Seascapes: a retreat for those being ordained.

In a fortnight's time I shall be conducting a retreat for those who are being ordained deacon this summer in my home Diocese of Newcastle. They will be ordained in Newcastle Cathedral on Saturday 30 June. That's the day after the anniversary of my own ordination as a deacon in 1975. I shall give the sermon at that service. It goes without saying that I am looking forward to it. It's always a privilege to be with ordinands as they cross this crucial threshold and take up their new roles in public ministry.

The retreat will be at Alnmouth Friary on the Northumberland coast, just down the road from Alnwick where I was Vicar in the 1980s. I got to know it well at that time. Before my institution as incumbent, I spent a few days on retreat there. I made regular visits to speak with one of the senior Brothers who was a wise, kindly spiritual director. Every Friday my curate (who belonged to the Franciscan Third Order) and I would attend the midday office and eucharist there and then stay on for lunch with the Brothers. The Friary was, and still is, a real foyer, a place of warmth and hospitality.

"Thin" places where we spend times of spiritual significance often provide their own symbols and metaphors to help us reflect on whatever experience we are undergoing. I vividly remember my own priest's ordination retreat during the hot summer of 1976. I stayed with a Benedictine community, and apart from prayer times, meals and sleep (when it came), spent the entire time sitting under a lime tree in the beautiful grounds. The grass was already parched in the fierce heat, but not under that tree. There I read a lot, wrote a little, pondered much and stumbled around in my personal prayers. The community left that sunny patch of England many years ago now. I have no idea whether the tree is still there. But its shelter during those three days has remained an important grace-filled memory. It's felt like a symbol of God's care and protection, especially when the realities of public ministry kicked in as they always do eventually, and sometimes it felt hard and (here's where the metaphor of shelter is important) exposed. Like Jonah and his gourd, perhaps?

What metaphor could the Friary offer this year's candidates as they think and pray about their ordination and the lifetime of public ministry that lies ahead? It's not for me to do more than make suggestions - they must do their own search look for whatever images and symbols are there to recognise them. But an obvious one is the sea itself. What everyone loves at the Friary is the chapel which looks out on the beach at Alnmouth. At high tide you see mostly sea. At low tide, there is a broad expanse of beach, beautiful glowing sands like the ones we remember from childhood seaside holidays. Sometimes I've almost wanted to cry out in that chapel like the ancient Greeks on their long march home, ecstatic on their first sight of it: "The sea! The sea!"

The sea is the chapel altar's backdrop, its reredos if you like. Inevitably, it is always changing and this is its glory. The rhythms of the tides, the changes of weather, the alterations in the light with the ebbs and flows of the seasons - all these add their own dimension to the spirituality of the chapel where we shall gather for the daily prayers of the community and for the eucharist. Your eye is constantly drawn to what's happening out there in this magnificent seascape. It could so easily be a distraction from prayer and meditation. And I'll admit it sometimes is, the magic of what takes place when the sea meets the land. When Cuthbert created his hermitage on the Inner Farne twenty miles up the coast, he built the walls of his cell high enough to cut out the views of rock and sea - for this very reason maybe, so that he could focus more intently on God?

That's the via negativa at work, understanding the spiritual path in terms of what God is not. On the other hand, and more accessibly for most of us, we can train ourselves to try to discern where God is in what we see around us, or at least find in the world of our experience images of what God could be like. I don't mean only blue skies or glowing sunsets or cute animals or fine landscapes and seascapes, though these are all gifts of God. I mean taking in what surrounds us in all its vicissitudes: dark as well as light, storm as well as stillness, rough seas as well as calm, monochrome as well as a vibrant colour. (I've found photography to be a great teacher here in helping me not simply to see but to notice, try to see into, feel for what Gerard Manley Hopkins calls the inscape - but that's for another blog.) For me the vista is a vision of the real world as if viewed through the lens of the eucharist, glimpsed as God sees it. It draws us back into its beating heart because we are learning to see not simply with our eyes but in our souls. That makes it a living icon, written by God himself.

Here, the Friary chapel can help us integrate what we see and touch and experience with how we pray. For if the reredos, this east seaward window is not to be a distraction, then it must provide us with spiritual food for thought to inform our prayer, whether corporate or personal, and our celebration of the eucharist. All of us will find our life-experience mirrored in that window from time to time, in the ever-changing conditions of land, sea and sky. Sometimes the alterations can be so subtle that we hardly notice them, like the tide creeping in over the sand on a calm day. At other times there will be dramatic changes whose suddenness takes us by surprise, as when a storm breaks unexpectedly, or a sunburst emerges out of a sullen lead-grey sky.

And if the window is a symbol of life, it is also a symbol of the tides of ordained ministry. The seascape is always changing. Sometimes those changes seem charged with promise, at other times laden with threat. As men and women in the public ministry of the church, our calling is to enter into human life in all its variety, and in God's name help people to make sense of it, even glimpse where God might be in it all. It calls for solidarity in both storm and sunshine, troubled seas and still, perilous journeys into the unknown as well as calm sea and prosperous voyage. Our new deacons have no idea of where their ministries will take them even in a few days' time, still less in the years of their lifetimes. How can they? How could I, sitting under that lime tree more than forty years ago?

But what we can and must do is offer the path ahead to God. "Lead kindly light" were words often in my thoughts as I stood in that chapel as a parish priest and pondered on my ministry in the parish a few miles inland; and even, in a highly symbolic way, "for those in peril on the sea" when things felt rough. There's a poem by William Blake, one of England's great "see-ers", that I shall quote in one of my addresses:

Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Through the world we safely go.
Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine.

Those words are embroidered on a sampler the parish gave us when we said farewell. It still hangs in the room where we spend most of our daylight hours at home. They remind me of that window at the Friary and the years of stipendiary ordained ministry I have now laid down. And now, it's time for a new generation of clergy to pick up the baton in turn. I can promise them that Blake speaks the truth, not only of human life and discipleship, but of ministry too. And it's all there, in that window and in what they will recognise as they gaze into it and say their prayers and offer their lives as God's deacons.

It goes without saying that my prayers will be with them too. And with all those who are being ordained in the coming weeks in churches and cathedrals across the country.

The North East in Twelve Favourite Places 3: Alnwick

 In this series I’m writing about some of my favourite North East places. You’ll understand that I’m especially drawn to those that hold personal memories for me, or with which I have a connection. So this month I want to revisit the town that was our home for five years – Alnwick.

I was appointed Vicar there in 1987, exactly thirty years ago. We had three young children. A fourth was born the following year. We lived in a fine Victorian vicarage opposite the church, built by the Duke of Northumberland in the 1840s. It was a great place to live as a young family. We soon made good friends there whom we still see all these years later.

Alnwick has some of the best countryside in Northumberland close at hand. On one side, the heritage coast is a short drive away while on the other the Simonside and Cheviot Hills are equally accessible. I wrote about Edlingham in the first article. When I went out there across the moor to take services, I could scarcely believe that I was lucky enough to be driving around such glorious landscapes.

These articles are deliberately not focusing on the tourist trail. So I won’t say much about the big must-sees. Most of you will have visited the Alnwick Garden. It came into being after we had left the town but has certainly put it on the map when it comes to tourism. Likewise Barter Books in the old railway station – if this vast secondhand bookshop had been there in my time, would I ever have done a proper day’s work? The great Alnwick Castle, the “Windsor of the North”, historically made the place what it is, the ancient ducal town of Northumberland complete with its own Shakespearian hero, Henry Percy, better known as Harry Hotspur (Henry IV Part 1). Tottenham Hotspur FC is named after him because the Percy family originally owned the land where the club was founded.

Not enough people find their way to St Michael's Parish Church. It’s one of Northumberland’s finest. It’s situated on the northern edge of the town at the end of the fine street called Bailiffgate: that tells you that the outer bailey of the Castle extended to the church yard gate. In that respect it’s similar to Durham where we went to live twenty years later. Like many Northumberland churches, Alnwick has a fortification built on to the south east corner, a kind of vicar’s pele that would have provided a defensive look-out against impending attacks by Scots or border reivers.

There are hardly any churches in the county that were mainly built in the Perpendicular Gothic style of the fifteenth century (but there’s another near Haydon Bridge in our neighbouring parish of Beltingham). It’s dedicated to St Michael, the patron saint of the town (a good name, that!): there’s a sculpture of the archangel on a pant (fountain) in the town centre. The church is grand as befits its ducal status, wide and spacious, a joy to worship in and walk round. Inside you’ll find some remarkable sculptures on the capitals (or tops) of the piers in the chancel, and also what’s said to be one of the finest medieval parish chests in England.

Like Berwick-upon-Tweed, Alnwick has a strongly enclosed feel to it, thanks largely to its fortified gateway known as Bondgate Tower. You drive into the town from “Bondgate Without” to “Bondgate Within” – here, the word “gate” means not what we tend to think but a “street” or road. (Once upon the time, all traffic on the Great North Road had to squeeze through this narrow pinch-point causing long traffic jams on either side. The A1 bypass was built only a decade or so before we arrived.)

As you wander round the centre of Alnwick, you might be tempted to think of it more as a Georgian market town than a medieval settlement. Many buildings date back to the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The elegant Lion Bridge over the River Aln, from which you get an unrivalled view of the Castle in Capability Brown’s landscaped setting, dates from this period. But look carefully at the street patterns and the long narrow burgage plots behind the buildings. They tell a story of a much more ancient place that originated in Saxon times, even though there are no visible traces of that era now.

Outside the town past the Church, you reach the gate to Hulne Park. This exquisite park belongs to the Northumberland Estates (i.e. the Duke). You are welcome to walk there (between 1100 and sunset – no cars are permitted). A couple of miles inside you come across the lonely ruins of Hulne Friary where a Carmelite community lived in the middle ages. It’s a fascinating muddle of medieval and early Gothic Revival buildings. We used to have parish harvest services and suppers there. They were good days. 

The North East in Twelve Favourite Places 1: Edlingham

This year I am writing a series of twelve short articles for our village magazine Haydon Bridge News. The suggestion was to take a look at some of the less well-known places in North East England, or at some less familiar aspects of places we thought we knew. I know that many readers share my love of the North East, so I've decided to give these modest pieces an audience beyond our village.

Just to clarify. "North East" (with or without the hyphen - I prefer it without) means the land between the Tees and the Tweed. In old (Pevsner) money, that is the counties of Durham and Northumberland. I'm dotting around between the north and south of this region, old and new, urban and rural, upland and coast. There is so much to enjoy in this part of England, so much that is characterful and interesting. There's a fair amount of personal reminiscence in these articles and some photographs to liven up the text.

Here and in the next three blogs are the first four articles from January to April. After that, I'll post once each piece is published. So here goes.

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This series of pieces is about byways, not main roads.

I’m not asking you to ignore the great sights of North East England: Lindisfarne, Durham Cathedral, Alnwick Castle, Hadrian’s Wall, the Northumberland Heritage Coast, Beamish, the Angel of the North, the Tyne Bridges and many more wonderful places. How could we forget the unforgettable that have so shaped the region and made it familiar to people across the world?

But I want to take you to some of the North East’s less familiar sites, landscapes and buildings. I’m suggesting twelve to start with that are largely off the main tourist routes. And I begin with a remote little place that seems to me to sum up so much of the spirit of this part of England. It’s the village of Edlingham just off one of Northumberland’s most beautiful roads that strides across the sandstone hills between Alnwick and Rothbury.

I was vicar of this parish more than 30 years ago when it was part of a united benefice with Alnwick. Getting out to the church could be tricky on winter days. One snowy January Sunday, there were just two of us in church for the morning service. The other person had also driven out of Alnwick and across the moor, bringing with her the church silver for communion. We had to break the ice on the water cruets that morning, I remember.

This is wild, craggy country, quintessential Northumberland. The views across the Vale of Whittingham as you come off the moor are outstanding, with Cheviot and Hedgehope prominent on the horizon. The tops are often white with snow between November and May – the best time to walk the Cheviots if you don’t want to find yourself knee-deep in mud. You can see the little village below you as you drive towards the turning. 

It’s an enjoyable surprise, then, to find that Edlingham has a fine group of historic buildings: a church, a castle and a railway viaduct. Just like Durham. The viaduct used to carry the North Eastern Railway’s branch line from Alnwick to Cornhill. It barely lasted 40 years and was closed to passenger traffic in 1930. But the viaduct makes a splendid backdrop for the older buildings in front.

What is left of the Castle is an imposing ruin of a 13^th century fortified manor house. It was progressively fortified in the following centuries against the ever-present threat of raids across the Scottish border. The tower is not a keep but the remains of the solar or principal living room of a manor house. It has been voted as one of the best three castles in Northumberland.

The Church of St John the Baptist dates from around the Norman Conquest, though the mighty tower, rough-hewn chancel arch and aisle piers make you feel that it’s almost dateless, as if it has simply grown out of the ancient stony hillside. The church’s foundation takes us back indeed to Saxon times when these lands were gifted to the community of St Cuthbert that grew up around his memory (the church of Old Haydon has a similar history). Today’s community is developing plans to use the church as a gateway to the heritage of the area and for village activities.

I said that Edlingham somehow sums up the spirit of the North East. Its remoteness is part of that. But these three buildings between them symbolise the history of North East England: an ancient church connected to St Cuthbert, a castle that speaks of a marcher region that has been fought over for so many centuries, and a viaduct that recalls the huge impact of the industrial revolution on the area. All this in the middle of deep countryside. Go and see for yourself.

To get there: take the A1 to Alnwick, go through the town following the signs to Rothbury (B6341). The road climbs steeply on to Alnwick Moor. The turn for Edlingham is on the right about 5 miles along. Or just north of Morpeth, you can take the A697 towards Wooler and turn right at a crossroads on to the B6341.