in their lives Download the Way of Life 

With the sandy soil of Breckland beneath my feet    I walked the Desert Rats trail in ThetfordForest.  The 7 th Armoured Division,  who had earned their nickname in the sands of North Africa,   had been stationed here in the months leading up to D. Day in 1944.   There is a  Cromwell Tank beside the A1065 between Mundford and Swaffham which is a war memorial to their dead and marks the beginning of the walk. A  way-marked path with interpretation boards leads visitors around the site of the former camp and tells the  history of the famous fighting force. I made the easy 2 mile walk in reflective mood.  It was, you could say, an act of remembrance.  I am a war baby and my father had served alongside the Desert Rats in North Africa. By way of coincidence my son is serving with the 7th Armoured Brigade  today, providing boots on the (sandy) ground  in Afghanistan.  The sounds o...

There are charming villages, old towns, summer beer kellers under shade giving trees. Its everso clean and affluent. But there in the midst - you could overlook it if you chose - a reminder of darkness. They have done a brilliant job documenting 10,000 of the hundreds of thousands who died in the camp. The displays of pictures, videos etc. are wonderfully well done but it was the contrast of the amazing facilities loos with running water as much as you want and a cafe with cool drinks compared with the sheer bloody harshness of the prisoners lives that made the biggest impression. I was challenged by the Jewish memorial: we must not let the earth forget the blood shed. As I contemplated the Jews, Jehovas Witnesses, Gay Men and others treated inhumanely it semed not to be my role to forgive. Victims, their family and loved ones, God even, yes they might forgive. "Judgement is mine!" saith the Lord. Yes and forgiveness too! And I...

It’s difficult to follow in the steps of someone who walked on water! The best I can do is to take to my canoe! On a summer’s evening I slipped it into the water and went with the flow. Biblical references bubbled up in my mind –  “The river of God is full of water” (Psalm 96); Ezekiel’s vision of a flood of  water flowing from the temple bringing life to the desert and Dead Sea (Ezekiel 47); Jesus’ baptism,  his Galilee ministry and the promise of streams of living water springing up to eternal life. Birdsong filled the air,  I was intoxicated by the beauty around me and  my attention was focused slightly beyond, hoping to catch a glimpse of the mystery  - of the Lord who walked in the cool of the evening ! My reverie was broken by passing boats.  A hire cruiser pushed up river towards conviviality, food, drink  and  warm welcome that awaited at Coltishall’s Rising Sun.  In the opposite direction, a late day boat hurried b...

The people of Hethel want you to use their church and the surrounding area for your spiritual well-being.  Their notice board and their entry on the www.achurchnearyou.com  website make it equally clear. You couldn’t be more warmly welcomed! If you were  looking for a place to heed Jesus’ call to “ Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.’ (Matt.6.31), or to  “Consider the lilies, how they grow.” (Luke 12.27) All Saints’, Hethel  would suit your needs perfectly. Next door to the church is the country’s  smallest nature reserve with the country’s oldest Hawthorn tree. It is inevitable that someone should have claimed it as having sprung from Joseph of Arimathea’s staff but it is only 700 year old!    Across the road from the church,   maps and a series of way marks invite you to saunter round Permissive Footpaths through woods and pastures. In April the last of the snowdrops and ...

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...