To reach the place just ahead of you, what do you do?
The shortest way between two points- that straight line,
the most straight of greatest renown. You put one foot in
front of the other and carry on, repeating yourself. Until you
reach the point ahead, assuming initial motion and no resistance.
You walk the straight line and you journey it.
No. Don’t.
To reach the place just ahead of you, set out backwards
rising slowly and describe a circle complete but for the
smallest measure between the place you left and the point
you reach just ahead of it. And while you wheel right round towards yourself, measure a slow spiral if you like. That
way you’ll see everything about on the slow journey between
two juxtaposed points. That way it is rich, most rich.
Think about it.
Topology of the word. Speech’s own algebra.
Think on it.
‘24’
Stephen Watts
(Found in Ten Poems about Walking, selected by Sasha Dugdale)
There are different charts and guides available to me as I travel across the interior desert of this Advent. The movement of moon and stars is one. Matt Gaw in his book Under the Stars describes the various ways in which a navigator might find Polaris, the North or Pole star:
While the Plough is the easiest way to find Polaris – the North Star – the pointers forever tethered to it during the asterism’s anticlockwise spin, there are other ways. The Northern Cross at the heart of Cygnus also points to the Lode Star. Tristian Gooley, in his book The Walker’s Guide to Outdoor Clues and Signs, suggests thinking of the cross as a crucifix, with Jesus’ right hand pointing to the Pole Star. Auriga, the Charioteer (which to my eyes looks more like a wonky barn), also can help find the Polaris. By following the lean of its collapsing, obtuse side, you can find the star that sits directly above the earth’s axis.
Even when the North Star is obscured, it’s still possible to work out direction, although it can take more time. While the points at which the moon, the planets and the sun rise change over days, weeks and months, the place on the horizon where stars rise remain constant. Of course, the stars move (or appear to with the Earth’s spin) and the time they rise changes but their path, their trajectory, is always the same. (176-7)
Another type of map available me, part of which might also have been available to the Wise-Ones, is the Old Testament: that container for multiple books of scripture containing stories, poems, prophecies, laments. These books would have provided myriad sources of knowledge of God for those at the court of Herod the Great in Jerusalem, on whom the Wise-Ones called. The Wise-Ones asked:
Where is the child who has been born King of the Jews?
In response Herod called together ‘all the chief priests and scribes of the people’, and he in turn asked them ‘where the Messiah, the Christ, was to be born’ (Matthew 2.4)
I can imagine the scattered and frantic discussions and disputes that took place throughout Jerusalem in response to Herod’s question. He had asked the specialists, those Hebrew scribes and theologians who knew the scriptures intimately and who daily commentated on the Torah, the law of God, as it was to be lived out by the Jewish people. If I had to depend on my knowledge of Scripture to answer a question of life and death, could I do it?
I doubt it. And this is why I need the prayers of the saints who have preceded me, for their faith gives me courage and inspiration – another type of chart or map. A couple of years ago, my parents and some of our friends walked the Cuckmere Pilgrim Path across the South Downs in East Sussex which circles through a chain of seven ancient churches. In each church there is a pilgrim prayer. At Wilmington this reads as follows:
Did not our hearts burn within us while He talked with us on the road,
and while He opened the Scriptures to us? (Luke 24.32)
For each step that we might take,
Be our guide, O Lord of Life.
For each load that we might bear,
Be our strength, O Lord of Life.
For each mountain we might face,
Be our power, O Lord of Life.
For each river that might impede,
Be our safety, O Lord of Life.
For each place where we might rest
Be our peace, O Lord of Life.
For each sunrise and sunset,
Be our joy, O Lord of Life.
May God the Father who created you, guide your footsteps,
May God the Son who redeemed you, share your journey,
May God the Holy Spirit who sanctifies you, lead you on life’s pilgrimage,
and the blessing of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit
be with you wherever you may go.
Amen.
Such prayers for guidance, strength, power, safety, peace, joy and blessing are not just metaphorically necessary for my Advent journey and beyond, but are critical not least because they teach me I do not walk alone. I walk with God, even on my journey into the heart of that very God. I walk with the prayers of those who pray for me. I walk with countless unseen saints and angels. The map of their faith is such a comfort and a wonder.
Wonder is what the angels’ eyes hold, wonder:
The eyes of faith, too, unbelieving in the strangeness.
Looking on him who makes all being gift,
Whose overflowing holds, sustains,
Who sets what is in shape,
Here in the cradle, swaddled, homeless,
And here adored by the bright eyes of angels,
The great Lord recognised.
Sinai ablaze, the black pall rising,
Through it the horn’s pitch, high, intolerable,
And I, I step across the mortal frontier
Into the feast safe in my Christ from slaughter.
Beyond that boundary, all loss is mended,
The wilderness is filled, for he,
Broker between the litigants, stands in the breach,
Offers himself for peace.
Between the butchered thieves, the mercy seat, the healing,
The place for him to test death’s costs,
Who powers his very killers’ arms,
Drives in the nails that hold him, while he pays
The debt of brands torn from the bonfire,
Due to his Father’s law, the flames of justice
Bright for forgiveness now, administering
Liberty’s contract.
Soul, look. This is the place where all kings’ monarch
rested a corpse, the maker of our rest, and in
His stillness all things that always move,
Within his buried silence.
Song for the lost, and life; wonder
For angels’s straining eyes, God’s flesh.
They praise together, they adore,
‘To him’, they shout, ‘only to him’.
And I, while there is breath left to me,
Say, Thanksgiving, with a hundred thousand words,
Thanksgiving: that there is a God to worship,
There is an everlasting matter for my singing;
Who with the worst of us, in what
he shares with me, cried under tempting,
A child and powerless, the boundless
Living true God.
Flesh rots: instead, aflame, along with heaven’s singers,
I shall pierce through the veil, into the land
Of infinite astonishment, the land
Of what was done at Calvary;
I shall look on what never can be seen, and still
Shall live, look on the one who died and who still lives
And shall; look in eternal jointure and communion,
Not to be parted.
I shall lift up the name that God
Sets out to be a mercy seat, a healing, and the veils,
And the imaginings and shrouds have gone, because
My soul stands now, his finished likeness,
Admitted now to share his secret, that his blood and hurt
Showed once, now I shall kiss the Son
And never turn away again. And never
Turn away.
‘Hymn for the Mercy Seat’
Ann Griffiths
(as translated from the Welsh by Rowan Williams)
a well-worn path. (iPhone image)
image into ikon 