Beckoning

We left Holy Island yesterday. This visit has not had much sun. But yesterday as we prepared to journey back south, the sun came out. 

People find crossing the sands at low tide by these posts showing the way from Beal at the end of St Cuthberts Way a powerful end to a pilgrimage. But yesterday I thought about the posts beckoning me the other way. The brightness being ahead of us, the challenge of the mainland having light in it to illuminate the darknesses we face. Leaving the causeway is always hard for us, but always on leaving there is a message given. Yesterday while going home felt hard, and today I’m paying for a long drive and can hardly move or speak my lungs have been overworked, there is a hope amongst the barrage of medical appointments and scans and lung function tests ahead, and feeling out of control of life in so many ways. The message of this season is that the light shines in the darkness and the darkness shall not put it out. So while I’m sad as ever to leave the island, there is enough spiritual strength in me if not physical to face each day. I think! 

This season is all about journeying and also journeying back different. Shepherds return glorifying and praising God for all they see, magi return by another road. This season is also about light. That’s why I guess trees go up so early and houses are bedecked with stuff to make the darkness bearable. We seem to have a month of Christmas now. I even heard the Wombles at breakfast this morning! We wish you a wombling merry Christmas is a classic, let’s be honest about it! 

On my first visit to the island to stay on sabbatical in 2009, I found a poem which said I didn’t come to stay however wonderful the experience, I came to go back. The challenge is how we remember the God moments in the rubbish of everyday. I guess as I keep writing that God incarnate is in the shit. And a lot of people today are having a lot of that. A group on Facebook called Nite Blessings had an honest prayer the other night I share here: 

Naughtily I yearn for this sort of prayer to be in our church. People struggling going back to stuff need to be allowed to voice what they face. 

‪May fear’s threats be silenced by Hope’s promises. May the terror of darkness be destroyed by the Presence of Light. May the nausea of uncertainty be settled by the Giver of Faith. Fragility is not weakness. Honesty is not failure. Hope requires no pretence.‬