RATTLESNAKES

Some walks look promising on the OS map and turn out not to deliver. Others look potentially dull, and because of the time of year or the weather or the arrival of the unexpected are wonderful. The stroll from Barnack to Bainton today is one of those. Now pastoral, now sylvan, with the temperature already in the twenties just after nine o’clock and the crops shimmering in the heat haze, I’m delighted by the butterflies dancing around me as I walk the oft right-angling path.

Christopher, our priest at Welland Fosse, recently introduced a session on intercessory prayer with a George Herbert sonnet. Sometimes I find Herbert difficult, but this is marvellous – you probably know it…

 Prayer the Churches banquet, Angels age,

God’s breath in man returning to his birth

The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,

The Christian plummet sounding heav’n and earth;

 

Engine against th’Almightie, sinners towre,

Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,

The six daies – world transposing in an houre

A kinde of tune, which all things heare and fear;

 

Softnesse, and peace, and joy, and love, and blisse,

Exalted Manna, gladnesse of the best,

Heaven in ordinarie, man well drest,

The milkie may, the bird of Paradise,

Church-bels beyond the starres heard, the souls bloud,

The land of spices; something understood.

Reversed thunder’ – wow! - such an astoundingly modern thing. Feel those commas. Countless people have fed off the poem’s resounding, meaning-rich phrases. The pay off line became the title for a long running Radio 4 programme which, going out just before midnight on a Sunday, has been one of the more innovative pieces of religious/spiritual broadcasting over the years IMO. The hook for today’s walk is without question: ‘Heaven in ordinarie…’, because the mile or so into Bainton points up the mystic beauty of small and usually unconsidered things - the perfection of a creamy-white convolvulus flower, the insect-like tops of a field of fast-ripening barley, the cool respite offered by a woodland

glade. The unfairly maligned R.C.Zaehner’s classic book on mysticism goes large on Wordsworth. I don’t know where Mr. Daffodil’s nature-ecstasy sits with the Church of England, so laden with earth-bound doctrine and practice, synods and PCCs, genuflection and processions, sometimes so short on wonder, but it’s where my faith begins and ends, and has done since childhood. Everything else that’s theory-laden hangs around it, like a set of clothes. In that sense maybe I am a ‘a man well drest’.  Apparently Herbert was a dapper sort of chap. What jumps out of the sonnet for you?

The name of the village of Bainton also carries mystical associations, though spurious. The composer Edgar Bainton wasn’t born in the village, had nothing to do with it subsequently, and went off to Australia for the second half of his career, but his most famous choral work, regularly cropping up in posh Anglican evensongs is ‘And I saw a new heaven’.

Isn’t the making and handing down of ‘art’ a strange thing?  Bainton was celebrated in his day, particularly when he was young, but his music isn’t much played now - his good friend Rutland Boughton (there’s a first name for you!) even less so. They both wrote music with a generous, dramatic sweep, and Boughton even founded a Glastonbury Festival which ran for a score of years until the mid-twenties (the nineteen twenties!) before the Eavis’s were ever newsworthy. Boughton’s intellectual landscape was wide-ranging and peculiarly of its time, encompassing Arthurian legend and the Communist Party. These composers’ output was as great as anyone’s, and technically assured. Yet now they’re scarcely remembered - except in Bainton’s case for one celebrated church anthem. Weird. And for someone like me whose career has consisted in dithering around the edges of the media, it’s both humbling and strangely consoling. Their technical ‘chops’ were on a different planet to mine.

I visit St. Mary’s church, but don’t take in much, except that it’s open and I’m glad to be there. I do see an A4 report on its fabric loitering by the desk near the door. The summary at its conclusion is: ‘The church is in need of a lot of tlc’ and a second look around me confirms the assessment.

There’s been discussion at General Synod and in the pages of the Church Times about the need to create ‘10,000 lay-led churches’. Leaving aside that this is a hugely ambitious target, and that as someone about to embark on certification as a diocesan ‘lay worship leader’ some church bureaucrat somewhere might in future identify me as one of the ten thousand called to lead, this begs so many questions about the relationship between clergy, laity and the C. of E. What happens to the fabric of the St. Mary’s of this world in the meantime? Is being ‘mission-shaped’ the alpha and omega of ‘doing church’? Secular society may be making their choice not to listen. (Mission Praise 651…)

I move on through the sunshine to the hamlet of Ashton (the third village of that name I’ve encountered on the Big Walk). Ashton is a single straight lane. The first house I come to, restored to pristine condition amidst extensive grounds, is called ‘First House’. Now this may be an ancient name for all I know, but with the property looking as expensive as it does, is my mild harrumph justified? Unimpeachable in the truth of its geographical position (except that if you were coming the other way it could equally well be entitled ‘Last House’) am I crabby to suggest the name implies ‘I look down on him because…’ cf. Messrs. Barker, Corbett and Cleese in ‘The Frost Report’?  What do the people who live in the humbler cottages along the lane think? Do they tug their forelocks as they pass?

From Ashton I go torpeling. The Torpel Way is named after Sir Roger de Torpel, the remains of whose Manor I eventually come to at the end of the straight road which leads into Helpston. There were many Sir Rogers (hard not to avoid a smirk), and one of them built a great deer park, which the Crown in the person of Henry VIII eventually decided should become its own. On the other hand the Torpels probably owed their estate to the Crown in the first place, so one can’t shed too many tears. Read an entertaining and present-tense child-friendly account of all things Torpel at http://langdyke.org.uk

St. Botolph’s Helpston is closed. This is the place where John Clare was born and so I can eat my sandwiches beside his multi-flowered memorial in the churchyard. Another day I could visit the museum in Helpston’s Woodgate: it sounds like an hour or so well spent. On the memorial stone by my feet the John Clare Society declares that ‘A poet is born, not made’. I think this is probably true, but puzzle how it can be so. Determinism sits uncomfortably with a sixties’ education.

On from the village towards Helpston Heath, and then by tracks zig-zagging to Ufford where the White Hart welcomes the parched, weary traveller with a ginger beer in its commodious bar. The church of St. Andrew is conserved, and very tidily too. It stands on a promontory, looking towards the distant, invisible sea from its height of forty odd metres, and above a settlement so precise and delicate. Nothing jars, nothing is out of place in Ufford. Certainly not at The Hall, which the National Trust had to sell on, because the cost of refurbishment was too great. Whoever owns it now has done a bang-up job. What an extraordinary thing to live in such a house – I’m presuming the internals must be as pristine as the outside. I’m tickled to see that the organ in St. Andrew’s, small and baroque, was the third ever made by the late Ken Tickell from Northampton. His work has graced many places of worship.

Next Monday is the day the British press have christened ‘Freedom Day’ when, begone dull care, we shall all be allowed to cast our masks aside to hug and kiss, and order drinks at the bar unhindered by unwelcome social disapproval. Except that the risk of catching the Virus remains astonishingly high, even though we may not now die from it because of the amazing science that has been done. (As I write this, the daily count of infections is hovering around 50,000.) Except that the P.M. is self-isolating again after his new Health Secretary has tested positive. Except that the whole world is watching stupefied as the UK conducts a massive experiment on its own population. And the Church? Where is the Church on this?

As throughout the pandemic, we are quiet, even in the person of Her Majesty, who one would have thought might have passed on some word of wisdom and common sense to her subjects. Whereas all we have is Prince Charles, allowing it to be known that he’d rather die than wear a mask. (Not his words, but you know that’s what he means, and he’s had the Virus already, so that’s OK then…) No word from Justin that I’ve heard or that has been printed.  We do not know what to say, and we are ourselves divided between those who wish to throw caution to the wind in worship and those like me who are just simply windy. There are those, and I hope their voices do not become too strident, who see the continued taking of anti-Covid precautions as a lack of faith. But surely, we should never, ever, score points from each other as Christians because we think we have greater faith than another? That way lies the country religion of Texas, and handling rattlesnakes. The theme of this blog has been ‘Better Together’. The resonances of ‘being together’ now provoke fear and grief among many. We are bereft, desperate for reassurance, craving a real sharing of the Peace, the sense that we really are One Body, experiencing the Eucharist as half a meal. Are we all Catholics now? Or are we all Evangelicals, for whom sometimes, communion seems a necessary evil interrupting high-handed praise and worship? No. Better together. Better in colour. Better believe it.

Torpels and corbels:  14 km. 4.7 hrs. 26 degrees. No stiles. Ten gates. One bridge. Three churches (one conserved).  Like flowers and bugs and you and me, is the Virus part of God’s creation?  How does this relate to the Muslim’s ‘Insha’allah’?

 A prayer for our time:

 O Lord, increase our faith

Strengthen us and confirm us

In thy true faith.

Endue us with wisdom

Charity, chastity and patience.

In all our adversities

Sweet Jesus say amen.

Amen.

 Henry Loosemore ( died 1670).