The first Sunday in July 2015 was our eighth Wild Church event and a real highlight. Having started our river pilgrimage at the beginning of Advent in the depths of winter, it felt like a cause for celebration, to look back over these months of meeting and now find ourselves at the height of summer, and it was also the high point of our pilgrimage, having tracked the River Dart to Postbridge which is not far from its source.
So fifteen pilgrims, including one small dog, started our afternoon together at St. Gabriel’s Church. This is a beautiful sacred space in the heart of Dartmoor and clearly much loved and well cared for by its local congregation. Although, like many rural churches, St. Gabriel’s doesn’t have a service every week and we weren’t therefore able to join them on this first Sunday of the month, we were warmly welcomed by Annie, the Church warden, who also runs the Village Store.
One of the many lovely touches in the Church is a central space where chairs can be arranged in a circle and another is a beautiful dish for lighting candles, so we felt immediately at home as we settled into some quiet time. Before sinking into silence, we first shared names and reflections about ‘source’ and feeling ‘at home’. Physically ‘home’ ranged from Staverton to Sweden and inwardly, thoughts were expressed about home being about people rather than place, or being in the present, or being rooted on the land, wherever that may be, or in love. Going into meditation was an invitation to be at home in ourselves in the presence of God, of the Source of All Being. For me (Sam) I often feel this as being held in the arms of the Holy Mother, Mary.
We moved into the receptive space of silent prayer through listening to music. In honour of St.Gabriel to whom this Church is dedicated, our music was Sting’s contemporary version of the ancient Basque folk carol, Gabriel’s Message, as translated by the Devon parson, Rev’d Sabine Baring Gould. Click here for a more traditional version. After silent time we then moved into toning and then singing the carol together. I find the sound of voices blending together in sacred space after silence so moving. Here we were as a unique group of people, drawn together with sacred intention and entering into a sweet communion of sound. Some of us may never meet again and yet for a few moments it felt as if we were part of an angelic choir. I hope Gabriel approved!
We then set off from the Church towards the home of Seventh Wave Music, to meet with Carolyn Hillyer in her and her husband Nigel’s ancient farmstead. Along the way we passed old trees and the graveyard, walked alongside beautiful species rich meadows and hedge banks full of sweet scented roses, foxgloves and bilberries, which were ripe, ready to eat and much enjoyed! I found myself thinking around our theme of ‘source’ and back to the beginnings of our journey, as we lit candles in the darkness by the ancient yew in Dartington. T.S Eliot’s well known words from the end of the Four Quartets came to mind again:
We die with the dying:
See they depart, and we go with them.
We are born with the dead:
See they return, and bring us with them.
The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree
Are of equal duration…
We came out of silence to greet Carolyn who was so generously sharing her time and sacred space in her reconstructed Bronze Age Round House. Carolyn and Nigel have been using this as a ceremonial space for many years and it feels saturated with prayer. Here they have welcomed many people, including indigenous peoples from all over the world, to share their music and sacred ceremonies, so it was a great honour for us to walk the path from St. Gabriel’s door to here, bringing his song and our collaborative communion. Carolyn later told us that this was the first time communion had been celebrated here, so I’m really glad we were able to add an indigenous christian ceremony to others that had been shared here over the years.
In the spirit of co-creation, we took time to design our ceremony together before entering into sacred space. I am always amazed by how this works – that it works at all! That a group of people who have never met or worked together before can, through open and spontaneous conversation, co create sacred ceremony. I simply input a little facilitation and hold the basic communion structure of ‘gather, engage, share & bless’ and invite contributions, never knowing what these might be or from whom. It’s a wonderful trust exercise!
Soon we were gathered around the warm hearth with Carolyn offering a beautiful opening song to the Ancestors and a shared blessing chant to gather us. We then each helped to kindle our central fire by adding sticks Carolyn had prepared for us. Chris then invited us into confession in his own heart-felt words, encouraging us to reflect on any ways we may have fallen short of expressing our God given good nature and letting go into forgiveness in preparation for communion. Jane drew us into speaking our own prayers including those for loved ones, for the dying, for creatures and for the earth. Various folks had readings and poems for us to engage with before we shared a silent communion of organic wholemeal bread and sloe gin, taking it in turns to give and receive, to and from each other.
As the rain poured down outside we closed the ceremony with some lemon balm tea from the hearth and a final singing of our blessing chant and Gabriel’s Message, before taking our blessings out to share with the land, emerging to find the round house gently steaming in the watery sunshine. Helen guided us in a circle danced version of our song under an ancient beech tree and we then concluded by tying ribbons on the ash tree by the farm well. Carolyn told us how this farmstead is one of the oldest on Dartmoor, such that people had been drawing water from this source for a thousand years or more. So it was a honour to add our blessings to the many bright coloured tokens that were already dancing on the branches.
Before long we were each travelling back to our own homes and I hope each carrying back blessings into our own lives and communities. I certainly found this afternoon a very magical return to the Source in many ways. On my way home, I paused to visit the River Dart by the Postbridge clapper bridge and then savoured the winding way home over the open moors, past sheep and ponies and rainbows. My route took me past many of the places we have come to know over these months… past St.Raphael’s and our summer camp site, past Sue’s farm with her horses, past St. Mary’s at Holne and the hill fort at Hembury, past Buckfast Abbey with the spire of Holy Trinity on its hollow hill, over the steam railway line and the bridge at Staverton and all the way past my home Church of beloved Mother Mary in Dartington and back to my little house and family. So perhaps I can finish those words from Little Gidding in my heart:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning…