Sue Vincent's Blog: Echoes of Life, page 1046

Today

ARS GEOMETRICA IV

Originally posted on Stuart France:

“What kept you?”
“Looking ahead…”
- The Hobbit: an Unexpected Journey

…Not that we were going to let that stop us.

The next two leaves of the book can be taken together and it was these entries more than any others perhaps which gave us inkling that the book may be describing a ritual.

Leaves ‘Three’ and ‘Four’:

Certainly one of the things the Alchemists could seemingly never agree upon was the number of actual operations leading to the successful culmination of their art… Three, Five or Seven were the usual candidates but here in this ‘little book’ we had a possible solution to the conundrum and what’s more by giving these operations a spatial direction in the round as it were they had also been reduced to a whole.

Where else could the Nigredo commence or the Rubedo finish?

Perfect… Crystalline…Complete.

Our admiration for the unsteady and elusive visitant…

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Little gems – Stockport

“You are supposed to go to church on a Sunday it is true but not necessarily fifteen!” So writes ‘Don’ in The Initiate. It wasn’t quite as hectic this Sunday… a mere handful of churches, with a couple of country pubs by way of necessary refreshment. But we found some real gems, and were fortunate enough to meet and speak with some of the people who know and care for these places.

As a rule we prefer to find these little churches open and empty, to be explored with delight in their history and artistry in a spirit of adventure, contemplation and with the quiet reverence that we accord to all sacred places of any path. Yet when you meet with people who know and love them, know their history and beauty and are willing to take time from their day to share their knowledge it somehow brings these places to light and warmth. A church without a congregation is, after all, missing its heart.

Our first stop was a small church with an unusual tower that we had passed on our way to a Silent Eye meeting in Stockport on the Friday. The service had just finished and most people had left, yet we were warmly invited in to see the building. A small, intimate church with a beautifully carved Evangelists pillar by the lectern, glorious abstract windows and an apse over the altar unlike any we have yet seen.

A wonderful lady called Helen, deeply knowledgeable and with her heart deeply entwined with the building, shared her time and told us the story of the unknown Italian, an itinerant artist, who had offered to paint it before moving on. We spoke with the vicar and her husband and agreed to write a piece for the Parish magazine before leaving with a camera full of images and far more knowledge than when we had arrived. They also pointed us in the direction of another church close by with some spectacular windows. The vicar, preparing for a baptism, kindly told us their story.

We had only intended on visiting the one church and another tiny one we had passed… of course, it didn’t work that way. We saw a few more too, spending an hour with the vicar of St Mary’s learning the history of windows and building, and seeing a copy of the famous ‘breeches bible’ in which Adam and Eve cover their nakedness with breeches…

It is a wonderful thing to see faces light up as they share something they love… no matter whether it be church or chapel, landscape or book… there is something very intimate in the gift of knowledge given from heart to heart. It is as if, at these moments, all barriers come down as with a gentle pride the giver shares a glimpse into their own inner being. At these moments, indeed, it seems as if the kinship we all share comes right to the surface and although you are speaking to a stranger, you are as familiar and close as if you have known each other for years of friendship.

You may get the same feeling of familiarity sometimes with the written word when the writer’s heart is opened with the pages, but nothing quite replaces that shared smile when eye meets eye in a smile of understanding and shared humanity. To be able to share these moments is one of the most beautiful gifts, and runs deep within us… grandmother to granddaughter, mother to son, friends, lovers… or strangers whose paths cross for a momentary magic. To be open to others in this way is to find a doorway to your own inner heart.

Flame

Little gems – Aylesbury

I had occasion to go into town one summer’s day back on 2013. I am seldom happy about that, but sometimes it has to be done. Not that it is a bad town, to be fair. It has a history, and a rich one. As it is not ‘my’ town, when I moved into the area many years ago, I made a conscious effort to find out a little of that history. And today I took the camera to the old town.

We know there was an iron age hillfort where the old town and church now stand. A saint was buried here, St Osyth, whose holy well remains just outside the town. Her remains were moved in 1500 on Papal orders and reburied in secret after the town became a place of unofficial pilgrimage. Saxon and Norman lords have held the place. It has been central to many of the great events in our little country’s history, from John Hampden’s refusal to pay Ship Money, to Henry VIII who made it the county town, in lieu of Buckingham, to curry favour with the family of the ill-fated Anne Boleyn. The battle of Holman’s Bridge was fought here during the English Civil War, pistols were found in a priest hole and Cromwell stayed we are told, appropriately enough, at the King’s Head.

This ancient inn dates back to 1455 and is still a functioning pub. The old stable yard is a pleasant place to sit amid the history on a summer’s day. It has a royal history. Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou, his bride, are said to have stayed here, and it is known that Henry VIII wooed Anne Boleyn in the Solar.. the room with the large window above the entrance. The inn is now cared for by the National Trust, and as the recent limewash fades and mellows the timbers will once again be visible.

Sadly, most casual visitors to Aylesbury will see a town centre much like any other these days. A large relic of the concrete revolution dominates both the town centre and all views of it from across the Vale. The population has doubled since the 60’s with London overspill and much of the remaining 16th and 17th century historic market town was demolished to build a shopping centre to cater for the influx of new people.

Yet, if one takes the time to look behind the glossy facades or above the tired shops of the old High Street there is still much to see. Those who wander off down the backstreets may even stumble upon the lovely old town that still clusters around the parish church of St Mary.

I like old churches. You may have noticed. For the beauty, the history and the marks left by real people through the ages. So I was going to brave the interior of St Mary’s today, but found it preparing for a concert. Beneath the church are ancient crypts, a Saxon church once stood here, but what remains today is a grander building. Heavily restored by Scott, the 15th century windows were stripped out and replaced by mock 13th century lancets and at first glance you would put it squarely in the Victorian era.

When I first moved here, the best part of twenty years ago, the interior was still very much as it had been for a century or so. I recall one lovely evening at Christmas, being a proud Mum as my son sang with the Favouriti from the Grammar School he attended. The atmosphere, then, was beautiful and full of gentle peace. Now most of the furnishings have been removed. The pews are gone, the tiny Lady chapel was today a waiting room, rather than a place of prayer and technicians made a visitor to a sacred place feel like an intruder.

The place saddens me. The churches, of course, have to move with the times and serve the community in whichever way is needed. Facilities must be provided and space utilised. But it can be done sympathetically… or not. These are, after all, sacred spaces to those who worship there, and to those who respect their faith. While there is much now done to protect the fabric of these ancient buildings, and we restore with a lighter touch and more sympathy their historic bones, it seems, sometimes, as if there is little regard paid to the very reason for their existence and survival.

While the King’s Head still serves ale to the thirsty, after half a thousand years, some of the churches I have visited lately have lost their atmosphere of prayer as they are secularised and their soul forgotten. Side chapels become lumber rooms, kitchens plonked unceremoniously in the nave complete with microwave… I am all for bringing places of worship into relevance and into touch with everyday life… they were, after all, at their inception, the very heart of the community. I’d just like to see a little more discretion in how it is done sometimes, and a regard for maybe a thousand years of faith held in trust within those walls.

In a corner of St Mary’s is the tomb of Lady Lee. She was the wife of Sir Henry lee, Knight of the Garter, champion of Elizabeth I. Her Ladyship died in 1584 and on her tomb is written: “Good frend sticke but to strew with crimson flowers this marble stone”. Every other time, over the years, that I have visited, there has been a crimson flower before her effigy. It is said it has always been so. There was one there still. This time it was artificial. It said it all. Next time, I will take her flowers.

 

Ghost

#1000Speak Shine

Have you ever thought how fragmented we are most of the time. Bits of our attention are given or called here and there, certain of our skills and talents required but seldom more than that. If I am asked to hang a picture, for example, it has no relevance that I can bake a fabulous chocolate cake or speak decent French, and (unless they have an urgent desire for cake with a little je ne sais quoi while I hang the frame) the person who asks me will have no interest in those talents at that moment in time.

How seldom is it that we are asked to give ourselves whole to any task or area of our lives? Even rarer, perhaps, are the occasions when we choose to do so, simply because we can, plunging head first into the moment at hand as if it is all there is in the whole of eternity?

I wonder if anyone is ever really known, except in a fragmentary way, through the facet of the self in action in a particular arena or relationship. Even our nearest and dearest have things they do not share with us, facets of themselves we may never see… and that is as it should be… we too have faces we may not show or share.

Even we seldom consciously know and accept our entire selves, of course. We readily admit our flaws to ourselves once we have become aware of them. Yet, while we may admit, nay boast, even, of the glories of our respective chocolate gateaux, few of us will admit to those personality traits which are seen as ‘good’.

We may admit to the socially acceptable ones… the type we put on job application forms… flexible, adaptable, good with people… but the really good ones, we seldom admit to seeing in ourselves. Possibly in part because those who voice that recognition of their own better qualities rarely seem to actually have them. ‘I see myself as compassionate/empathetic/generous’ … the vast majority of the time, these things are said by those who aren’t and we have all known those who voice them and yet wouldn’t know true humility or compassion if it hit them in the face with a wet fish.

But voicing it is different from feeling it. To speak of compassion and to feel it working through the layers of your being, reaching out, that is a different thing.Compassion is not pity… pity looks with a sad smile from on high… compassion reaches out in empathy from the level ground of a shared humanity.

Perhaps we need to take that scintilla of time to simply recognise the good within us as we feel it, in exactly the same way as we recognise the darker facets of ourselves in action… the ones that make us cringe and squirm occasionally. We all have those. Because unless we are prepared to admit who we are to ourselves… the good equally with the less good, accepting our wholeness in all its balanced beauty, how can anyone else ever see that in us too?

Don’t we all wish to be loved and accepted for who we are in our entirety? Yet we hide the good, even from ourselves, behind a socially acceptable modesty while brandishing our flaws and frailties as if they alone define who we are. They do not. We define who we are. As much by how we choose to see ourselves as by anything else. If we see ourselves whole, perhaps others may too. They cannot until we do, as we project outward only a fragment of who we are. The saying ‘love thy neighbour as thyself’ comes to mind. Maybe if we love our whole selves we can love others wholly too.

We are told that the very physical fabric of everything we know, including our own bodies, is made of the matter from which the stars were formed. Our physical forms exist because somewhere, aeons ago, a star died. If that is so, why should we not simply shine?

1000 Voices speak for Compassion

Little Gems – Dinton

One summer’s morning, back in 2013, I nipped out for milk and got a little sidetracked… I often do.

You may have noticed that I seem to spend a lot of time wandering the highways and wild places with a camera. Occasionally I become aware that this is, quite possibly, folly for a woman alone. As I waded through nettles taller than I this morning, in search of a shot of a local ruin I was reminded of this as I called myself an idiot for the umpteenth time. I was, however, very glad I had chosen the leggings and sleeves I had cursed two minutes earlier as being too warm for the sunshine.

I had not intended to visit the place, had, indeed, only nipped out to get milk and Ani’s dinner. But picking up the camera is a habit. I thought a drive in the gorgeous sunshine might clear the fog of painkillers and Dinton is, like so much here, on my doorstep.

St Peter and St Paul, Dinton

There is an ancient church there, dating back to Norman times at least, it has probably been a sacred site since much earlier. Cromwell probably visited the church if he stayed with his friend Simon Mayne at the magnificent old manor next door. It was Mayne who signed the death warrant of Charles I and it is thought that his clerk, John Biggs, may have been the executioner. It is known that after the beheading of the King, Biggs returned to the village and lived in a cave or hidden place, becoming known as the Dinton Hermit. I am desperate to get inside the church and see if the interior matches up to the fabulous doorway, but there are no keyholder details displayed. I might be lucky on a Sunday….

Sadly, I was not. So I remembered the Castle.

Norman tympanum at the church… an angel wielding Thor’s hammer?

Dinton Castle is a bit of a misnomer. It is a ruined folly, built in 1769 by Sir John Vanhattem, then Lord of the Manor to house his collection of fossils. Indeed, the spirals of great ammonites can still be seen built into the higher, less accessible reaches of the crumbling limestone walls. I had walked the boys here one summer’s day just after we had moved from the north. It was a long trek, but we were exploring and had already found the most incongruous Egyptian temple down a country lane, built to house the ancient sacred spring.

Somewhat unexpected in a country lane in deepest Buckinghamshire..

The folly stands rather romantically in a circle of trees, half hidden from the road in summer. Neat fields surround it on three sides, all straight lines and edges. But there are no manicured lawns within, just five foot high nettles and a narrow trampled path to the entrance.

Little now remains apart from the octagonal shell and the towers east and west. Inside the place is open to the winds and the pigeons nest in the remnants of the fireplaces. It is fascinating to me to be able to trace the clues in the architecture, reconstructing the building in imagination from the remains.

The space was surprisingly free of the bottles and sweet wrappers of local children, but then, it has a very curious feel to it. I would imagine, for that very reason, that in the days prior to games consoles it would have been a regular haunt of adventurous youth, but today it stood silent in its leafy bower.

The site itself has a history going back a very long way. Neolithic and paleolithic remains have been found here, and during the building of the folly a Saxon burial ground was uncovered. The ammonites, of course, are at least 65 million years old. They are beautiful things. Pliny called them after Amun after the Egyptian god who wore the curved ram’s horns. They bring back memories of childhood on the beaches of Yorkshire, armed with a fossil hammer and a teacher of such tales. One story, I remember was that of Saint Hilda who turned a plague of snakes to stone. It was below her abbey at Whitby we used to find the best ones.

Their form is seen in many old walls in the area, they were common in the local quarries once upon a time. One can only imagine what the workers believed these serpentstones to be in the days before our knowledge of prehistory explained them. They must have seemed magical indeed, echoing the spiral patterns of our ancestors that are still remembered in folk dance and art to this day.

Of course, the place is haunted, according to local myth. With such a history, it almost has to have a ghost story. It is said that the King’s executioner walks there, even though the folly was yet to be built. Still, the land has always been there, and who knows what echoes of memory the earth itself holds if we knew how to listen for them?

Brave

Little gems – St Lawrence, Broughton

I’m heading north this morning for the monthly meeting of the Silent Eye as we gear up towards the annual April Workshop in Derbyshire. There are one or two things we have in mind to see while I’m up there… and who knows where we might end up. You don’t actually have to go far to find little gems of places to visit. So, while I’m away I thought I could share a few places that we found pretty much on the doorstep.

Note the dragon has a head on its tail too.

The church of St Lawrence poked its tower tantalisingly above the square, modern rooftops of Milton Keynes, looking very much out of place and rather forlorn. We had been on the way to the coach station but had time to spare and decided to investigate. That was the first time. It was obvious when we opened the door that we would have to come back… the walls were amazing.

The painting to the left of the window shows blasphemers dismembering Christ… a very Osirian painting.

The church is now redundant and cared for by the Churches Conservation Trust which looks after some of the historic and beautiful places that are no longer in service. St Lawrence’s was first built in the 14th century and, as with many of the old places, restored in the 19th century. The chancel was completely rebuilt in 1849, but the rest of the church was the surprise.

St Helena and St Eligius

There are windows by Kempe and Gibbs. Bells from the 15th century… but it was the walls that had us standing open mouthed in the doorway. The walls are covered with paintings dating back to 1400AD. They were covered in plaster for about 300 years after the Reformation, when such idolatrous iconography was hidden behind whitewashed walls bearing no more than scrolls of text from the Bible. We have to wonder how many other old churches bear similar treasures beneath the flaking distemper. It is surprising how many paintings are still being uncovered and waiting for conservation to make them safe for future generations to see.

The Virgin pleads for sinners on the day of Judgement while the devil tips the scales

This is living history… You can see the costumes of the times on the figures. The hierarchy of the Biblical scenes mirrors that of the unlettered peasant who would recognise the social status of Lord or Lady by their clothing, and these scenes were designed to convey both stories and morality to those to whom the Bible was closed through illiteracy. Although by the middle of the 15th century books were being printed, it would still be many, many years before they came widely available at a price the ordinary man could afford and for most to have the skills to read for themselves.

A rather curious costume?

The wall paintings of churches, then, provided a unique service… a picture book that spoke without words, telling the stories of the saints, tales from the Bible and instilling the Christian values deemed necessary both for the social position of the peasantry and for their entry into heaven.

St George lost his head when the roof was replaced

At this point in our travels we had been fortunate to discover the wealth of wall paintings that survive in the small village churches of Buckinghamshire. Most of them were fragmentary, faded and intriguing. These were the most colourful and complete that we had seen and it took little imagination to see how they must once have looked when the entire church was covered in them. For an unexpected find, it was a treasure.

The maw of Hell