Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Advent, prayer, simplicity, Slowing Down
This online Advent Calendar looks rooted and valuable as we prepare for Christ.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Camino de Levante, pilgrimage, prayer, Slowing Down, St Francis
This was a transitional time in my Camino a year ago. I had walked the long, hard solo miles from Valencia to Toledo; immensely hard and immensely enjoyable. I met my friends Roy and Karen, on holiday, walked a little with them, enjoyed their company hugely, and spent time with them visiting the tourist and Carmelite sights and sites in Avila and Toledo.
Then began the Third Stage. I took the train on to Zamora. I knew there would be other pilgrims walking up the Via de la Plata from Sevilla; I knew I could take my time, walk more slowly, be less driven, reach Santiago in time to reach my family who were coming out to meet me at Half Term.
I spent two nights in Zamora to look round this romanesque gem. Over breakfast I met a man with a laden cycle. Was he going to Santiago? No, but he was cycling to Africa – put my exertions into perspective! Looked round the Cathedral and the Magdalena and ate a good lunch: rice with sausage, salt cod, creme caramel, wine, water, coffee.
I attempted a siesta and then went to find a Mass. It was the eve of St Francis Day. The bell was tolling and people were filing into the Church attached to the Clarisses Convent. On top sat the only storks I saw in Spain.
There was Exposition, then Rosary, then Mass. During the sermon, the priest broke down in tears. The Third Order gathered around a habit for the Transitus, the service marking Francis’ death and committing us to following the Way of the Gospel. Afterwards, they were very glad to meet an Anglican member of the Franciscan family.
I walked back with the priest, who spoke to each of the people begging for money, telling me who I should give money to and how much. I sat in the Plaza Mayor, taking in all the day, wondering about tomorrow, reflecting on it all. As my supper arrived, I wrote:
I need to reflect about the Incarnation and what the pilgrimage teaches about it – also about everything being material for prayer, being stripped back.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Bonnie Thurston, poetry, prayer, Slowing Down
Wake early Well of course and not in fearful response to Calvinistic maxims (¨healthy, wealthy and wise¨) but for the stillness mysterious presence companionable, enfolding We must wake early how else can we see the sky so full of stars but low as if bending to kiss earth’s darkness presage dawn’s embrace provident daily reminder we are not forgotten. Bonnie Thurston 25th November 2009 Tymawr
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Camino de Levante, pilgrimage, Sabbath, Slowing Down
Chinchilla de Monte Aragon
An essential part of my Camino was taking the occasional rest day. This was part of a pact I made with my body and it was wonderful to wake at 5.30 or 6.00am and to turn over and sleep again. To spend the morning pottering around the town, getting rest, feasting my eyes and soul on the beauty that Spain offers, eating, taking siesta, praying.
Looking back, I always stopped for two nights in places that were nourishing. Chinchilla, in the photo above, a stunning hilltop town with people who cared for me deeply and practically; the outstanding architecture and ambience of Toledo and Zamora (could one rush through these without stopping to look and look again?); Santa Croya de Tera with the care from Casa Anita and the statue of Santiago Peregrino; the profound silence and prayer of Mosterio de Oseira.
Statue of Our Lady, Osiera
These days were important. My pilgrimage – and my being – would have been impoverished without them. I am learning deep and important things from them. To remember that life is not all about rushing onwards, that we should be shaped by leisure and prayer rather then work, that I need rest. In short, things that are all about Sabbath.
The last six weeks have been frantically busy. It has been one of those times when there has been no choice but to work to my limits. But there is now the prospect of some space, of having time for reflection, of giving attention to the more gentle rhythms of being. And, indeed, there is the prospect of a few days on a short walking pilgrimage next month.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Brandwood, David Scott, George Herbert, poetry, prayer, resources, Slowing Down, St Bede's, urban ministry
The last few weeks have been frantically busy. This has been for a number of good reasons and I am happy as a priest to work to the limits of my capacity at particular times. The danger for me lies in getting into a pattern where I work flat out all the time, become exhausted and then a liability. Walking the Camino, along with a commitment to walking and cycling in life, has been enormously important in ensuring I keep a proper shape in my life. I am enjoying an emptier diary this week, a chance to stretch, to reflect on and process all the busy-ness.
One of the important things that has been happening is discerning the direction of the next few years at St Bede’s, Brandwood, where I spend half my work as Vicar. 
We have been using the Diocese of Birmingham’s excellent Transforming Church initiative to help us in this. Over the last months, folk at St Bede’s have gathered together a list of all the ideas of things we would like to do. On Saturday, about twenty of us spent a day in prayerful discernment. We prayed for our parish and then looked at what we already do. We then considered future work. We are already active in our local community through our Community Project, particularly in working in partnership with local agencies and people of goodwill to give a better quality of life to all (click here to read the story of this). We are committed to this and especially to a youth work initiative that will be getting off the ground in the next few months. We also need to pay some attention to our finances so that all that we do and are is on a secure footing.
When we came to look at what else we might do, I was very happy that the mind of the meeting was to give attention to our life of prayer, both as individuals and corporately as a Church. We do pray at the moment, but this will be an opportunity to deepen this part of our life in Christ. It is also an opportunity for integration, to see that prayer and action are part of a seamless robe, that our mission is holistic, caring for all of a person’s being and needs. This became clearer than ever to me in that School of Prayer and School of Charity which is the Camino de Santiago. On it, we learn to pray more deeply; that prayer is tested and proved in our encounters with others, especially when it is difficult.
Here are two poems on prayer which give much to live out of:
PRAYER. (I) (by George Herbert)
PRAYER the Churches banquet, Angels age,
Gods 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, sinner’s 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 way, the bird of Paradise,
Church-bels beyond the stars heard, the souls bloud,
The land of spices, something understood.
A Priest at Prayer
From prayer to prayer involves
a dwindling, a way of being
that accounts for weariness, a regular
drawing in and letting out of breath;
the planting of a word and its forgetting,
a close examination of what is there
until it isn’t, a candle flame beating air,
love meeting Love before the house wakes up;
space body-shaped, time vacated,
the passive tense, a waiting to receive,
out-of-bounds of what is right
or wrong, subject to being surprised
by God on briefest sight.
from David Scott Selected Poems.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Camino de Levante, Environment, pilgrimage, prayer, Slowing Down
On the 8th October, I had a rest day at the excellent Casa Anita in Santa Croya de Tera. As I wrote earlier, this was to rest and dry my gear in an extremely hospitable and nourishing house (which also had unlimited supplies of free wine). Across the River Tera is the village of Santa Marta de Tera with its remarkable Santiago Peregrino statue which I wanted to spend more time praying with than a day of walking would allow.
It was very good to be with the statue and then inside the ancient Romanesque Church, a feeling of being part of something extremely ancient; a widow in traditional black came in to make her intercessions. It felt very right as a pilgrim to spend days like this, not always to be rushing on to the next stop, but to turn aside to explore, to pray, to enjoy. And, of course, to play.
After our time in Church, Jose Carlos and I, wandered slowly to the River Tera. On the bridge I taught him the ancient and skillful game of poohsticks. We then found our way to the bank where JC started to prove that Brazilians are as good at stone skimming as they are at football. I desperately searched for the right stones – the flat ones of a good size and weight to get as many bounces on the water’s surface as possible.
And then. And then I found the right stone. Right because it is almost exactly the same shape as the Santiago Peregrino statue a hundred yards away up the hill outside the south door of the Church.
The stone, which is a couple of inches long, is here with me now. It had to go in my pack for the rest of the Camino. It was such a coincidence and such a special find. The Pilgrimage, the Camino, was somehow reflected in nature, and nature had given this gift up to me as I played.
The anonymous, unknown sculptor of a thousand years ago had worked with natural stone, inspiration and imagination. The stone I found had been worn by water. This was one of those times when things fit together, an experience of grace and blessing to be treasured in the heart and reflected on later.
This, of course, was not the only time I was brought closer to God through nature while on the Camino. There were the many stunningly beautiful views, seeing a single flower growing in the path, the verdant greenery of the cloisters in Segovia amidst the parched earth.
The reminders that God has made the earth and that it is good and that I want to give thanks for it and also to commit myself to help it to continue, to be there for the children.
This is a post about obvious beauty and goodness and grace. Next time I will reflect on when things are more difficult, about when they are broken.
I will write a proper post about some of the connections that the Camino has suggested between the Cross and the environment and slowing down later in the week, but in the meantime I want to advertise why we are waiting, an excellent Anglican online Advent Calendar, which gives much to ponder on this theme.
Archbishop Rowan introduces it by saying:
“We hope for a world in which we have learned to live with the grain of things, to live patiently, to live respectfully, to live in a way that takes our environment seriously…”
to open the Advent Calendar (and – thanks be to God! – it contains no chocolate), click here.
Last week I went for a walk with my friend Mike on the Long Mynd in Shropshire. It was good to be out again, good to be walking familiar paths, good to share what I could of the Camino with a friend.
Mike told me about a Study Day he had been to where the speaker referred to a book by the Japanese theologian Kosuke Koyama called Three Mile an Hour God. This title spoke to me so much of things I had been thinking about and experiencing on the Spanish roads that I broke my resolution to read the books I already have before I buy any more.
Koyama’s book is a collection of biblical reflections on the relation between God and the world. So much of our contemporary culture speaks against the slowness, simplicity and gratitude which to me are among the key features of the Camino. Walter Starkie puts this well in an encounter with a friend in a Cider House in Oviedo fifty odd years ago: ”Why go rainbow-chasing after old Santiago Matamoros, the Thunderer? He’s outmoded and worn out. Today we have stream-lined saints who move quicker and obtain quicker returns. We live in a mechanical age, amigo.”
Now, I have nothing against the mechanical age per se, but there are deeper and more truthful things being whispered to us if we can but take the time to listen. Koyama speaks of this:
God walks ‘slowly’ because he is of love. If he is not love he would have gone much faster. Love has its speed. It is an inner speed. It is a spiritual speed. It is a different kind of speed from the technological speed to which we are accustomed. It is ‘slow’ yet it is lord over all other speeds since it is the speed of love. It goes on in the depth of our life, whether we notice or not, whether we are currently hit by a storm or not, at three miles an hour. It is the speed we walk, and therefore it is the speed the love of God walks.
I hope to take these reflections on and a bit deeper over the next week or two, thinking more about the Cross and its cosmic and ecological dimensions, and also about the relationship between the urban and the rural. Your comments or emails are always very welcome and helpful.
