Saturday Compline & cocoa (from The Campfire Church retreat Journey into Light)

 #1 GATHERING

Welcome, friends.

Please take your place in this community of love and prayer

as night falls and we close the day together

and travel into silence.

 

#2  PRAYER

God of all life

God of the darkness as of the light

God of the unseen world as well as the visible

You see in the darkness

You speak hope into our uncertainty

And strength into our vulnerability.

As the day ends and we make ready to go to bed

Under the gathered clouds and the stars

Under the moon sailing above us across the sky

Under the protection of your love and power

We entrust ourselves to you

We place everything into you hands.

God of Earth and Heaven,

We are yours.

Amen

#3 SONG

Giving it all to you — Geraldine Latty

#4 REFLECTIONS TO THINK ON

 

The British Isles were first evangelised by Columba’s monks from Iona.

They got a long way.

Where I live, in East Sussex, there were inaccessible and resistant pockets that Augustine of Canterbury’s missionary activities in the 6th century never managed to reach. There’s a saying in Sussex, “We won’t be druv,” and that applied to religious conversion as well as everything else. 

But the monks of Iona got through, which is why when King Offa gave a portion of land in East Sussex to the glory of God in perpetuity, the deeds reference Celtic, not Roman, Christianity.

One wise and gentle tactic of the Iona monks was to establish Christian practice alongside the Old Religion, rather than tossing out or discrediting the spiritual path the people had always trod, based on the round of the agricultural year and the seasons of the light.

So, for instance, they settled the feast of the Incarnation, the birth of the Infant Light of the World, just adjacent to Yul (which means “the turn”), at the deepest and darkest, coldest, most forlorn time of year. Into our darkness the living light is born, bringing us hope. Jesus wasn’t born in December, he was born around September — it’s not a birthday celebration. It’s the monks showing the people of the ancient Celtic world, by juxtaposition with their established ceremonies, the meaning of the Gospel.

And they didn’t rival or displace or push aside the ceremonies of the Celtic wheel of the year; they just placed the new stories and observances next to them, so people could see the similarities and understand the teaching.

The festival of Imbolc runs through from the evening of February 1st to the evening of February 2nd — because the Celtic day started at sunset — and the Christian feast of Candlemas is placed alongside it on February 2nd. 

Imbolc was one of the fire festivals, so the monks made Candlemas a time when, as the days were lengthening now and the light was getting stronger, everyone could bring a candle from home to the church for a festival of light. They made that connection between Jesus and light — the Gospel teaching that Jesus is the light of the world.

And Imbolc is also the time for cleaning your home, and the clear, lucid February light shows up all the dust and cobwebs; it’s time to sweep out the house. And it’s Brigid’s tide — protector of the home — when the celebrations, making use of water and milk, have specifically feminine connections. Like visiting the holy wells; the ancient Celts saw wells (springs, water sources) as the opening of the womb of the earth, like waters breaking when a child is born. The neck of the cervix is call the os, and there’s a place in Yorkshire called Osmotherly after the holy well there — the womb opening of Mother Earth.

So the Christian feast of Candlemas set alongside the festival of Imbolc was made a celebration of the purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary after childbirth — which would have been 40 days after Jesus was born.

It speaks of welcoming the growing and strengthening light, of purification and cleansing, of the ways of women and the home.  As we’ve heard from Grace, the word Imbolc may have its origins in the Irish word for “in the belly”, and refer to the time of quickening felt by the mother; some people suggest it comes from the word meaning “lamb’s milk”; and there is a suggestion that it’s linked to a time of ritual cleansing and purification. So it became the time to think of the stirring of spiritual light within us, or of Jesus the Lamb of God as a young child at the breast of his mother — or of the purification of mother Mary after the birth of her baby Jesus.

There is so much to think of here, capturing the holiness that we touch when we connect with the Earth and her seasons, with the ordinary rhythms of life and humanity, with the simple tasks of sweeping the house and washing ourselves ad feeding our children.

This, thought the ancient Celts and affirmed the monks of Iona, is where we find God — or where his Light finds us.

#5 PRAYER FOR THE WORLD

Watch now, dear Lord, 

with those who watch or weep tonight,

and give your angels charge over those who sleep. 

Tend your sick ones, O Lord Christ, 

rest your weary ones,

 bless your dying ones, 

soothe your suffering ones, 

have mercy on your afflicted ones, 

shield your joyous ones

 – and all for your love’s sake.

#6 CLOSING PRAYERS

O Trinity of love

You have been with us at the world’s beginning

Be with us till the world’s end

You have been with us at our life’s shaping

Be with us at our life’s end

You have been with us at the sun’s rising

Be with us at the day’s end.     (Iona)

God be in my head and in my understanding;

God be in my eyes and in my looking;

God be in my mouth and in my speaking;

God be in my heart and in my thinking;

God be at mine end, and at my departing.    (The Sarum Prayer)

 

Saturday late afternoon prayer (from The Campfire Church retreat Journey into Light)

 At our retreat gathering on Facebook, the heart of this meeting was a conversation sharing the thoughts from our individual and separate time through the afternoon, which I can't add into this post. You can put your thoughts in a comment if you'd like to.

Here are the prayers we shared.

SATURDAY EVENING PRAYER

#1 GATHERING

Welcome! How lovely to see you. 

One of my favourite things is watching people come in and take their place in the circle around the campfire — familiar faces and people who are new to me.

#2  REFLECTIONS ON THE AFTERNOON

How did your afternoon go? Did you get outside for a walk? Did you read something, or make something, or watch something? Did inspiration come to you? 

What happened today?

#3 READING

Jesus said

‘Come unto me all you who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls – for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.’

#4 PRAYERS 

I am here in the name of Jesus Christ

A safe place to be.

The Lord is my light and my help

Whom then shall I fear?

The Lord is the strength of my life

Of whom then shall I be afraid?

Thou shalt keep them in perfect peace 

whose minds are stayed on thee.

My prayer rises in peace like the smoke of incense 

unto the presence of divine love.

as the earth keeps turning, turning through space,

and night falls and day breaks from land to land,

I think of people waking, sleeping, sleepless,

being born and dying, one world, one humanity:

and I bless this round world with God’s peace. 

#5 SONG

“You will be found”

Because sometimes the morning light finds your heart at midnight.

 

Saturday midday prayer and thinkabout (from The Campfire Church retreat Journey into Light)

 #1 GATHERING

Hello again, friends. 

It’s lovely to see you.

We’ll begin properly in 5 minutes, but how are you doing? Everything okay?

Remember to set your notifications for each Event to “All”, as it’ll help you keep up. If you “Like” each post as you see it, that will let me know how many people have caught up to where we are.

If you refresh your page every now and then, that can overcome the problem of posts getting stuck and failing to arrive on your page.

#2 A READING:

The apostles rejoined Jesus and told him all that they had done and taught.  Then he said to them, “You must come away to a quiet place all by yourselves and rest awhile”; for there were so many people coming and going that they hardly had leisure even to eat.   So they went off in a boat to a quiet place where they could be by themselves.  

                                                                                                                                                                                                   (Mark 6.31-32)

#3 PRAYER

Thank you, God of all things strange and wonderful

for the internet that allows us to be together

and by ourselves

at the same time.

Thank you for the comfort and encouragement

of each other’s company.

Thank you for the quietness of solitude.

Help us to find, gratefully, time to breathe and be.

Help us to settle quietly into you company.

Help us to centre ourselves in you.

#4 SONG — “Jesus be the centre”

#5 THINKABOUT  

LETTING LIGHT IN (honesty and transparency in public and private life).

You’ll probably get the best out of the Thinkabout with the video, but in case that’s difficult for you, or you like to read as well as listen, I’ll give you the full text below.

 

I once took a funeral for a woman whose name was Lark. An exceptionally beautiful soul, she had been a devotee of Sai Baba and her life was conditioned by the spiritual principles she believed.

Sitting with her family as we talked through what would be appropriate for the ceremony of blessing upon her onward journey from this life, I listened to them describe how she had lived and who she was. One of her daughters said that, in making choices and deciding which way to go, Lark thought we should always look for the path the light shines on. I never forgot that, and it has stood me in good stead.

Light. What is it like? What is its nature, what are its properties?

Well, an obvious one is that you can see through it swell as seeing by it. Light isn’t thick or lumpy like porridge or bread, it’s like lemon juice or a precious gem. It’s transparent, and it illuminates and reveals.

What does that mean for the choices we make and the discipline we practice?

In our private lives, walking in the light means honesty and authenticity. Grace will be unpacking that for us tomorrow morning — what it might mean to be our authentic selves. 

Looking for the path the light shines on in our everyday lives also implies paying attention — living simply and quietly so we are not plagued by confusion and distraction, we are then free to bring our full attention to whatever needs our help or participation or contribution in the present moment. Then we will arrive with heart and mind prepared at the now reality of what life is asking of us today. Our calling requires us to refrain from entanglement and overcommitment, to give ourselves breathing room and space; otherwise we’ll find ourselves making mistakes and grabbing the first thing that comes to hand, choosing what is expedient instead of what will create hope and health for our body and soul (and other people’s too), or being carried along by the tide.

Not everything in our lives is purely personal and private, though. There is always a relational community dimension, which then widens out into the public sphere. We have a contribution to make, and this is a responsibility we  cannot evade.

How is it expressed?

It’s there in our personal relationships. In my own life, I’ve been a preacher and a writer and a pastor and a chaplain, but I’ve noticed that the people I have most influenced are those who have lived with me. I’ve seen our path drawn into accord and commonality. My second husband, Bernard, was very angry with the church when we got married; he thought religion was a power game. It is, of course, but there’s more to it than that, and during the brief time we were together before he died, he came to understand how the cross sits at the heart of creation, holding all things together, the starting point of the new and living way. He made his peace with Jesus, and in the last weeks and days of his life he was able to plug into the light and strength of Jesus. It sustained him and carried him home. That was better than dying angry and defeated.

In our personal relationships, it is wise to choose as friends those who enable others to shine — someone who radiates light, not someone who absorbs it for their own aggrandisement. Someone who lights up the room for everyone, not someone who insists on hogging the spotlight. Humility. Encouragement. Generosity. Responsibility. That’s what we’re looking for, the path the light shines on.

The light we shine is also expressed in our consumer choices, and in this time of urgent ecological threat, it’s important that we stand firm in accepting this responsibility. Living simply is critical here because we’re dealing with the minutiae — what shop we buy from, what food we pick, which fabrics we choose for our clothes, how we heat our homes, what transport we decide on; oh, my Lord, there is so much to consider, and all of it matters. Living simply gives us space to think it over and enquire.

Again, we look for the path the light shines on, pick out the thread the light shines on, and take that way. We take the trouble to ask questions, and we flow with the answers that remind us of the life of Jesus.

In the political sphere, as voters, we also have choices to make. Anyone who says politics has nothing to do with religion is talking through the back of their neck — politics is how we express our organisation as community, there is no more obvious way of loving our neighbour as ourselves.

Party politics is not so much the issue here as the presence of light. There are different methods and systems for running a country; some of them are better than others, but most of them are beneficial and effective in the right hands.

In our political affiliation, the thing to attract us should be not so much the traditions we trust because they’re familiar — voting the way Dad voted — as the life the light shines from and the path the light shines on. We should be looking for the soul, the life, that reminds us of Jesus. We should familiarise ourselves with the New Testament and look for a good match.

As political voters, we can look out for honesty and transparency in a politician’s life and conduct, look for consistency — do they practice what they advocate? We can look at how they treat others: light reveals and illumines, it doesn’t conceal or suppress.

If we see subterfuge and deceit, our vote should never be cast there. Nor should we cast our vote where we see greed or exceptionalism or hubris or frivolity. We are looking for the serious and sober life, for something that will bear the searching of light. “My burden is light,” said Jesus; and we are looking for the life that is carrying the light, like his.

There is also artificial light, and we have to be wary of that. There are the floodlights and footlights created by marketing and promotion — the sort you can buy with money to make a showman look good. We have a responsibility to note the use of that kind of illumination and set it to one side; it’s something people do, but it’s not what we’re looking for.

We are looking for the light that comes into the world to enlighten all humanity, the living light that shines from the way of Jesus and can shine as a lantern in our hearts, enabling both ourselves and our fellow travellers to see which way to go.

At this season of Candlemas when light strengthens and illumines the house,  finding every nook and cranny and showing up what’s there for what it really is, may you be rinsed and lit up, may you receive the light and glow, may you be blessed with clarity and insight, may you put your finger on truth, may you find the path the light shines on for you.

#6  REFLECTION

Remember the clear light,

The pure clear white light

From which everything in the universe comes,

To which everything in the universe returns;

The original nature of your own mind,

The natural state of the universe unmanifest.

Let go into the clear light, trust it, merge with it.

It is your own true nature, it is home.

~ The Tibetan Book of the Dead

 

Saturday early morning prayer from Journey into Light retreat (The Campfire Church Candlemas retreat)

 #1 GATHERING

Good morning, friends. Wes hal!

May you be blessed through this day as we walk together.

May you find the insights you need to nourish your soul,

and may it be a happy time, too.

#2 PRAYER

'I rise up clothed in strength of Christ

I shall not be imprisoned

I shall not be harmed

I shall not be downtrodden

I shall not be left alone

I shall not be tainted

I shall not be overwhelmed.

I go clothed in Christ’s white garments

I go freed to weave Christ’s patterns

I go loved to serve Christ’s weak ones

I go armed to rout out Christ’s foes.'

(Community of Aidan & Hilda)

#3 FROM THE PSALMS

As the deer that yearns 

for running streams.

so my soul is thirsting for you my God.

The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want.

he rests me in green pastures

and walks with me by still waters.

He restores my soul.

#4 SONG

 

#5 PRAYER

O God our creator, your kindness has brought us the gift of a new day.

Help us to leave yesterday behind, and neither to covet nor dread tomorrow, but to accept the uniqueness of today.

Holy and strong, holy and immortal, wise and living

Under your kindness I take my shelter

Your goodness smiles and is quiet

In your presence is my refuge and sanctuary

Transfuse me with your peace

Breathing in I calm my body

Breathing out I smile

There is time.

There is a place for me, here with you.

This is your day, and by waking up in the morning

I understand that I have been invited to share it with you.

Thank you.

Today I am saying yes to your grace

                       and yes to your gift

                       and yes to your company

May I walk in quietness today

May I walk in gentleness today

Today may I take time to listen and time to see.

'Though the dawn breaks cheerless on this isle today 

My spirit walks upon a path of light.

For I know my greatness:

Thou hast built me a throne within thy heart;

I dwell safely within the circle of thy care;

I cannot for a moment fall out of the everlasting arms;

I am on my way to glory. '                 (Alistair Maclean)

Amen

 

 

Friday Compline from Journey into Light Retreat

 Oops — sorry! I forgot I was meant to be posting that here as well. 

I hope catching up doesn't spoil it for you. Maybe start with the morning one posted after this, and come back to this one on Sunday night?

Anyway, here we go.

*       *       *        *       *

#0  SHORT FANFARE

I declare this retreat OPEN!! 

(Well, in a few minutes. I’ll put up a gathering post)

 

#1 GATHERING

Welcome, friends, to our Candlemas retreat, Journey Into Light. 

 

Over the next 48 hours as we travel together through the rhythms of light and darkness, and think about this season of light returning to our world in the springtime, please feel free to join in with as much or as little as you wish of these online gatherings. 

 

I hope our journey together will be a blessing and an inspiration.

We begin with Night Prayer — we’ve called it Compline, but it’s not the traditional format (nothing is, in The Campfire Church!) but our own quiet time together to end the day.

We hope you have come armed with your cup of cocoa or tea or coffee, to make you comfortable and relaxed as we put the world to bed.

#2 READING (Mark 4.35-36)

That day when evening came, he said to his disciples, “Let us go over to the other side.” Leaving the crowd behind, they took him along, just as he was, in the boat. 

#3 SONG — “So much magnificence” by Miten

There is so much magnificence

Near the ocean

Waves are coming in

Waves are coming in

Hallelujah

#4 PRAYER

Before me peaceful

Behind me peaceful

Under me peaceful

Over me peaceful

All around me peaceful.     

(Navajo prayer)

Let the day end

the night fall

the world move into silence

and let God’s people say ‘Amen’.

Let minds unwind

hearts be still

bodies relax 

and let God’s people say ‘Amen’.

But before the day is done

let God’s holy name be praised

and let God’s people say ‘Amen’.              (Iona)

#5 SOME THOUGHTS TO REFLECT ON  

St Brighid, Imbolc, the birth of the spring lambs, and the returning of light after the winter.

#6 CONFESSION

(Feel free if you wish to copy and paste any you want to share into the comments)

The end of the day.

These are the treasures of today ………… 

These are the things that need your salve…… 

These are the things I am ashamed of……… 

These are the things I am proud of……… 

Thank you for it all.

May none of it be wasted, even the knotty bits.

#7 CLOSING PRAYER

I am not just me by myself, I am part of everything; 

part of your web of life.

Please centre me again, and from this prayer 

may hope and peace be released along the web.

Especially, there are the ones you have given me, 

the ones who are connected to my being by great arteries of love, the ones who tug at my heart-strings.

As the day began with you, so may it end with you:

Goodnight, Thou-Who-Watchest-Over-Me.

Please use my rest to heal and equip my soul, 

for thou art with me.

Amen

Ssh. Just stillness

Find something

Read something

Watch something

Complete something

Eat something

Prepare something

Write something

Record something

Check something

Clean something

Buy something

Put something away

Look for something

Cook something

Think about something

Discard something

Listen to something

All of that.

But in between there are gaps.

Moments for stillness; to breathe and just be.

In awareness of the everything behind and beneath all the somethings that come and go.

This everything — it has a heartbeat. It has a smile.

Namo’valokiteshvaraya Chant

In loving memory of the teacher Thich Nhat Hanh

who shone so bright a light

and taught us so much.

"Empty-handed I entered the world

Barefoot I leave it.

My coming, my going—

Two simple happenings

That got entangled."

~ Kozan Ichikyo

Reverence for life

 I want to say something about how we regard and behave towards farm animals — that are raised for our meat or milk or eggs.

First, though, in these days when vegan lifestyle is increasingly advocated as essential for a sustainable future, I want to say something about that, and explain why I am not a vegan even though I hold all life in reverence.

I am not vegan for three reasons.

The first is that I believe mixed diet to be necessary for nutritional health. There's a good article here that carefully explains why vegan diet can be an excellent de-tox and weight loss programme in the short term, but in the long term it tends to create nutritional deficit. Like many people, I don't do at all well on a vegan diet, though I certainly choose to restrict to small amounts my intake of meat (I avoid dairy because it makes me ill), since it is obtained at the cost of an animal's life. Only a little is necessary.

The second reason I'm not vegan is that I believe mixed farming is crucial to regenerative agriculture. There are various online sources of information about this, but I think Allan Savory is one of the best. I'm aware that others have challenged his perspective, but it remains true that animal dunging and trampling in herd movement on open ground (not just forest) is an important contributor to bio-diversity and planetary health. Permaculturists also include an animal component (chickens usually) to their regenerative land projects. I am utterly opposed to huge feedlots and factory farms — as I am opposed to mono-crop arable farming too — but 100% pasture fed animals are good news for the Earth, because to achieve that it is necessary to manage the land regeneratively; poor pasture won't deliver the goods.

The third reason I'm not vegan is that I believe all life is ensouled — rocks and rivers and plants as well as finned and feathered and furry beings. So I believe every being should be treated with reverence and respect; and as we do have to eat something, that reverence must extend to the beings of any species that we farm — and to the land itself, which is holy and belongs to God.

In general, when I see people propose vegan lifestyle, what I notice is that they love the animals — they honour the gentle cows and clever pigs and the chickens who have so much more personality and relatability than most of us imagine. But the thing is, without farms, those animals would cease to be. They wouldn't have a better life — they just wouldn't be born in the first place. I'd guess most animals would rather pass up life on Earth than be born to the living hell of the meat plant, but an animal can be happy in a well-run farm with trees and streams and wallows and a byre to shelter from bad weather.

Also, it's important to consider how animals die. Farm animals are slaughtered in an abattoir. The meat I eat, I buy from small family farms where the animals are slaughtered on the farm, so they never have to endure the stress of live transport and mass slaughter. Death is always a solemn and fearful prospect, but it can be done humanely. 

And the alternative is not living comfortably, for ever. A wild fox, for instance lives for two to four years; in captivity a fox can easily live to be fourteen. Predators, accidents and disease all happen to animals that are not under human care; and their deaths can involve more pain and violence, and be far more protracted, than dying in an abattoir. Best case scenario, dying of old age, if you are a ruminant will probably be from starvation when your teeth fall out.

It isn't simply a matter of life versus death — because everything that is born has to die. It's about how you live and how you die, and how to manage that responsibly, kindly and respectfully.

I eat less meat and pay a premium for the meat I do eat, in order to secure as part of the deal the highest possible animal welfare, and regenerative farming of the land.

But what I want to say here, really, is something about treating with reverence and respect those living beings who die so we can eat.

I saw a video of fishermen — pole-and-line fishing, not trawling, so sustainable and responsible — who took the fish they caught and flung each one back over their shoulder to land with force on the deck of the boat, and there bounce and writhe until they died. That's awful. They should have been killed swiftly and expertly as soon as they were caught.

At Christmas I saw a Facebook post from a local butcher showing a cartoon of two little pigs, one saying to the other "They said they're getting us blankets for Christmas." That isn't funny. It's desperately, unbearably sad.

In the same way, I hate the shop displays or online videos of Thanksgiving turkeys, dressed up as something or used like puppets. I think it's shameful.

It's important to understand that the attitude flows from and relates to the person with the attitude, not the topic they are considering. So someone who mocks an animal in its helplessness destined to die, or ridicules and makes fun of its poor dead body, or laughs at the suffering involved, is degenerating their own soul. They are sick. They are spiritually diseased. And so are we if we participate in this or tacitly go along with it.

So I support mixed farming — I eat meat and fish and poultry and eggs — but I consider that has a responsibility inescapably accompanying it; to treat farm animals with consideration and respect, to honour them, and to regard their being and their death not as a joke or a light matter, but as something holy, a gift of life to us which we should receive with humble gratitude. We should love them. We should love all the Earth.

Peregrination

 In the last two or three years of her life (she lived to be 93), my mother's astral body left the place she physically was and went on journeys.

"You don't know where I am, do you?" she'd say, dreamily: "I'm not here."

She had a soul friend, an astral dog called Lou who had no physical being so far as we knew. Lou used to travel with her to keep her safe.

She used to return to places where she'd lived, or places she'd visited and loved, and wander around there and look at them, with Lou walking close beside her to take care of her.

She went back to the family home where we lived most happily, the culmination of all her patient buying and selling her way up the property ladder, a thirteenth century house in five acres of land with woodland and a river running through it — where we kept sheep and hens and grew vegetables and had as many apples as we wanted picked straight from the orchard trees. She and Lou revisited that place, and lay down and slept there for a while.

But the place she most often returned to was the North York Moors — "Is there a cardiologist on the North York Moors?", she asked me one day. There she would wander along sheep tracks, with Lou to nudge her or tug at her sleeve to keep her feet in the way she had to go.

"I'm on the North York Moors . . . " she'd say, dreamy and happy and contented; and in my mind I could picture her there, because I also love the North York Moors.

One night among many when we were called out in emergency because she'd pressed her Lifeline button, she said to me, "I want to live for ever."

"Well, you will," I said. "We all do."

But she was not to be fobbed off.

"I mean in this world, " she said fiercely.

But even while she was here, she wandered away. She saw a fairy once when she was a little girl, stood quite still and watched it for a while. One time when she was driving in her car up to a crossroads near the church in the village where she lived, she had to wait at the intersection for a funeral with black horses to go by. It felt very special to have been there just at that moment, watching the horses pulling the carriage down the lane. She asked, the next day, whose funeral it had been; but there had been no funeral, and no such horses in the village.

Once, driving up the M1 with my father, she (the passenger) had cried out to him to be careful because of the black dog jumping up at the car. One of my daughters has seen that black dog, too.

And when my father died, she opened to door one morning to find him standing there, smiling at her, young again.

Back to her mind along the paths of memory came things she had physically seen, too — Fred Denby who gave her a lamb of her own, sitting her on his knee and telling her nursery rhymes, her Aunt Kate saying she was a dirty blossom because she buried her wet underpants in the fields of their farm, a great stud stallion being led along the lane to the brood mares, the Hindenburg flying over the farm one day, the prisoners of war who worked there, the animals in the fold yard with their breath hanging in clouds on the frosty air, and the men taking the kitchen door off its hinges to carry in the man who'd slipped and fallen in the fold yard and broken his leg. They brought him into the kitchen, with its great open fire place and the dairy off the back, and cleared the table to make a place where they could put him down and set the broken bone.

Most of all, in those last years she remembered our sheep — going across the bridge we built over the river, at nightfall, to check they were all safe and well in their byre. And she'd call out to them, "Goodnight, boys!" and they'd call back to her. "Baaaa!!"

She rejected the frequent urging of her next door neighbour to take up knitting or at least listen to the radio or turn on the television.

She just sat quietly in her chair with her head resting on her hand, and let her mind and her soul and her astral body roam free.

She said she thought she was just a waste of space now, but she was never bored.

Candlemas retreat on Facebook and possibly here too

 Hello friends.

As you'll probably know, we (me, Buzzfloyd, Tony) run a Facebook group called The Campfire Church. 

We started it to offer fellowship and connection to folk online when their regular churches couldn't meet through the lockdown months of the pandemic. We met every Sunday on Facebook through that time — a very happy international fellowship.

Then when restrictions eased and the churches began to open up again, we judged it time to stop our every-Sunday gatherings.

But when we asked within our group what people would be doing now, we found that during the pandemic so much had changed that 'going back to normal' wasn't necessarily what felt right. 

The pandemic season has been a very revealing time, during which we (you too, I expect) have learned a lot about ourselves and the world around us. 

This phenomenon meant that Tony, Buzzfloyd and I, and several who belonged to The Campfire Church, felt differently about how they related to the church community. Things had changed.

We saw that just disbanding The Campfire Church would therefore leave some people with no fellowship at all, and they would all miss each other — we came to be such good friends through those Sunday meetings. On the other hand, we didn't want to set up a rival church organisation to pull people away from the faith families where they already belonged.

So we've moved on to a different pattern.

On the second Sunday of every month, here in Hastings in East Sussex, we have a small physical gathering (we can only wodge about a dozen people max into our front room, including children), called Second Sunday Circle.

Whenever there is a fifth Sunday to the month, The Campfire Church meets on Facebook in the usual way.

We also looked at where there were gaps to be filled. For instance, some of our people are elderly or disabled, and many of us feel less confident about going out late at night than we once did — the lockdown months somewhat shrank our optimism and resilience, and increased our sense of vulnerability, I suspect. So we offered a Campfire Church midnight gathering on Facebook, for people who love to go to Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, but feel daunted now about venturing forth late at night.

And at the beginning of February we are offering a Candlemas Retreat online at The Campfire Church on Facebook. So people will set the time aside in their own homes, and we will meet online at intervals through the time frame of the retreat.

It's called Journey Into Light, and it's set up here on Facebook — there's nothing in it yet, obviously, except an introductory post giving the outline of what the time together will contain, because it won't begin until February; but nearer the time I will begin to put up various posts (activities and links) to resource those coming to the retreat for the quiet times between the sessions.

This retreat will start on Friday 4th February at 8pm GMT, and run through to Sunday 6th February late afternoon (GMT timing).

I'm telling you about this in case you think you'd like to join in. I know you sometimes miss me if I don't post here very often, and since I last posted a few days ago I've been busy getting our Second Sunday Circle ready (we met yesterday) and beginning to plan the Candlemas Retreat. So if you are on Facebook you can connect with me more than if you look just look out for me posting here.

I do know, though, that some of you find social media overwhelming, and really don't want to be on Facebook, and would rather not open a Facebook account even to go to something you'd like to attend.

What I'm wondering — and I haven't totally thought this through, it might be a disaster — is whether, for those of you who'd love to come to the retreat but really don't want to be on Facebook, I might be able to offer some level of participation here on Kindred of the Quiet Way.

Of course, you wouldn't be able to participate as fully; I could give you links to the short videoed input talks, and give you the text of the prayers, and links out to any music we'll be including (devotional songs), and I can post links and info for any activities etc — but you won't be able to join in with the conversation, which we do by text comments on posts, not by Zoom-style rooms (as many of us are introverts, this works well for us).  

I don't know how well it would work, but we could try it. So I just thought I'd run the idea by you, and see what you think. Ideal would be for you to join The Campfire Church — or you can just join the Journey Into Light retreat, as it has/is its own Facebook group — because that would be the most rewarding way to experience it, but if for your own reasons you can't stay Facebook, do you like the idea of a more limited participation here?

Just in case you were wondering, let me say that I made a decision that any ministry I offer is part of grace, so it's given freely as a gift to those who find it useful. There is no cost to attend the retreat on Facebook, and you will not be asked for money at any group I run. Keep it simple, keep it small, keep it free, is my approach to church.