The Vicar's Sabbatical
[Music] A sabbatical is a gift made possible by the generosity of many people This year I was blessed with three months of freedom three months with no work commitments at all A sabbatical is a time of exploration and spiritual discovery and this video is my expression of thanks to all those who supported me on my journey [Music] Everything starts at Paddington Station easily my favourite railway station in London not just because it's a glorious expression of Victorian engineering architecture or even because it has its own bear but because it's the gateway to Cornwall I'm taking my bike for a week in St Just, way down near Landsend, thanks to my lovely friends Jill and Jeremy whose annexe has been my place of retreat for many years now This is somewhere I go to take some rest, to leave work behind, to quieten the voice of the institution This is my time to read and think and cycle and walk Cornwall land of scenery, pasties and flowers, a great place to do some thinking, to watch someone take a ferret for a walk and this is where I put my sabbatical aims in order I want to find out more about St Francis mystic, poet, itinerant preacher, founder of the Franciscan order and so my next destination will be Assisi where he lived and worked and is buried I want to be as openhearted as Francis was, willing to take risks and try new things. I want to travel lightly, taking little luggage, travelling in the most planet friendly way I can This is a pilgrimage not a holiday and the journey will, I hope, be as much of a learning experience as Assisi itself and finally I want to reconnect with family and friends to have time to see people who live far away My journey begins with Eurostar to Paris, then a train to Basel, a local train through Switzerland to Interlaken, where I break my journey for two nights, then I travel to Florence then on to Assisi Cming back I will visit Rome then spend my last night in Zurich before coming back to Paris and London The day starts early, very early, getting up to cycle to St Pancras for the first Eurostar of the day and three hours later I'm at the Gare du Nord My first real challenge is to cycle across Paris Fortunately Paris has some of the best cycle lanes in the world it's a piece of cake to get to the fabulous Gare de Lyon and on the train to Switzerland [Music] In no time (because I fell asleep) I'm in Interlaken, the little town that nestles at the foot of the high Alps between Lake Brienne and Lake Thun I've taken a day here to cycle halfway around Lake Thun and then get a ferry back to Interlaken 'you don't want to do that' says someone on the Internet 'it's a busy road' This is not a busy road at least not to someone who is familiar with the Old Kent Road It's peaceful and lovely and at some point it occurs to me that I'm not thinking about church or spirituality or anything at all really I'm just here looking at turquoise water and cows, real Swiss cows with bells on I squeeze in an evening ride to Lake Brienne and catch a rainbow and then the day is over I'm sad at having to leave the next morning I feel I haven't finished with Switzerland but I console myself that the next stop is Florence somewhere I've never been I leave the Alps behind, pass Lake Maggiore, and we pull into Milan [Music] These absolute scenes are Milano Centrale, Europe's biggest railway station It has the world's ugliest fountain and the most shops you can possibly cram into a triple decker station I'm desperate to get away from it I've got three hours to wait before the Firenze train so in the spirit of being openhearted I try and find some nice things to say about Milan well it's got cute trams [Music] and I have the best breakfast of the whole trip at a tiny cafe when I accidentally order a coffee iced cream instead of an iced coffee I return to Centrale station in fear and trembling but I find the fabulous Frecciarossa train quite easily and soon I'm heading into Tuscany To arrive at Florence is to step back in time the streets are tiny the buildings are beautiful It's a city to get lost in with little streetscapes and market stalls churches on every corner and it's dominated by the Duomo the Cathedrale de Santa Maria del Fiore It's stunning from every angle Brunelleschi's masterpiece and in the light of the setting sun it glows These complex rooftops are the perfect place for swifts and swallows and the twilight is full of birds I'm in love with Florence and I haven't even visited anywhere yet The next day is for art there's so much art in the Florentine museums Madonnas saints and angels I'm charmed to see that the angels in early pictures are swallows with faces My feet are screaming so I stop for one of the best and the most expensive ice creams of my life I meet St Francis again in his quiet brown cassock a contrast to the bright robes of the saints and martyrs There's one more place to visit in Florence I follow the crowd turn a corner and there is Michelangelo's David There is no better way to see a city than an early morning bike ride when it's just you and the street sweepers Florence is a city for walking but there's a wonderful cycle path along the river and I have it almost to myself before I have my last coffee in Florence and take the train again Assisi has a charming railway station The station is actually not in Assisi though it does have a distant view up the hill to the town Google Maps says it's a six-minute cycle ride there's a quiet cycling route avoiding the roads and it winds through fields and olive groves gradually getting steeper until I'm glad I've got an e-bike [Music] Then the map tells me to go upstairs I take the panniers and basket off the bike carry it up go back for the bags and bring them up then repeat for the next flight of stairs muttering to myself 'it's a pilgrimage not a holiday' That's when I see another three flights drifting up into the distance and that's when I run out of water It takes me 2 hours not 6 minutes but it's worth it Once rehydrated I discovered that visiting Assisi is like walking into Instagram It's exquisite, little streets wandering up and down crisscrossed by even narrower alleyways there are flowers everywhere jasmine bougainvillea and others I can't name I'm not sure why but I expected to be disappointed by Assisi I thought it would be a tourist trap but for all the saints and Madonnas you can buy it's still a holy place The city leaflet does not say 'we welcome visitors' but 'we welcome pilgrims' and there is a sense of being welcomed here Nobody tried to rip me off the food the accommodation was all wonderful clean safe and not overpriced The Basilica of St Francis is at the end of the town a grand building for a humble saint but it isn't intimidating In here there's art Giotto's frescoes of the life of St Francis around the walls but the tomb itself is as simple as the habit St Francis wore Nobody rushes you you can spend as long as you like here Mass is said every hour and I went for a blessing wishing there wasn't a divide between Catholic and Anglican Assisi was lovely and I hope to return but I'd reached my destination and it was time to go In some ways my journey was like that of the pilgrims of old when the homeward journey was as long as the outbound Now the chances are you'll return home by the fastest route possible I was going home a slower way giving myself time to process what I'd seen and heard and felt I got to Assi station in 6 minutes and took the first train to Roma Termini Rome is a city where it's best not to get lost It's a big place with a lot to see and a lot of people trying to see it and it can be overwhelming The ancient world appears around every corner these are my feet on a piece of actual ancient Roman stone In the city within a city the Vatican you are in the Pope's garden The Sistine Chapel is a wonder And now for the mother of churches St Peter's Basilica yet more of Michelangelo's genius I wanted to see it but I thought I'd feel distant I didn't think I belonged here I looked up and saw TU ES PETRUS written around the ceiling 'tu es Petrus' - 'you are Peter' This is St Peter's Church, St Peter the patron saint of people who speak first and think later people who suffer from permanent foot-in-mouth people who jump in the water and then ask how deep it is Peter is my kind of saint They say he's buried here and maybe he is but it doesn't matter it's still his place and it's a place where ordinary people belong The fine art the glorious ceiings even Bernini's incredible altarpiece It all belongs to the children of God to you and to me we can all goggle at the Swiss guards we can all go to the souvenir shop but the reality is we can all say our prayers in this place I left more openhearted than when I arrived My early morning ride in Rome took me to the Trevi fountain after a cycle along the Tiber it's back to Roma Termini and the train through the lakes and the Alps to the land of rosti and chocolate Zurich was just a stopover I didn't have high expectations vaguely thinking it would be a city of banks and insurance companies My biggest regret is not spending longer there because it's a fantastic city The last day of my trip and my birthday: fast train to Paris cycle back across the city Eurostar home How many people can say that on their birthday they had breakfast in Zurich lunch in Paris and dinner in London cooked by my daughter and it was good to be home I've been reading about St Francis rebel youth soldier monk and naturist Like St Peter he's impulsive generous and full of love my kind of saint I read GK Chesterton's biography and learned that GK Chesterton was a raging old racist even by the standards of his time It's good having time to read, rather than squeezing reading into the interstices of the day, and these long train rides a perfect reading time I read so many books in these three months some brilliant some funny all worth the time I now went north beyond the top of mainland Scotland to the Orkney Isles I traveled in style taking the sleeper to Inverness and from there a little train to Thurso just down the road from John O'Groats and then the ferry to Stromness on Orkney 15 years ago two of my oldest friends Jill and Russell bought a house here a wreck that had to be rebuilt almost in its entirety The house looks over a beach and out to see to Scapa Flow This is one of the world's great natural harbours, a safe port in any storm Walk down to the sandy beach and you will find tranquillity, looking out over the waves into the distance or picking up shells and fragments of mother-of-pearl A sunny day brings visitors from the vast cruise ships that drop into Orkney and are quietly absorbed into the islands, provided with ice cream, crab sandwiches and tours It seems like a remote place hardly touched by human hand but this is a carefully preserved illusion Scapa Bay is one of the largest oil terminals in the country taking in massive tankers and unloading oil into underground tanks dug deep into those green hills I had not heard of Scapa Flow before I visited but when I mentioned it to my mother she recognised the name at once This is the last resting place of HMS Royal Oak and most of her crew HMS Royal Oak was one of the first ships sunk in the second world war It was a training ship resting at anchor in Scapa Flow when it was attacked and sunk by a German U-boat that sneaked into the harbour following a route that everyone believed was impossible Eight hundred men and boys died and the wreck still lies in the bay today a designated marine grave The only visible traces are the green buoy that marks the site of the wreck and the Memorial Garden at the end of the bay with its list of 833 names The second world war has left other traces on Orkney The islands were changed forever by the creation of the Churchill barriers causeways between the islands that blocked unwanted access to Scapa Flow permanently These causeways were built by Italian prisoners of war young men whose short bewildering lives had taken them from the Italian villages of their childhood to war in North Africa and then to the remote Orkney island of Lamb Holm where they fashioned concrete slabs to be dropped into the sea as the causeway base Among the prisoners was an artist Domenico Chiocchetti and together with a number of other prisoners he built a chapel out of two Nissen huts placed end to end and it is still here today It's a little miracle a place of worship made from paint and scrap metal and here I found St Francis again the Italian saint in his humble cassock facing St Clare across the altar The Italian Chapel is a treasure a place of beauty created in defiance of horror made by prisoners and preserved by their captors It's a memorial to that war and to the resilience of these islands and the kindness of their people From wartime memories I go back further in time when I visit the Cathedral Church of St Magnus I'm not quite sure how a Presbyterian Church can have a cathedral but they do here It feels welcoming with a sense of a house of prayer for the people St Francis has his spot here too The cathedral has been been here for nearly 900 years On Orkney that's only yesterday we meet the deep past at this spectacular atone circle the Ring of Brodgar it's so quiet here no noise of traffic no aircraft just the wind and the birds and at Skara Brae the nearby Stone Age settlement a whole village has been preserved I wonder what they were thinking as they went about their lives fishing and hunting Why did they go to the trouble of raising their standing stones and their great circles? What were their stories their understandings of life and death and what happened to them in the end? Nobody knows why this settlement was abandoned Orkney is a wonderful place perfect to wander and perfect to cycle wild and different to anywhere else I've ever been Before I left my parish a kind friend gave me a Tau ring the symbol of St Francis and I wore it on Assisi and have worn it for times of prayer since Here on Orkney I picked up my other symbol of pilgrimage the scallop shell and it comes back to London with me An early morning ferry ride another four hour wait on a rainy day in little Thurso where I have some breakfast, go for a bike ride, find it cold and miserable so I have another breakfast Finally I chug back through the Highlands to Inverness where I pick up the sleeper train home and my last view of Scotland is a highland sunset It's hard at the end of a sabbatical when you've had the adventure of a lifetime when you've seen and done so much to just come back to the rhythms of ordinary life but one thing the sabbatical gave me was fresh eyes to see the city I call home there's art here too here's St Francis again in the Courtauld collection talking to the birds here's something painted only days ago We forget to go to our museums and galleries and theatres even though there are some cheap seats to be had I even went up the chimney at Battersea power station to see the whole city from a new perspective I went to church too I met the lovely people of Oasis Waterloo, a church so welcoming that I was sad to leave I spent a week with my mum I went to an ordination where I met an old friend and I just spent time at home enjoying family in the summer London is a brilliant city and I'm so grateful I live here The Franciscan message of caring for others caring for creation and living out a generous faith is as relevant here as it is on Assisi I'm at the end of my sabbatical but it will stay with me as memory and as inspiration for the rest of my life [Music]
2024-10-06 15:30
