It’s fine and dandy for me to go scribbling away about
love peace and how Anglicans should link hands and sing from the same hymn
sheet - #bettertogether. But let’s
get real. What happens when we consider a particular concrete issue. How well do
we all, Evangelicals, Catholics and Liberals hang together then? How far does someone have
to go before a judgment is made that they’re outside the Anglican (the
Christian) tent? I know, I know, this is a heavy way to begin a post on a walking blog. Cut to the chase, if you've got a headache already.
Before I set off for Brigstock, Sue reminds me it’s
Ascension Day. What do you reckon to
Jesus’ Ascension? Or do you avoid thinking about it at all, which is what I
suspect many clergy do, because I’ve heard very few sermons preached on the subject,
though trainee layreader Sarah did a fine job on Sunday at our St. Peter’s. Perhaps,
quite understandably, preachers feel
reluctant to share their own anxieties and doubts with their congregations. To
be blunt, if Jesus died and rose again, his permanent presence on Earth in
physical risen form would have made for an entirely different cosmology of faith,
so his ascension is a Biblical and practical necessity, and is absolutely tied
to the resurrection. On the other hand, (reverse-engineering our theology) …if
there was no physical resurrection…what then? But, seriously, can we really
swallow what most people think the gospel writer Luke is telling us at the
outset of the Book of Acts, Jesus going heavenwards like a Saturn rocket?
Historiographically, some of what we read in the
Gospels generally stands up very well against, for example, the writing of the near-contemporary
historian Tacitus, whose support of presumed real events by miraculous
occurrences is continual. But that isn’t history quite by the supposedly
objective standards of the 20th and 21st century, even if
we’re very used to interrogating the possible bias of today’s writers. The word
‘myth’, sometimes applied by theologians to New Testament writing, is perhaps
more confusing than comforting and helpful. Reading Mark’s Gospel again
recently, I’m struck by the insistent drum beat of its argument about who Jesus
is. Events are only important for Mark in the context of his evangelism. But this
we know. It’s a Gospel, stupid. The
modern politician’s summary packaging of Christianity as a moral creed to which
we all subscribe, churchgoers and non-churchgoers, is nowhere to be found. The
Gospels (and the Book of Acts) always provoke, always challenge, are never
comfortable.
The red kites watch and wheel in the skies over
Brigstock. Spring colours and scents overflow from cottage gardens. I sneeze. By
Wallis and Linnell’s imposing but empty, four-storey factory near New Town, I
make a wrong turn into a gentleman’s front garden and am kindly but firmly
re-directed. Wallis and Linnell were clothing maunfacturers, whose business
made a mid-Victorian transition into bricks and mortar. It was at that nineteenth
century time when entrepreneurs realised they could squeeze more from their employees
if they stopped them doing piece-work in their cottages, and put them into
factories. A first building was erected in Kettering, but W. & L. needed
more workers, so second and third plants were added in Cottingham and
Brigstock. This wasn’t capitalism without kindness. It seems Wallis in
particular took great interest in his employees’ welfare and spiritual needs.
One small testimony to this is said to be the windows arrayed along all four
storeys in the Brigstock factory, letting light into the workers’ lives. Or was
this simply to optimise the quality of the garments? The business finally shut
its doors for good in 1979, unable, I suppose, to compete with the Far East,
but Wallis and Linnell’s factory remains Brigstock’s most striking building, perhaps
even including its distinguished church.
On the diagonal across a horsey field I come to a gate
and enter the southernmost part of an extensive tract of woodland. It’s known
as Old Dry Bushes. This is somewhat
ironic because yesterday it rained (we need it!) and the bushes are anything
but dry. Pushing through them on an initially wandery path I’m quickly soaked.
I’ve imprudently donned Merrills for the day’s yomp, and as comedian Katie
Brand found on Channel 4’s recent Pilgrimage,
wet feet blister more easily than dry ones. By the end of today my right sole
will be sore. I thought this CTVC (Christian Television Centre) offering a
rather good second series. The first one aired last year and purported to take
a handful of slightly ill-matched celebs to Santiago di Compostela along the camino. Well, a little bit of it. The
narrative ended up rather whingey and unsatisfactory. The follow-up persuaded a
more cohesive set of people, including actor Lesley Joseph, comedians Stephen
K. Amos and Les Dennis and long-jump hero Greg Rutherford, to walk part of the
pilgrim route across the Alps and down to Rome. No one’s converted, but
spiritualities are explored and in some cases revived, and some memories are
healed. The best thing is that through a reality TV format it did get to some
of the reasons you might want to try a pilgrimage, and examine some of the
emotions you might encounter while doing so. Astonishingly two of the protagonists
found walking through woodland an utterly novel experience. So what had they
(and their parents!) been doing all their lives? Duh!
The path opens onto a broad, straight north-bound
track, and I stride along enjoying the full-on happy surround sound birdie
chorus, which today includes that definitive note of summer, a cuckoo, suddenly
but elusively very close to my left. As I exit the wood, there’s a thrum of
jolly human conversation too, and I find twenty eight Kettering Ramblers taking
a breather. I say hello, and of course the person who engages me in
conversation is Canon Roger Knight who when he hears I’m from Weston Favell,
asks me if I know Richard Pestell, layreader of this parish and one time
Diocesan Secretary - which I do. Small world. Later, when I look him up on the
Web, I learn that two years ago at this time of the year and on the first
anniversary of his wife Ann’s passing, Canon Roger was prayer-walking in aid of
MND charities.
I push on up a dusty track which brings me to the main
road down to Weldon. I’m hoping for a path beside the tarmac, but am
disappointed, and spend twenty minutes hopping up and down onto the verge
avoiding cars and parcel vans. Thankfully the HGVs seem to have been re-routed.
In the distance I can see the industrial plants which I suppose to be the
inheritors of Corby’s defunct steel industry. New housing is pushing out from
Corby here too, as in Great Oakley, as commuters eye up the trade-off between
cheaper Northamptonshire accommodation and lengthier travel distances and times
into London.
St Mary the Virgin, Weldon is along a suddenly
pastoral lane away from the main road. I sit in its churchyard, and from
nowhere, a gust of wind blows grit from a nearby mole-hill over my glasses and
into my right eye. For the rest of the afternoon it’s very sore, exacerbated by
the high pollen count. I find such trivial physical distractions make my
pathetic attempts at concentrated prayer well-nigh impossible. It nags at me,
this inability to transcend even the merest hint of suffering. What would I do,
were I to find myself on, for example, the wrong end of MND? I suppose I’d have
to cling on to a different understanding of the body of Christ, other members
upholding me in infirmity, and just do my best.
Place names sometimes bring people’s names to mind, and I think of actor Jonny Weldon, who a
decade ago was a young adolescent member of some of the numerous teams of
talented child singers/performers sent by the Sylvia Young Theatre School to
appear in our English Language Teaching audio programmes. Some of them go on to
become e.g. accountants, hair-dressers, teachers (or even vicars for all I
know), but a few take the risk, stay the distance and progress into adult show
biz, as Jonny has done. It’s not the most straightforward or easy of careers,
but on the Web there’s a nice snap of Jonny, looking fit and well and about to
run the London Marathon. He was suddenly there on the stage of the Royal, a few
Christmases ago, a main protagonist of one of those small-cast, happy,
all-action children’s shows. Very good he was too.
Wikipedia is unusually discreet about all things
Weldon i.e. there’s apparently not a lot to be said. However, the activities of
the cricket club figure large, and much is made of a ‘famous’ William Hay as
one of their number. Just in case, I check him out, but can now confirm this is
not the Will Hay of ‘Oh, Mr.
Porter’ fame, who’s described elsewhere on the Web as… ‘An English comedian, actor, author, film director and amateur
astronomer…’. Nor is this the William Hay who turned out two or three times
for the M.C.C. in the Victorian era. I can only assume he’s the current team’s
star batsman – and possibly author of the Wikipedia entry. Or married to her.
I have to retrace my steps along the main road verges
(grr!) and up the dusty track called Bears Lane to where I left the Kettering
Ramblers, although they moved off towards a pub lunch an hour and a half ago. Walking
the field edge track towards Cockendale Wood, I get thoroughly dazed and
confused, and near Bocase Farm actually emulate Pooh and Piglet by walking in a
complete circle only to find myself accidentally back where I started. Idiot! I try the opposite side of a hedge the second
time round and am eventually rewarded with a confirming bridleway sign, and
distant glimpses of Lower Benefield’s high spire though it takes a long drag
along the metalled surface of Causin Way to reach it.
St. Mary’s Benefield is described as a ‘Tractarian
Church’, and some frills and furbilows of Ninian Comper are to be found inside
and out, notably on the crucifixed war memorial. Benefield appears such a rural
backwater, that on a sunny summer’s day it’s hard to square the ecclesiological
hard-ball of ‘Branch Theory’ (trying to retrospectively justify Anglicanism as
a legitimised third way of the True Church) with the surroundings. But maybe
this is a twenty-first century city-centric perspective of mine. I still
wonder, as I think I’ve done before, if revival could begin, not in our
troubled, struggling inner city churches, but in rural locations like
Benefield. Isn’t the real passion for Brexit, the unquiet heart of the Tory
Party, most active in the countryside?
The most famous son of Benefield’s soil is Miles
Berkeley, one of the founders of the science of plant pathology. He was an
important academic but also a clergyman: vicar at nearby Apethorpe and then at
Sibbertoft. I’m intrigued to read that
he was a cryptogamist, thinking for a moment this meant he was unusually
secretive about his wives, and that I’d stumbled across a hitherto unsuspected tabloid
quirk of Victorian clergy. Alas no, (or perhaps jolly good, no!) – it just means
he was an expert on lichens.
It’s a long walk back to Fermyn Woods across the
fields and along the lane known as Harley Way. There’s an airstrip just there,
from which gliders are powered up into the sky, not by being towed behind a
plane, but launched from a fixed cable.
I watch as one is reeled in along and then above the runway, climbing at
a steep angle until it catches the thermals, at which point the glider
detaches, and a parachute is deployed to drop the cable safely to the ground. I
watch fascinated, as the chute gently descends, and then turn to see where the
glider is. But the cloud’s lowering now, and it has simply vanished from my
sight. In my end is my beginning. ‘Brothers, this Lord Jesus/Shall return
again/With his Father’s glory/With his angel train…’
McVey’s
McNuggets*: 24 km. 6.8 hours. 22 degrees. Sun and cloud, and a
burning breeze, as it turned out. 5 stiles. 4 gates. 2 bridges.
Quite a lot of road walking. The birdsong really was wonderful today.
·
It’s
Tory Party election time - when their less-than-200,000 members determine who
will be Prime Minister for the other 66 million of us. Esther McVey, Saints
preserve us, seems to be the favourite female pick of the Daily Telegraph. Other candidates are available. And will be given
their shout-out in these pages.
Father
When do I
take
Reason and
Logic
Out of their
boxes
For proper
employ in your service?
And when
should I put them away
Close the lid
Mind my own
business
And simply
trust
That you have
the answers?
Father
Expand my
faith
And so
increase my ability
To do that
for which
You have made
me.
Amen.
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