Holy Saturday. A day of desolation for the Christian church.
Today I experimented with “Church in the Wild”. The idea is to use physical exercise as a form of non-verbal worship. It’s something I’ve been thinking about and working through for quite a while, so today was an opportunity to test it out in a corporate way – a shared way.
My wife has ME/CFS, so her capacity for physical exertion is limited. For my wife to worship with ‘all’ her strength is a very different experience to the way I would worship with ‘all’ my strength. No less relevant though. There’s an equality in the word ‘all’ when each of us uses ‘all’ we have.
The ‘Elephant Trees’ are a Weardale landmark. There’s a bridleway that passes beside them. A farm track leads through multiple gates before ending in a sheep field. I used a car to get my wife to within 1.5km of the trees. Ahead of us lay a steep sandy/rocky/muddy track up the hillside. I read a bit of holy scripture before we started:
Come, let us return to the Lord;
for it is he who has torn, and he will heal us;
he has struck down, and he will bind us up
There was a light drizzle in the air: the leading edge of a Spring storm bowling across the Atlantic. The dog had a coat on, and was on a short lead as we crossed sheep-filled fields. We met some experienced looking and well equipped walkers heading towards us and shared farm gate opening duties. I was quietly using the Jesus prayer as a mantra to stop my mind wandering.
A short walk, but blustery, and the rain began to come down more assertively: pattering on our kagool type coats. We reached the trees and I read a little more holy scripture:
Let us know, let us press on to know the Lord;
his appearing is as sure as the dawn;
he will come to us like the showers,
like the spring rains that water the earth
Finishing with the Lord’s prayer, we turned for home. It was clear that this had been just about the right amount of physical exertion for her… although I could tell she’d need the rest of the day to recover. I felt I’d only scratched the surface of my energy… but I also know that I cycle more than I walk, and that 3km of moorland track were using different muscles to the ones I normally call upon.
