Someone said th…

Someone said that the issues of the second half of life are issues of one’s childhood. Interesting how things suddenly pop into one’s conscious not just from childhood but from other periods of life. An opportunity to reflect and wonder, to acknowledge hurts caused and failures. Always a bit of a aha!! shock moment when it happens, then the peace of dealing with it, forgiving one’s self, asking forgiveness if possible, laying it aside and moving on.  Part of continuing to grow and the Spiritual journey.

 

Wandering & Wondering

I never thought that my deciding to visit my brother would become a journey back in time reviving rich memories of place, people and experiences. Underlining the rich life I have had and still continue to have.

 

I went for another long walk across London Bridge this time I walked towards St. Paul’s and finally finished up in Trafalgar Square, again it was a warm day and I enjoyed just striding a long being aware.  Being aware of people, history and the hustle and bustle of the The City.  Ancient Pubs like the Cheshire Cheese in Fleet Street, little alleys leading to the Inner Temple and the magnificent building of the Royal of Courts of Justice in the Strand.  A Brief walking past with his white tabs all so now and yet historic.

 

The next day I was in Marylebone High Street my first London home, with my guardians, was a tiny flat on the first floor I don’t think I have been there for sixty three years.   Living in a flat was so strange, for the twelve year old boy from India.  The day was again mellow, Jean, Narma and I  were able to sit outside for our lunch.

 

Jean had decided to spoil me and took us off to the longest Champagne bar in the world in St. Pancras Station.   St. Pancras is magnificent.   The restorers have done a wonderful job, kept the superb Victorian building and added a tasteful shopping experience besides this champagne bar.  One sits at a table with Eurostar  arriving in right beside you,  there is a the glass partition separating you from the train and the folk disembarking.. We enjoyed  Balfour Champagne grown, fermented and bottled in the UK.

 

On to Dubai.

Went to Gatwick by taxi, interestingly enough there was another blast from the past, as we drove through the Elephant and Castle the driver told me how he was brought up there. I then told him how I used to live in Kennington Park Road and drink at the White Bear Pub.  He said I used to drink there too and there it is.  The Toc H hostel that I lived in before I went to New Zealand was almost directly opposite the Pub.  I thought of Ray and Gloria, we had met one another in the White Bear, years later they turned up my Parish in Auckland.

 

On the flight got chatting with a man who offered me a Champagne turned out that he had been to School at St. Joseph’s in Darjeeling, I went to school in Kurseong about 30 miles south of Darjeeling.  He had been brought up in Assam on a Tea Estate.

 

Memories of Victoria ,my first Boarding School, flooded back.  The Houses at Victoria were name after mountaineers who had attempted to climb Mt Everest  Mallory, Irving and others I can’t remember.  We were there for nine months of the year went in March and came home in  December.  The Donkey Train that climbed up the cudside (hillside) zigzagging  backwards and forwards from one cutting to another.

In the Big Smoke

London, what a city and what a time to visit it, half term.  The place is crawling with children and parents who in the main look harassed and tired.  The looks on many of the children’s faces are a prompt to explore again the sense of wonder and let my inner child have free rein to wonder.   I have walked for miles and loved looking,.   The weather has been a gift dry and warm which has added to the enjoyment.

Looking at the architecture it’s variety, especially the older buildings with all the decoration built into the stone work.  Looking at the people a veritable united nations with so many different languages being spoken around me.  The wonder of how varied we all are with our different languages and cultures.  So different to the London I left fifty-five years ago.  In a way my walking has been a pilgrimage to old haunts, Great Tower Street where  I worked and All Hallows Barking by the Tower where The Revd. Tubby Clayton is buried.  Tubby, as we all knew him, was the founder of Toc H and before I left I lived in a Toch H Hostel, and when I got to New Zealand found branches there.

Yesterday  I went to the National Gallery to see and exhibition called The Sacred made Real.  The works in the exhibition, from the 17th-century,  in the main part have never been seen outside Spain as they are still a focus of veneration  in places of worship and have been loaned for the exhibition.  Some of the Artists are unknown outside Spain.  Most of the works are carved in wood and then polychromed.  The rules of the Guilds didn’t allow the Sculptor to paint his work it had to passed to a painted skilled in polychroming.  The realism is quite remarkable in fact one figure when you first look makes you think it is a live person acting as a statue.

The theology that caused these works to be created is very foreign to some one from a protestant persuasion in fact for many it would almost be blasphemous.  The idea that touching a statue as an act of devotion or gazing at it in prayer could easily be seen as a form of idolatry.   However I found the exhibition very moving especially a piece called The Virgin of Sorrows, the sculptor and the painter had brought to life the face of a woman who has lost her child and in a very subtle way that makes you think.   The Statue of  Mary Magdalene meditating on the Crucifixion was another piece moved me.

The exhibition coming right at the beginning of my travels has left me much to ponder on the spiritual as I move on.

Travelling Man

Well here we go, off again into the wild blue yonder, wonder what I will discover about the world, myself and others.  Exciting yet scary, anticipatory and wondering.