Who would think?

Who would think that Luton Airport was the take off point for St Catherine's Monastery at the foot of Mount Sinai?  Well it is and here I am in Pret a Manger waiting to go through the departure gate to meet up with Aidan Hart and others who are choosing to spend a week discovering how to read an icon.   Our Western eyes look at icons as art, as pictures which can please and uplift but they aren't art, they are word and this is why we call those who bring them to life, icon writers.  It is the word conveying through image, the eternal story of man's relationship to his Creator.  At St Catherine's Monastery there is are many icons, some familar to you like the early 4th Century icon of Christ Pantocrator, (means Saviour of the World).  But there are extraordinary stories depicted: Moses and the Burning Bush, the Transfiguration with Christ elevated and seen with the great prophets but also viewed by the 3 disciples from the world which that Christ came to offer freedom to.

So, you can see that transfiguration seems to be a little way away from Luton Airport!  But what is interesting about Luton Airport is the number of people passing through and their different reasons for doing it.  Clearly all of us have stepped out of our own homes and we all have expectations of somehow transcending our everyday.  The traveller going to sample holiday life at one of the Egyptian Resorts, the businessman looking for new business and the pilgrim searching for a glimpse of a transcendent spiritual reality.  We all take our way through the same gates, visit the same cappucino outlets, munch the same croissants, are filled with expectation of a new and special joy.

I haven't used my blog for ages but I will take you with me, via Sharm al Sheikh still filled with the COP climate people, via Dahab where there will be those searching for an underwater odyssey and those just wanting sun, sand and a good time.  We will travel by bus tomorrow down to Sinai and there will hope to arrive in time to meet Father Justin, the librarian, an unlikely Greek Orthodox monk who is American and was brought up in the Pentecostal Faith.  He picked up a book on the Desert Fathers when he was at university and thought the life of one of these might be the ultimate adventure. He became a Monk in the US but then came to Egypt which was a great piece of luck for the Monastery which needed just such a person of great intellect, an ability with language so he can speak to the Bedouin helpers as well as intoning and knowing the great ancient Greek scriptures.  He became the librarian of the Monastery and has overseen its complete renewal.. More of that with photographs in the week.

My flight is called. Off I go! But not just to the sea!

A Meditathon, join in on November 25th

Dear Reader,

Are you a meditator?  Would you like to be a meditator?  Well, long term meditator or new to it, here is a chance to give it a try in the company of both old and new meditators and to make it a more important date for you, here is why.  

Look at it this way, the more passengers who go to one side of a boat or a bus, the more likely it is to tip the balance of the vessel.  

Meditation changes things, it can transform a person but it can transform an atmosphere so if you have any spare time on November 25th, any few minutes, any half hour or longer, join us on November 25th anytime between 7.30 am GMT to 7.30 pm GMT please register on Eventbrite and I will send you a link to join us.  Let's tip the balance towards the importance of a quieter mind, a more considered way of communicating by quieting our own minds ...together.

We will have an encouraging reading every 30 minutes to cheer us on.  I haven't ever spent a whole day, a whole 12 hours without moving (much!) so your support will be invaluable.

Hope you might feel inspired to join in by clicking this link

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/just-this-day-join-a-meditatathon-tickets-128131190841

xxxx 

The tale of a boy needing all our support

                                                                                          

I haven't been  moved to add to the blog for a long time, maybe we have all been hunkered down in survival mode thinking of our own futures.  But now I am moved to write and hope that you will be moved when you hear the story of Alex, a talented young dancer who against a whole heap of difficulties in his early life forged a great future as a professional dancer but who has been stopped in his tracks by a broken neck.  This is no ordinary boy though and his story will have you alternately reaching for the Kleenex and then hopefully clicking on the go fund me and donate to his future recovery.  When I met him, he was a teenager, full of energy and enthusiasm for his chosen life of dance.  What I saw about him was that the dance wasn't in his feet it was in his eyes and when you watch the film you will see that the dance is still there

He will tell you in his own words how he broke his neck.  One moment, playing frisbee with friends, the next facedown in the river facing a new rather daunting set of obstacles.  Pulled out by friends, resuscitated by paramedics, intensive care, operations, Stoke Mandeville and now working working working on his future.  Let's get going and make that future dance.  Click the blue writing to take you to the Go Fund Me page.

MAGNIFICENCE! DON'T MISS THIS LOCKDOWN TREAT

It arrived this morning, the book we had been waiting for.  It is called Magnificence and is the product of one man's love of the Medieval Period and his particular talent in letting us join him in discovering our own love of Beauty and Magnificence, maybe our Magpie tendency to be drawn to the glittering jewel encrusted past.
MAGNIFICENCE AND PRINCELY SPLENDOUR IN THE MIDDLE AGES

A highly and beautifully illustrated book, written by bestselling author Richard Barber, shows how medieval princes proclaimed their special status through displays of magnificence.

We know Richard from sailing on the River Deben and having a real eye for beauty, both in his house and his garden and this book is an expression of that.  It is that eye coupled with his extensive understanding of the Middle Ages which make this such a winner of a book.  

You can get your copy from Amazon and Grandpa who you see here, so pleased with his new copy, recommends it as perfect reading for the enforced leisure time we are currently having.  

Look how pleased Grandpa is with his copy.  You will be too so get your copy while you have time to read it!

"How do you recognise a king when you see one?  By the thirteenth century, the special status, which had evolved over the centuries, was matched by the display of kingly grandeur. This was enshrined in the idea of "magnificence". Magnificence was seen as the king's duty, was applied to everything: his person, the garments he wore, his courtiers, the artists, the musicians and architects he employed. Above all, it was on show in his public appearances, his feasts and ceremonies. The "magnificent" collections of jewels, manuscripts and holy relics were displayed to a handful of favoured visitors. Those visitors also had to be entertained, and royal feasts developed into an amazing form of performance art.

This book is not only about objects and occasions, but also about people, the people who created them, from the kings and their courtiers to the artists, craftsmen and musicians, down to the scribes and clerks, the showmen, dancers and acrobats, and the servants at table.
Pageantry and displays of splendour always catch our attention, and medieval feasts and tournaments are among the most popular forms of historical re-enactment today. Magnificence celebrates many of the high points of the medieval world, drawing them together in a sumptuous volume which is at least an echo of the wonderful illuminated manuscripts which these kings collected."

Brexit and the North Sea

There is a man in the village here on the edge of the North Sea who hasn't been to the next door village for 4 years!  This is his home and you will know now what he feels about Brexit.  Here, we cosmopolitan philosophers types have reeled in different directions at the news of Parliament's  suspension.  We were about to meditate but decided to meet up in the back bedroom and all have our two pennorth of opinion and contrasting emotional responses;  did we get anywhere? NO we didn't but clearly meditation was going to be too much of a struggle as the conversation would be difficult to dismiss from our fevered brains.   So we go down to the sea, scene of the previous wild swimming.  (I should put you right about the naked swimmers, two of the swimmers remained on the beach in clothes  whilst I was the only one to cast myself on the waters in my altogether.  But they did drink the wine and they did giggle like teenagers!)  

That sea knows how to set you straight, to soothe the sensibilities and remind us of how much we all love each other, never mind the different opinions we might have.  It was as still as still, as warm as it could be and empty except for us and one other.  The painter got into her own painting, there she is in the photograph, the horizon empty and huge and no sign of any other country on the other side!  That is what the Suffolk boy thinks, leave those other countries on the other side of the sea.  Me, I'm just interested to see what will happen and of course I do wonder what Jacob Rees Mogg was offered for tea at Balmoral, don't you? 

Casting off!

We have, between the three of us, 223 years of existence, two aged 76 and me, the junior coming in at 71 years old.  We are serious philosophical people.  We decide to go to the beach for what may well be the end of the record breaking warm August Bank Holiday.  We have spent so many summers here together with children and grandchildren and we love it.  The bank holiday ended yesterday but as we are retired our holiday continued and we decided to make the most of it.  We had already had wine for lunch and slept it off in the afternoon while the summer sun continued to shine.  Then, when it began to cool, we rose up, packed our barbecue bits, our aged bathing costumes, towels and a bar of chocolate and went down to the Shingle beach we love so much.  Everyone else was leaving as the sun went down but we lit our barbecue and chatted over a bottle of wine as the sea crept up towards us.  The barbecue took ages to get going but suddenly, with extra effort from us, it glowed red.  We cooked our sausages, ate them in buns with mustard and tomato ketchup washed down with more wine and then, as everyone had left the beach, we cast caution to the winds and staggered naked into the sea which didn't make the slightest complaint about our age or our size or our state of inebriation.  The sea just lapped up to the Shingle and we floated under the misty sky giggling like teenagers, then clambered up the shingle bank, gathered our belongings and came home to the 10.00 clock news and our grown up selves.

The monk and the spaceship baby meet up soon!

Father Laurence and Father Justin meeting at St Catherine's`

In exactly a week's time, Father Justin, a Texan born Greek Orthodox Monk from Sinai will be getting off a train at St Neots station where we will meet him.  I have never had a Greek Orthodox Monk to stay before and at the same time, the baby who once slept in a space ship incubator and was so tiny, she could fit in your pocket, will be staying here.  What will she make of a tall, thin saintly man with twinkling eyes, all dressed in black with a long long beard and his long hair tied in a pony tail and what will he, fresh from Sinai, what will he be thinking of us!  I look round the kitchen all full of photographs, pots of spoons and jars of marmalade.  There are books and felt tip pens waiting for that small child to draw her circles and lines making  birds and fishes, giving them eyes and naming them, bird and fish and then handing us the pen to do the same.  Will he join in that game?  He can't be used to small children curious about everything and she won't have seen anyone looking like him.  I know why he's here, he is coming to give two talks in London and to have a day in Cambridge with us beforehand but she will just see a new person in Granny's kitchen.   She won't be interested in his spiritual message, just whether he can draw a bird.

Will she ask him to follow her into the garden?

And what will he make of us, of the countryside, wintery now and so English, different to Sinai where the desert yields a little green in the garden of the Monastery and deep water has made an oasis with peach and almond trees, dates and a few vegetables.  Will he borrow some wellington boots and stride alongside us walking the dogs round the fields?  Will he be happy here?  You can come and meet him too.   If you live in London you can listen to him talk on November 28th at St Martin-in-the-Fields at 10.00 am.  He will be part of a programme where he and a Benedictine Monk, Father Laurence Freeman tell us about the mystical tradition of both Eastern and Western Christianity.  This event is free and open to all but if you live in another country you can hear Father Justin speaking the same evening via live stream.  If you register for this by clicking on this link, I will send you the access information  a few days beforehand. And I will tell you after all the talks are over and Father Justin has gone back to his desert Monastery, how he and baby Bea and the dogs got on in the kitchen of our house! And there may even be a photo of them all together.

St Catherine's Monastery right under the God trodden Mount Sinai