HERE COMES THE SUN

 

'Peace doves' installation: Lincoln Cathedral: Peter Walker

The drive from Grantham towards Lincoln is just an extended memory lane. My pilgrim’s route has already taken me on foot through most of these villages. As I motor on, what stays with me is no replay of aching muscles or pinched toes. Rather, I feel a golden-hued nostalgia for the beauty and kindness I met. Every day was filled with sunshine, or so it seems. But then, as previously observed, I’m a glass-half-empty person, and a fair-weather rambler.

At Waddington I take a few moments to see what St. Michael’s looks like when there’s no jumble sale in the offing. It’s spiritually comfy: there are echoes of my own childhood religion in the surroundings – 20^th century modernist architecture, an infant-friendly depiction of God’s care for his creation, the bones of Christian theology laid out in front of the congregation – but I’m remembering a different era and a different denomination.  So then, not ‘change and decay in all around I see’. But like other twenty-first century Christians, I need to understand afresh every day that the context has changed, and accept the shock of the new without too much wistfulness. With L.P. Hartley’s narrator, ‘the past is a different country…’ etc. (I always forget this was Hartley, and want to attribute it to Auden or Eliot…)

A fortnight ago, there wasn’t any aircraft activity above and around Waddington. Not so today. Even while I’m sitting in the church, what sounds like one of the Boeing ‘Rivet-Joint’ reconnaissance planes gives my ears a shake.  Perhaps it’s making its way east to loiter near the Ukraine-Russia border. And once I’m outside, either the Red Arrows are practising, or there’s an exercise on and ‘enemy’ aircraft are pretending to take out the airbase. The cloud ceiling is very low: I can hear, but I can’t see, which is very frustrating.  Metaphor anyone?

In one way this partial sensory deprivation has a benefit. The mind concentrates purely on the thrilling sound of the jet engines -and what a technical marvel is revealed – the bandwidth of energy, the perfect functioning of the power units, the experience of restrained power with so much more in reserve. And yet, how terrifying to be in a dug-out somewhere on a contested border or to live in a refugee camp while unseen death-dealers seek to eliminate you.

Picking up the Viking Way on the edge of ‘The Cliff’, a chance combination of angles gives an immediate glimpse of Lincoln Cathedral in the hazy distance. Approaching Bracebridge Heath, on my right I see what is probably the tower of a waterwork: ecclesiastical tribute architecture.  We too dispense water to the thirsty. To my left the Lincoln-satellite conurbations of the Hykehams fill the valley. The path undulates as it follows the scarp, eventually coming up to the London Road where it descends into the city. Four late middle-aged walkers going in the opposite direction obstruct the gate to the path’s continuation on the far side of the road. They’re entirely caught up in their own need for argument and route finding, despite their maps and the fact the way ahead is jolly obvious. They ask my opinion but show no signs of giving way. I more or less elbow them aside, and leave them to their perplexity. Fifty metres later I realise my advice was ambiguous, but it’s too late now. I think about calling after them but we’re not exactly on Striding Edge. They won’t come to any harm, providing they follow the Highway Code and look right, look left and look right again crossing the A607.

The Viking Way follows a balcony path above Lincoln’s South Common, but only at its far end is the view across to the Cathedral revealed. The great church dominates the town below, a massive, uncompromising statement of power, fit for the vast diocesan province over which it once presided. Or is that too harsh?  Should it be better seen as a hugely confident proclamation of faith inspiring daily awe and repentance?

Dropping down over the common I pick my way through terraced houses towards the station. There’s a widespread smell of last evening’s dinner. A lot of the young mums walking their babies have brightly coloured hair. Surely the potions required to make our hair perkily pink, radically red or awesomely orange can’t do it any good?  At the level-crossing people wait patiently for one train to arrive and another to go (I’d forgotten this feature of inner Lincoln). Then we all shuffle over into a town centre that’s noisily thronged by newly arrived students, shoppers, and schoolchildren on outings which are majoring on retail rather than culture. Perhaps this is year-group bonding. The sensations of my own early days at university come flooding back – the uncertainties, the quiet desperation to find friends and construct a new, stable life in an alien place. The lunchtime hullaballoo is considerable.  All that’s needed to render Lincoln truly medieval today is a few market stalls and a set of stocks. Then, as I begin to push on up the slight gradient to the foot of the Steep, the crowd thins. What a stiff climb it is between the model shops and the cafés, twisting one way and then the other, forced onto the Merrell- denting cobbles by a team of painters doing up a house. For a few minutes this pilgrim is on his metaphorical knees. Then I creep past the castle entrance and make it onto the flat summit. I head for the tea-room and experience the salvation of Earl Grey tea and ginger cake.

The door to the Cathedral’s north transept is open.  Grateful to avoid discussion with Cathedral guides as to whether I should pay to pray, I slip in. There’s been an event, or maybe there’s about to be one. Areas are taped off. Chairs are being moved. People are standing around in small clumps. Notices proclaim we’re in a house of prayer, but despite the personal occasion, I’m not feeling the lurve. I walk round to the High Altar and lay down my rucksack and staff. I say thank you to God for the experiences of the last eight years. And then with Jed Bartlet, Martin Sheen’s fictional President in the West Wing it’s… ‘What’s next?’

I’d so wanted to finish my pilgrimage on a high, but knew instinctively I wouldn’t. No ending in my life has ever worked out that way. ‘Not with a bang, but a whimper…’ – now that is Eliot!  In these blogs I’ve dwelt, perhaps excessively, on the difficulties of Christ’s Church in contemporary British society, and it’s true that things with us Anglicans are messy and unclear. At times it’s hard to feel hopeful.  But through the length of history this has frequently been the case.  Joy comes in the morning.  Always.

However improbably:  Better together:  better in colour:  better than we think we are.

Waddington – Bracebridge Heath - Lincoln

13.5 km. 3.8 hrs. 17 degrees C. Cloudy.

‘Here comes the sun’ is The Beatles, of course, from the ‘Abbey Road’ album. Perhaps more significantly it marks the beginning of George Harrison’s solo career…so it looks back and looks forward in equal measures. It’s a genre-defying song – if you replaced Harrison’s own attractive lead vocal with Cat Stevens, nothing would need to be changed on the instrumental side. Is it folk? (this was the moment of the great Folk Revival), or is it rock? With all those dropped beats it nods to world music, or at least escapes the British borders into Europe. It’s one of the happiest, most optimistic songs I know in all of pop music, and so feels like a good note (series of notes!) on which to end.