Meander and convergence
A SMALL crowd of us gathered, on a recent Friday morning, outside the deconsecrated church in Stoke Ferry, Norfolk, where my late brother, Kit Hesketh Harvey, composed lyrics to music on a piano inherited from Flanders and Swann.
There was a grand sense of occasion, because the Lord-Lieutenant of Norfolk, the Lady Dannatt, was opening the merchant and pilgrim route from King’s Lynn to Ely, based on a map plotted by Kit to link a cluster of churches.
Our priest on this morning was the Revd Paul Gismondi, who had drawn my attention to the metaphor of rivers in pilgrimages. We found a way of crossing three Norfolk rivers on our route: the Nar, the Wissey, and the Ouse. And our pilgrim guide was Dr Guy Hayward, founder of the British Pilgrimage Trust, who — since “porch” comes from “port”, “nave” from navus, and Ely is known as the ship of the fens — imagined King’s Lynn as the church porch, our stretch of fen river-route as the nave, and Ely as the altar.
The Norfolk-based artist Sir Antony Gormley said he hoped that our walk would be “healthy and convivial”, which are good words to describe this endeavour.
Guy says that he is often asked what the difference is between a walk and a pilgrimage; on the basis of our experience, I would say it was a spiritual conviviality and serendipity. Being open-hearted makes you more responsive.
For instance, my niece, Gus, wondered about a maypole, and Guy remembered that there was a May Day festival of the Obby Oss in Padstow, if she would like to hear a song from it. Gus already knew it well, because her father — my brother — lived partly in Cornwall, and never missed Obby Oss.
Connections were like tributaries during our walk. Our path along the fens led into Ely past the old clay-pits owned by the railways. One of these, now a lake named after Kit, was bought by a friend of his to turn into a nature reserve. We are currently trying to coax turtle doves there, and our pilgrims carried brown paper packets of seed to scatter on the short grass by the reed-beds.
Fr Gismondi blessed the lake, and then Guy Hayward and my daughter-in-law sang Ralph Vaughan Williams’s “The Turtle Dove”. We got to Ely Cathedral for evensong, which was held in the Lady chapel, its flagstones welcoming pilgrims.
Comrades against arms
OUR pilgrimage was in memory of Kit, but, through shared memories, produced new friendships.
A favourite anecdote came from a friend of Kit’s, another choral scholar at Clare College, Cambridge, under Sir John Rutter — a famously gentle man, but once provoked beyond limit. Kit phoned him to say that he would have to miss evensong because he had been arrested, protesting about weapons at Lakenheath.
Rutter said this was really too much, and that he would have to report Kit to the Dean of Clare, Dr Rowan Williams, for a dressing-down. Kit replied: “Oh, I don’t think that will be necessary, because he’s here with me.”
Ways of the heart
THE following day, I had an email from another old friend of Kit’s, from Cornwall, which illustrated the serendipity of shared memories. At Kit’s funeral, the friend had met a university pal who remembered them meeting once before at the tiny village of St Endellion, near Wadebridge, which has sustained a high-end classical-music festival for nearly 70 years. Sir John Betjeman once wrote that the church there went on praying even when there was nobody in it.
The email read: “To cut a long story short, after 49 years away, I went back for eight days of sublime music-making, friendships renewed, of memories stirred. And none of it would have happened but for that chance encounter, which itself was because of Kit.” Paths are woven.
Thomas Cromwell tried to ban pilgrimages, favouring solitary study of the Bible over convivial journeys, with their shared ideas and serendipitous connections. He chose head over heart, but, with the rise of young people embracing pilgrimages, and the success of the British Pilgrimage Trust, we may be moving back into an era of the heart.
Immortal, divisible?
FOR many, the tending of a grave is the expression of care by the living for the dead. The rise in cremations over burials means the chance to commemorate in different places. Fewer of us spend all our lives in one place, and friends and relations can be spread out.
When my father died, the interment of ashes took place in the churchyard that he loved at St Mawgan, in Cornwall. It was where he spent his childhood, and where his parents are buried. But for years he had been living in Norfolk with his wife, my mother; so we scattered a small box of ashes there under a tree that he had loved for its bird life. It was easier for my mother to visit him.
Similarly, when my brother died in 2023, it seemed natural to return him to St Mawgan. He had built a house for his family at Constantine Bay, near by, which meant a great deal to him, and he was at peace there. But, again, I kept back a box of ashes for his Norfolk-based family.
It seems a generous act to split ashes, especially if families live far away, but I have encountered people who are vehemently against it. They believe that the body — even when reduced to grains of bone — cannot be divided up. I think of the communion, and the symbolic breaking of the bread, for reassurance.
Levelling down
THE burning of Notre-Dame in 2019 (News, 18 April 2019) was greeted with seemingly universal shock and sorrow. That is the moment when some truculent journalistic inquiry has its place.
I was editing Radio 4’s Today programme at the time, and remember the former Archbishop of York, Lord Sentamu, being interviewed by John Humphrys. Lord Sentamu said that our response to the tragedy should be to pray. Humphrys asked him: “What should we be praying for?” I accepted at the time that it was a fair question, but recently saw him again, and told him triumphantly that I had the answer, because I had seen the magnificent restoration of Notre-Dame. That is what we were praying for.
He shrugged grumpily that he didn’t like the grandeur of the restoration, and why did nobody care about all the little parish churches falling down? John’s journalism is based on a suspicion of power and wealth, which is itself a fine religious tradition — though he would not like me to say so.
Pressing pause
THE priest on our pilgrimage, Fr Gismondi, has published a book of his sermons delivered at Hatfield House during a year of Covid. It is called Thoughts for These Days.
It is a good study in the art of the sermon, but it has a wider appeal. Each sermon has insight, a kind of poetry, and a biblical reference. I would recommend it as an oasis in the hectic rush of news — a “Thought for the Day”.
The case for humanity
MORE and more, as I sign up for online services, I am asked the question “Are you a human or a robot?” I am sometimes a bit sloppy on the puzzles that are supposed to facilitate the distinction, so don’t always pass the human test. But I like to be asked.
In the evolution of AI, the question what it means to be human is fundamental.
Sarah Sands is a journalist and author.
