The Machine To The Merrie
Cheering On The Saints To Come
The Merrie Pilgrimage to Walsingham
“Be thou glad sleeper and thy sorrow off cast. I am the gate to all good adventure.”
C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength
Those that made it through the storm: pilgrims to the Slipper Chapel led by my sister Anna. All photography Charlotte Bromley Davenport.
It’s a funny old world when the notion of a pilgrimage seems oddly radical, but last weekend at Walsingham, that was how it felt.
And we got our work cut out for us: anyone that made it likely wrestled Storm Claudia all day Friday just trying to get into Norfolk. It was about eight hours all in from Devon, and it’s fair to say I was a little deranged by arrival. I met old companions for a fat-headed, creamy Guinness in the back room of The Bull as we stared wide eyed and compared harrowed notes on the buffeting winds, scandalous detours and endless sheets of black rain. We had friends coming in from Canada, Holland, Scotland and all over, so we were praying them safe through the fury.
Take Courage
I was also Keeper of the Keys at St Seraphim’s Orthodox chapel, so in the swirling dark of early evening I was shown the ropes by Joanna – a friendly face – in the rock’n’rolling weather. That little chapel would provide me with tremendous, prayerful solace in the good natured but relentless bustle of the weekend. After a tossing and turning night I was heartened to see a few of us had actually made it through the weather and were gathered for a little pilgrim walk up to the Slipper Chapel.
From Henry III onwards Walsingham became a major shrine in Northern Europe, and a place visited by Kings, Queens and a steady stream of folk looking for peace, healing and depth of feeling. It was a name familiar to Christians all across Europe. Pilgrimages were of course good for business: inn keepers, shoemakers, boatmen to name but three all felt the benefit. There was a route from Shoreditch all the way to Walsingham, roads often being repaired by charitable work from the Religious Houses.
The Milky Way was known as the ‘Walsingham Way’, because the stars were meant to illuminate the pilgrim paths, known as ‘Greenways’. This was a period when the very roads of England were made holy by crosses going far back as Anglo-Saxon times. Some marked their way to shrines, needed when crop was high across the fields and you couldn’t see a thing. There was estimated to be more than five thousand crosses accompanying our tracks and roads at one point.
Well, like pilgrims of olde, we eyed each other friendly-like and prepared to walk to the Slipper Chapel.
My sister Anna gave a beautiful welcome and some reasoning for what we were about to do, and then off we all shuffled, the day suddenly much calmer, and the fields shimmering bright with all that fallen rain. Orthodox, Catholics, Protestants, and all sorts of folk simply seeking a deeper life.
I managed to find a bed for a couple of hours, and then it was time to be back at the Parish Hall and for the wider day to begin. Spotting my mother, father, brother, sister, heroic nephews and one beautiful niece in the assembled horde brought a delighted smile to my face.
Kernow Class: Lucy Cooper
First up we had Lucy Cooper giving us some wider context for the whole notion of pilgrimage. Lucy is a fabulous writer, and also editor at the small press Cista Mystica. She walked us through some of her own considerable experience of ‘intentional strolling’ (maybe I just created a new phrase), and gave us all a lovely flavour of the west of Britain. Afterwards we chatted for a little while around the strange rebirth of interest in Christianity, and the urgency of our times. In the absence of my old friend Paul Kingsnorth I talked a little about the abiding notion of the Machine, and the possibility of being an Angel in the Machine ourselves. How do we move from the Machine to the Merrie?
Small Intentioned Steps Matter
Please don’t mistake this for me assuming one stomp across some soggy English fields eradicates the endlessly displayed and often terrifying spiritual turbulence of our age. But even so, one has to direct one’s feet somewhere, and this is, after all, Good News.
When you are lost in the forest it is tiny little breadcrumbs, small intentioned steps, that can lead you home. Circling darkness, and only focusing on circling darkness can lead to absolute paralysis. The weird titillation of paranoia. Drink some freshly squeezed orange juice, put on a James Brown record, spend an hour polishing your shoes. These things help.
I repeated something at the Merrie I wrote here a few weeks ago – the Devil hates a hand-made life.
Demons Want To Be Needed. Don’t be a life coach for a Demon’s self-esteem issues. If you want to disturb a Demon, a Machine, or a Monster, think about making a hand-made, human-sized life. Sometimes things are simpler than we may think. Find the Angel in the Machine, not just the Demon. Be the Angel in the Machine if you can. It’s radical to be a pilgrim.