On a River Cruise: pleasures and perspectives

We are back on the river again. 

Five years ago my wife and I took a river cruise on the Danube. We travelled upstream from Budapest to southern Germany. I wrote a blog charting our progress day by day. We enjoyed it so much (and learned so much) that we decided to make the journey downstream from Budapest to the Black Sea one day, if we could. Retirement has given us that opportunity. So here we are on board the MS William Wordsworth gliding seawards. Once again, I’m writing a blog about the voyage as we make it. I’ll publish it soon after we get back when I’ve had time to process my thoughts about the cruise, tidy up the writing, correct factual errors, remove actionable comments and include some photographs. 

Meanwhile, I thought I’d reflect briefly on the experience of river cruising. This is now the third time we’ve chosen this pleasant way of taking a holiday. The first was the Danube voyage I’ve just mentioned, and then, two years ago, a Rhine cruise from Cologne to Strasbourg and back. There’s lots that’s really enjoyable about it. Compared to cruises by sea, river cruising is small-scale and intimate. The company is convivial and the conversation often lively. The ships carry no more than 100 to 150 passengers (fewer on this cruise) so it’s fine for introverts, believe me! And unlike sea voyages, the scenery is changing around you all the time. The river does all the work. You only have to unpack your suitcase once and you only have to sleep in one bed. 

It’s hugely relaxing to sit on deck or in your own cabin watching villages, towns and landscapes drift past. The excursions to places of interest are tailored to the particular theme of the cruise and participants’ likely interests. On this cruise, we have seen two Hungarian cathedrals, several museums, and visited an extraordinary late Roman underground Christian burial site. We have walked round the capital of Serbia, Belgrade, not a city on many people’s bucket list but fascinating for its long and troubled history from the Roman Empire to the Balkan Wars. We have sailed down the spectacular Kazan Gorge through the Iron Gates, once the most dangerous stretch of the entire river for its treacherous shallows, rocks and cataracts. 

At its most enriching, travel will be both enjoyable and inspiring. But it also needs, I think, to be ethical and to offer new perspectives. I’ve suggested what’s enjoyable about river cruising. When you’re as well looked after as you are on a cruise ship, what’s not to enjoy? But that in itself raises ethical concerns. Tourism that entails air travel (which this trip does) at once poses questions about environmental sustainability. A river cruise ship, however modest compared to its huge ocean counterparts, still adds to my carbon footprint. What’s more, our ship is a bubble of luxury and privilege compared with most peoples’ lifestyles in the countries through which we are sailing, all of which are taking decades to recover from forty years of communist rule. It’s true that none of these ethical challenges is unique to travel. We face them at home on a daily basis. But travel at its best heightens them by making us more aware of our context and more sensitive to it. Like so much else that we enjoy, it’s a case of discerning how to find pleasure in principled ways, with integrity and conscience, never taking any of it for granted.

Inspiration, too, seems to me to be an essential ingredient of the good journey. I mean by that the capacity of travel to stretch our horizons, make us see the world and ourselves in new ways, be genuinely touched by what we experience and enjoy. All this happens, I think, when we make the decision to travel not as spectators but as participants. “Those who never travel think mother is the only cook” says a Bantu proverb. A couple of weeks ago I was in Santiago de Compostela with a group of clergy from Wales. I’d been asked to lead four Bible studies on the theme of pilgrimage. The central insight I wanted to share was that the difference between tourism and pilgrimage is that while tourists observe, pilgrims join in. To me, this is fundamental to travelling ethically and with a good conscience: trying whenever we can to engage with local people and their culture, allow ourselves to be enriched and inspired by what we encounter and join in with. You can read my blog about our pilgrimage to Santiago here.

Which brings me to my final ingredient of a good voyage, which is that there is that aspect of it that searches us, interrogates us, asks us how we might be changed as a result of what we discover and experience. Again, in my pilgrimage talks in Spain, the theme of transformation was central. We should not go home from our journeys the same as we arrived! In the case of Eastern Europe, I am finding that I am being challenged about my awareness of modern European history, especially the ordeals the Warsaw Pact countries went through under communism. On this cruise we are visiting places in former Iron Curtain countries Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria as well as Serbia and Croatia, part of the non-aligned communist former Yugoslavia. Many of the ship’s crew members come from these countries. Some of them are glad to share their experiences of life in nations with recent histories that are so different from ours. 

For example this afternoon we listened to one of them give an illuminating talk about growing up in communist Hungary in the 1970s and 80s. He described what life was like in those bad old days - acknowledging, he said, that times were nowhere near as bad then as they had been in the 1950s and 60s. The uprising of 1956 and its brutal repercussions are seared on the corporate memory of Hungarians of all ages. It’s good that a cruise can make room for potentially uncomfortable content like this so that we can be intelligent guests of these countries rather than mere voyeurs. It’s to be hoped that one of the benefits will e to make us not only better informed but more curious. The best travellers are surely those who are excited by a sense of curiosity. Isn’t that what makes us want to travel in the first place?

This cruise has made us think of more recent events too, the Balkan Wars that brought such misery to the nations of the former Yugoslavia. Serbia had a central role in those conflicts. People like me who are champions for the European Union often say that thanks to the EU, our continent has enjoyed seventy five years of peace. That’s true of the EU nations. But not of the Balkans. It’s sobering to see in Belgrade, for example, ruined buildings that were bombed by the NATO allies in an attempt to call a halt to Serbia’s aggression in the wars of the 1990s. (But the very fact that I state it in that way perhaps betrays my own western assumptions about the causes of those conflicts in the first place.) On the return journey we shall stop at Vukovar, a town that suffered terribly when it was on the front line of this desperate conflict. It will no doubt be a searching experience, and very possibly a troubling one. 

We set out on this journey on the day the UK voted in the European Parliamentary elections. (We voted first, then headed for the airport in case you’re wondering.) Today, we have been digesting the results of the elections both in Britain and across the EU. It seemed nicely symbolic to be afloat in central Europe while the outcomes were being analysed and debated, with an EU country on one side of the Danube (Romania) and a candidate EU state on the other (Serbia). Lively conversations about the elections are taking place on this ship too. So I’m grateful that this cruise is not simply about having beautiful experiences, but is posing real questions to us about the politics of Europe east and west, our European identity, and more broadly, our vision for the good society. What could be more important? Or necessary? And, I want to say, stimulating too. That’s a big part of the enjoyment.

A Pilgrimage to Santiago

I am writing this blog on the train, heading homewards from Cardiff. I’ve spent this week with clergy from the Diocese of Llandaff. Not in Wales, but in Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Bishop June Osborne had invited me to travel with her group of over one hundred people who were making this pilgrimage as their clergy school. It was part of the Diocese’s preparation for the Year of Pilgrimage that begins next year, when the Church in Wales marks the centenary of its disestablishment.

My brief was to offer a daily Bible reading on the theme of pilgrimage. You can read my four addresses at http://northernambo.blogspot.com. I decided to draw on St Luke’s Gospel to help us make connections between pilgrimage down the centuries and our lives today. The first address was on “Pilgrimage and the Offering of Life” where we looked at the child Jesus in the temple. The second, “Pilgrimage and Truth-Seeking” was based on the story of the temptations in the wilderness. The third, “Pilgrimage and Pain” drew on the journey Luke describes Jesus as making as he “turned his face towards Jerusalem”. And the final address on the Emmaus Road resurrection story explored Jesus as our contemporary who, known or unrecognised, walks with us on pilgrimage.

The great thing about the week was the freedom the Bishop gave us to engage with Santiago in our own way. What mattered, she said, was to be together. There was daily worship of course - bilingual Welsh/English, echoing the bilingual culture of our Galician hosts where they speak both Spanish and Gallego: I loved that. There were shared meals enjoyed together (including, on the last evening, a conference dinner in the legendary Parador opposite the Cathedral). There were sessions with visiting speakers on pilgrimage in Wales, pilgrimage with children and resources for promoting pilgrimage in local churches. And many memorable conversations. And lots of laughter. But much of each day was deliberately kept free: to walk (if you wanted to), explore the city (if you wanted to), read (if you wanted to) or simply benefit from a gentler pace of life away from the pressures of “ordinary time”.

It was not my first visit to the great pilgrimage city of Santiago. Jenny and I had been there in 2006 when we drove slowly and reflectively along the entire length of the Camino from one of its traditional starting points in France, Vézelay. And back again, along a different route. We’d stopped at the churches and shrines, said our prayers and lit candles. We’d met other pilgrims on the Camino and listened to their stories. We’d enjoyed each other’s companionship - such a rich word, that, literally “bread-sharing” - and felt a sense of contentment for so much that was lovely in our lives. It was a beautiful experience. 

I shared some of this with the Llandaff clergy. I wanted to emphasise that pilgrimage is not about the means of transport we use to make the journey, but the spirit in which we do it. With the biblical texts to inform us, we looked at different ways of understanding pilgrimage. A journey with a purpose was one. A journey that led to transformation and change was another. A journey that moved us from being observers to becoming participants was a third. The important point is that we bring the whole of ourselves with us. And although we can never know how until we do it, it’s going to make a difference to our lives. To fly by jet from Cardiff to Compostela may not offer the romance and hard work of walking. But that doesn’t make it any less of a pilgrimage. What matters is why we’re making the journey in the first place.

I was keen to deepen my understanding of Santiago as a pilgrim destination. So I spent a lot of time walking round this beautiful granite city (and photographing it - for me, an indispensable way of paying attention to its sense of place). The historic centre is one of those rare places where every building seems right, from the great churches, palaces and monasteries that cluster round the Cathedral, to the more intimate charms of the pedestrianised arcaded streets and squares and alleys within the line of the ancient city walls. 

The museums were especially good. Outstanding was the Museum of Pilgrimage close to the Cathedral. The interior of this classical building has been brilliantly reimagined as a sequence of contemporary spaces in which artefacts relating to pilgrimage are beautifully displayed. I learned a lot about the history of the Santiago pilgrimage, not least its political role in the Reconquista, the seven centuries it took to re-Christianise Spain and drive out Islam. In the galleries I saw many depictions in art and sculpture of St James Matamoros, the “Moor-Slayer” brandishing his sword for Christendom and trampling down the Muslims. It was sobering - painful actually - to see these representations of the Son of Thunder (which you find all along the Camino) in the light of the history of relations between Christianity and Islam and the tensions we are acutely aware of in today’s world.

I’d recommend any pilgrim in Santiago to visit this museum. Not only does it shed light on the Camino and how the Cathedral at Santiago developed into the world-famous shrine it has become. It also explores pilgrimage as a spiritual concept, why people of all world faiths undertake it, what aspirations and ideals it represents. And as you move from floor to floor, the museum’s striking architecture opens up to offer glimpses of the Cathedral towering above you across the square, and to remind you where you are, and why. 

The Cathedral itself is the high point of any visit to Santiago. It is undoubtedly one of the most important Romanesque churches in Europe. This year, essential conservation work means that it is heavily scaffolded and access is severely limited. In particular, we couldn’t climb the steps at the west end and go in by the celebrated Portico of Glory, one of the most marvellous creations of the twelfth century anywhere in the world. (An exhibition on the Portico in the Bishop’s Palace next door does go some way towards helping the visitor at least imagine what it looks like.) But we could still visit the crypt shrine to honour the reliquary of St James, and we could also go up the steps behind the high altar to hug his statue, a traditional act of greeting by pilgrims as they arrive in the Cathedral at the climax of their long journey. 

It’s too early to frame reflections on this unforgettable week. There has been a lot to think about. But I do want to pay tribute to the clergy of Llandaff Diocese for the way they engaged with the pilgrimage. It was clear from my conversations and from social media posts how much colleagues were getting out of the experience. Being there together with their Bishop was a big part of this, the sense that this shared journey to Santiago symbolised the hope-filled journey the Diocese itself was making as it approached the centenary. It was heartening to see the Bishop and her clergy so much at ease with one another. There can’t be many bishops who get a standing ovation from their clergy!

Speaking personally, I’ve not often spoken to a group of clergy who were more attentive, more responsive to what I was trying to share with them or more appreciative. A surprising number of people chose to take up themes from the talks over walks and drinks and meals, or simply wanted to tell me that something I’d said had touched them, or resonated in their own experience. On the final evening one priest, intrigued by my presentations, asked me about my aims as I’d set about preparing my addressses, the chief influences on my thinking, the theologians and spiritual writers I most admired, the part literature and the arts had played in my formation. I wasn’t expecting to be asked those thing, but I love the kind of candid conversation that fellow-travellers get into on pilgrimage. So I asked him the same questions in return! It made me aware of how privileged - and humbling - it is to be entrusted with a part to play in the spiritual development of colleagues in ministry. 

As always happens, I found myself deeply enriched by what fellow-pilgrims were giving back to me. Perhaps they weren’t aware that they were doing this, but I want to thank them all the same for such a generous “time of gifts”. And for the warmth of their hospitality, and for the best possible companionship on this pilgrim-adventure we shared together. 

And now that we’ve reached the time of homecoming, we know that our pilgrimage continues as the risen Lord walks alongside us in our ordinary days. He will keep alive in us the same joy and hope and companionship that we experienced in Santiago. Inspired by our memories of this week we travel on, thankful for all that these days together have meant for us. Ultreia! 

Photos at an Exhibtion: Don McCullin at the Tate

In Holy Week, I was preaching each evening at Southwark Cathedral. There was time during the day to benefit from being in London. So I went to see the retrospective exhibition of Don McCullin’s photography at the Tate Britain.

To me as an amateur photographer, he is one of the greats who has influenced me the most – though the effect of gazing on these powerful images was to wonder how I would dare ever to take a photograph again. McCullin is famous for his photographs of some of the most terrible conflicts of our time. His name is indelibly associated with images of the Congo, Biafra, Vietnam, Cambodia, Beirut, Northern Ireland and Iraq. Even if you don’t recognise the name, you’ll have seen his work, for example that famous photograph of the shell-shocked US marine in Vietnam, staring blankly not at the camera but through it, beyond it into a personal void that is beyond imagining.

I’d read McCullin’s autobiography Unreasonable Behaviour where he speaks memorably about his work in these calamitous war zones, his exposure to the worst human beings can do to one another. He writes: “Seeing, looking at what others cannot bear to see, is what my life as a war reporter is all about… Our knowing matters. These are sights that should, and do, bring pain, and shame, and guilt.”

He talks about the need to bear witness. “You cannot just look away.” And about the  pilgrimages he has had to make to record terrible things as part of his own journey of truth-seeking and to help us with ours. “I don’t believe you can see what’s beyond the edge unless you put your head over it; I’ve been right up to the precipice. That’s the only place to be if you’re going to see and show what suffering really means.”

The Tate was busy on the day I visited. But I was struck by what I can only describe as a kind of religious hush in the galleries where the exhibition was. You did not want to talk in front of these images, so filled with human darkness and pain, so powerful in their capacity to move us to tears. In Holy Week, it was like progressing slowly and prayerfully along the Stations of the Cross. It was to be brutally yet compassionately exposed to the suffering of Jesus in his people.

I knew I needed to say something about this in my Holy Week address in the Cathedral that night. The theme was how Jesus was crucified as a result of political decisions made by people in power, how the crowd got swept up in violence that resulted in the execution of an innocent man. That seemed to me to be true of so much I was looking at in McCullin’s images. I saw once again, as clearly as I have ever seen it, how religion, if it has nothing to say about suffering, has nothing to say, whether it’s suffering caused by natural events, or by man’s inhumanity to man. And I wanted to ask where hope lay amid all this cruelty and pain.

McCullin himself to some extent responds to that question of hope, or at least the question of how we come to terms with the brutal realities of the human condition, whether in conflict zones far away, or in the deprivation of people nearer to home in our own communities. Truth, he says, is better than falsehood and illusion. Infinitely better. That's why "bearing witness" matters so much. You are told precisely this when you visit Auschwitz, or the Holocaust Memorial of Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. To bear witness even to the worst atrocities imaginable is to stand against them and the lies that spawn them to begin with. Truth-seeking is a sign of hope and the possibility, if we have the will to put it into practice, that "never again" will be more than merely words.

In old age Don McCullin has taken to concentrating on landscapes. He says that while he can never “unsee” what he has witnessed, and does not wish to, his work is now largely to calm his spirit. The relics of classical antiquity have long been a favourite theme. Sometimes, an image like the ruins of Palmyra (as they used to be and as they now are, following Daesh’s destruction of what had survived), evokes the violence of our own times as well as of previous ages exacted on the remains of an ancient civilisation. He has some fine photographs of Hadrian’s Wall here in Northumberland that make a similar point, though less sharply.

But you sense that he finds artistic and spiritual solace most of all by photographing the Somerset Levels where he lives. He does this to beautiful effect. It feels healing in a gentle and life-giving way. The images are still printed dark, with high contrast and lowering skies, as if he is still haunted by the chiaroscuro, the light-and-dark journeys he has made during a lifetime. How could he not be? You have to wonder what the personal cost of his remarkable career has been. But he seems to chuckle as he reminds us that rural Somerset is not altogether a retreat from suffering, He muses that even the hills and hedgerows and waterways have their dark side, the “skull beneath the skin” where “nature red in tooth and claw” is the law of survival. Maybe it’s the insight of old age that there is, in the end, no escape from pain and death. Mortality is part of life and a spiritual task of ageing is to recognise it.

Yet there is something of resurrection about these late photographs too, eucharistic even. Photography isn’t only about being present to the way things are, noticing, paying attention, recording and interpreting, though these are necessary for any practitioner of the art. It’s also about being alive to possibilities, whether glimpsed within the composition itself or implied beyond the frame. There can be hints of transfiguration in even the bleakest of images. Which is why McCullin’s exhibition, shattering though it was to experience, did not leave me feeling hopeless. Images like his, like the Stations of the Cross indeed, have the potential to sensitise us, purify our perception of reality, alter our conventionally superficial responses to events, and thereby make us better people who can in turn build a better world. Perhaps that makes them redemptive?

“Waking up today” he writes “to a morning of birdsong, and stepping out of my back door, I spot the antlers of a deer emerging from the mist in my orchard. The light breaks through the cloud, striking the Iron Age hill fort like the fingers of God. And I find myself saying: ‘Thank you…whoever you are’.” And I find myself echoing: Amen. And even: Alleluia.

Don McCullin is at Tate Britain until 6 May.