Why can't you, just this once, be Uncle Fluffy?

A winter thought at the start of a walk. Uppingham’s civic cemetery is right at the end of Leicester Road. There’s ample car parking, and relatively few graves nicely and democratically laid out, first come, first served. It looks as if the neighbouring field could one day act as an overflow – for cars or bodies. Word has it that we’re running out of space in ancient graveyards. But would I want a loved one buried just here, close beside the busy A47? Probably not, unless HGV driving had been their life’s calling. This cemetery’s placement seems lacking in respect. We’re putting death where it won’t unduly bother us.

I hairpin left at the top of a green bowl on a path which draws the walker down beside a stream to Wardley Wood. The ground is saturated and progress very slippy-squelchy. The woodland’s winter-quiet, but provides welcome relief from the piercing northerly wind that’s blowing around the fringe of the first seasonal storm – ‘Atiyah’; strange name, after the Irish/English amalgams of recent years. Most of Wardley Wood is on a hillside, and towards its far end the ground slopes away, channelling the water, so the stream and path become more or less one. There has been a lot of precipitation in recent weeks, with the threat of more to come: this is the wettest I’ve seen the going during the four years of this project. Eventually I come to a track which takes me up to the small, comfortable settlement which gives the wood its name, a line of houses flanking elegant, spare St. Botolph’s, in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust since 2010 - about the time I was here last. The sheep in the adjoining field look heavy and content. A man halfway up a ladder to fix a roof nods, chap to chap.

I wander the church, thinking of the people who might still visit, perhaps for occasional services or to be married or maybe vagabonding like me, the silence broken intermittently by the tweeting of a sparrow who’s been caught up in the sanctuary. I hope he can find enough food for sustenance. How should I think of him?  As a prisoner of the Church or a humble priest-custodian of this holy place, bringing life to space declared redundant, because humans no longer care? Should I be sad or happy?

 

As sometimes happens, when I’m alone somewhere on this circling voyage of diocesan foolishness, I have to re-set the dials. In the presence of the absent God, what am I doing here in Wardley on such a winter’s day?

 Pretentious – probably - pompous, yeah, thank you for that, but I think it’s important, even in the Age of Social Media that people like you or me continue to make journals and records. I’ve recently come to realise how much I tend to see History (and even and particularly Personal History) as a puzzle to be definitively solved. Well, no it isn’t, it can’t be, but describing what happens, ‘what there is’ and relating it to the past and the future, offering possible explanations, is still something some of us can and should do.

 I have an agenda to promote too, but just now the dream of the people of God being ‘better together’ seems ever further away. For the third time since I began this Big Walk, we the people of the UK are shortly to vote for a New Beginning, even though we know there can/will be no such thing in the aftermath. As a country we’re hopelessly divided, and in many ways the Church is mirroring our body politic. I heard someone say from the pulpit recently – somewhat presumptuously - that they weren’t going to tell us how to vote (which of course could never be appropriate). In fact, the criteria on which we make our single, secret, political wish have never been harder to pin down. Should we abide by principle, or choose tactic? Prefer person to party? I haven’t a Scooby. In the church context, I don’t know whether (still!) reading MacCulloch's History of Christianity it’s a comfort to be reminded how deeply divided the Church was at the time of the Council at Chalcedon (451 A.D.) as they tried to cut and dry the question of how Jesus could be simultaneously human and divine. People died for the sake of these verbal and cognitive gymnastics, and amid similar religious differences are dying even today. So I think my advocacy is right, but not much likely to succeed. However, at the very least it changes me and just possibly it might influence you, so I’ll keep calm and carry on.

Someone’s improved the paths and tracks between Wardley and Belton-in-Rutland. Ten years ago, I got told off rudely by a posh farmer because I’d missed my way for lack of signage. He drove half a mile to complain I was where I shouldn’t be, even though I was plodding stoically  around a field margin to avoid damaging his bloody cabbages. I notice a CPRE reference on some of the newer signs, so maybe I wasn’t the only one to come in for agricultural abuse. I do nevertheless decline a more convenient path in favour of a detour via a layby replete with abandoned cars and coaches because a couple of longhorned cattle are standing guard over a small bridge in a ravine. They’ve clocked me from over a hundred metres, and are raising and lowering their heads in that bovine way which suggests ‘Don’t mess with me, mate’, so I don’t.

 

From the outside Belton’s church is a contrast to Wardley’s, its tower appearing squat even at its elevated position in the village. A rider-for-leisure trots by as I approach the lych-gate, mobile phone clamped to his right ear. This strikes me as odd, but only because I’ve never seen it before: I suppose some riders do it all the time. Dropping your mobile while seated atop your steed would be a bit of a pain.  Inside the church is damply chilly;  they’re looking for £44k to put right the water damage on the north aspect and prevent further decay. A bucket sits on the floor near the tower. Yet, with that cheering balance common among Christian parishes, the box for the Oakham Food Bank is overbrimming with produce. The leaflet for last Sunday’s worship is still available. I read the collect for that day aloud, and then the Isaiah passage which provided the first reading, with its inspirational vision of a possible future, the wolf and the lamb, the calf and the lion. They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain… A tear comes to the eye, because we so long for peace and amity, and the fulfilment of the prophecy is so far distant.  

 

To the north of the village the lanes divide. I take the more easterly route, Leighfield Way, which drops to a stream and then climbs steadily to the top of the wold. Turning right onto the ridge and Holygate Road there are long wide views to the next lazy roll of countryside, mostly open, with occasional areas of cover, and a vivid blue patch of Rutland Water sparkling away in the north-east. Near Wills Farm two Typhoons out of RAF Coningsby cruise past five hundred feet above me, maybe at 200 knots. At this relaxed speed the sound of their engines conveys massive authority and quality of engineering; it’s hard not to be impressed. I have to force myself to recollect that these are machines built with the intention of taking life, or at very least offering that possibility as a deterrent, in the interests of making the wolf lie down with the lamb.

 It’s at about this point that I realise I’ve left my stash of sandwiches in the car, and I’m hungry going on weak-kneed. I top up with a warming cup of tea from my NT thermos, and suck on a Strepsil, figuring there must be some trace amount of sugar among the active ingredients. There will, I think be no village shop in Redlington…

 

Nor is there, but it’s a very fetching place nonetheless, the church of St. Magdalene and St. Andrew set very high on its mound, so that you can’t help wondering what’s underneath, or what preceded it. It’s one of the ten (!) churches in the Rutland Water Benefice, whose name suggests, as Sue has pointed out, that the Rector might be best served by a boat in her commuting between parishes, or maybe better by a DUKW, the amphibious vehicles used by the WW2 allied military, which you can occasionally see in London being used as tourist transport. In its layout, buildings, and substantial earthwork, Redlington has the feel of an ancient and important settlement despite its size (never more than a population of about 250 over several centuries). The church website says that the 19^th century restoration makes interpretation of the church’s history difficult: it’s certainly intriguing, as is the whole untouched rectangular plan of the village.

 The walk on to Ayston is partly along a puddled byway, but mostly on a busy lane, where I have to make frequent hops onto the verge to preserve life and limb. Ayston’s worth it when I arrive. Away from the curve of the road through the village, there’s a grass lane which leads beside cottages to the church of St. Mary’s whose warm stone is dramatically lit by the afternoon sun. It too is a Churches Conservation project, and through the two-fold doors, the visitor is confronted and challenged by the well-scrubbed economy of space and decoration. There’s little in the way of artificial aid to cling on to in the service of faith. Here, coming to the encounter naked, one has to deal with God mano a mano.  As in the Garden, there’s nowhere to hide. High above is a brilliant surviving patch of wall-painting;  a crowned figure, Mary, Queen of Heaven, as I suppose; only this to focus the attention. It’s a memorable end to the afternoon.

Sandwiches short of a picnic:  17 km. 5.2.hrs. 6 deg. C. Keen northerly wind, dropping away during the afternoon. Clear skies for the most part. 3 stiles. 18 gates. 7 bridges. Four churches, all of them open: two redundant. One ‘hello’ from a lady on a white horse. One large, companionable bunny the opposite side of a fence near Lambley Lodge.

Father

Creator
Inspiration of humankind
We met you first
As you challenged Adam and Eve
With their disingenuity.
Help us to be truthful
With ourselves
And with each other
In loving candour
And lead us forward
As stewards
Of your Garden
And builders
Of your longed-for Kingdom.
We ask it in the name of
Your Son
Our Saviour
Jesus Christ
Amen.