The One-Eyed Farmer
The Saga of King Hrolf Kracki, (Part Four)
Morning my friends, I write to you from a shepherds hut on the River Cam in Cambridge. The sun is out and swans are grooving about next to old canal boats. I’m teaching up here for a few days then pootling home to Devon later today. Likely by the time you will have read this I will have just given a talk (at St. Peter & St. Paul in Bassingbourne) on what’s often called the sheep and the goats teaching by Yeshua at the end of the gospel of Matthew. It’s been a fascinating trip – on something of a retreat in Walsingham (more of that next week), then down to Lambeth Palace library for a filmed interview with Belle Tindall and Justin Brierly (out in the New Year), then a lively evening with my old friend Paul Kingsnorth and Claire Martin at St Ethelburga’s, ‘Finding God in Wild Places’.
Despite odd technical difficulties that attempted to blight both the interview and the evening, it all felt nourishing and exciting. Something is happening, and it’s refusing to be corralled too easily. Paul was on great form and the most interesting people turned up. Good conversations can be hard to find, but there were plenty afterwards. Claire and the St Ethelburga’s team were supremely friendly and experienced.
I am being drawn into yet more engaging with this Wild Christ that keeps resurfacing. As you know I have some caveats about the word wild in connection to Yeshua (he can’t be drawn with one line, or any), but for now at least this alignment of words keeps showing up and refusing to go away. I should submit, I suspect, to the energy of the moment.
I’m up in Cambridge having led a symposium on Retrieving Enchantment for the Trinity Forum, and a prayer breakfast on the story of Joseph and his Underworld encounters in Egypt: really how we attempt to turn a dream over time into a vision. A reviving burst of activity, then back to quiet soon enough.
Meantime, preparations are afoot for the festive season at my small press Cista Mystica with fresh additions to the shelves ready for the Christmas post. These three unearth my take on both the glories and despairs of Romantic love. They were rather hard-won books to write, but dipping in again I’m pleased to see wonder and hope tip toeing their way through all the drama. I’ll dare to venture if you do….
And now, into a very different landscape.
Coax the coals
oh Cinderbiters,
and let us proceed.
THE SAGA OF KING HROLF KRACKI, (PART FOUR)