I
The pilgrims come to a hauntingly simple,
small and sober barn of a building
standing in splendid isolation
on the edge of the Essex saltings; mysterious
and beautiful salt marsh wilderness – one of England’s
last natural wild spaces. Coastal erosion, tidal flooding
and human activities, all have shaped this chapel’s
landscape setting; saltmarsh and mudflats
shaped and re-shaped over millennia by waves,
tides and storms, as well as human endeavour.
Vast Mesolithic land surfaces, Bronze Age trackways,
Iron Age and Roman salt production sites and
Saxon fish traps are all exposed simultaneously
on this rich intertidal coastal wetland. The
“wilderness of nature” or the “wildness of desolation”?
The pilgrims come “praying, walking on the wall”
“At the mouth of the creek that drains out
to the fleet” singing “To my right, warbling larks.
To my left, muddy marsh. Bright behind me,
burning blackthorn blooms.” This is a place
where the land meets the sea and the sky
comes close. A place where the distance
between heaven and earth is tissue thin
and the Word is revealed at St Cedd’s Chapel –
St Peter-on-the-Wall – among the oldest largely intact
churches in England, founded in 654.
A religious community, a missionary community;
an Anglo-Celtic Church for the East Saxons
set astride the ruins of the abandoned
Roman fort of Othona. Used and disused
over many years, burned and repaired;
signalling station, barn, and chapel.
Without the work of Cedd from this Bradwell
base, the Christianization of the Anglo-Saxon
kingdoms, the history of Christianity and of England
itself, might all have been unrecognisably different.
Cedd and his monks understood how the faith fitted
Anglo-Saxon society and used their own language
to explain. Cedd led the way, as bishop of the East Saxons,
persuading leaders and their subjects from the midlands
to the south to adopt the new faith. A pioneering
individual, who deserves to be much better known,
made Bradwell a place of more than local importance
in the history of this county and country.
Everlasting God, whose servant Cedd. carried
the good news of your Son to the people
of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms; grant that we
who commemorate his service may know
the hope of the gospel in our hearts
and manifest its light in all our ways.
Still the pilgrims come on their small
adventure, walking St Peter’s Way,
the old Roman road, leaving the modern world
behind as they approach the Blackwater Estuary
and come close to mudflats and the sea.
Here the land meets and interpenetrates
sea and sky, as the medieval does the modern,
and human culture the natural environment.
The chapel they reach is minimal, pared down,
almost devoid of decoration – simple and serene.
Only the light, airy barn-like Nave – lofty and
spacious – remains, with benches, altar and a crucifix
hung high on the East wall. The eastern apse,
north and south porticus long gone. Long shafts
of light, from high-up windows, like spotlights, fall
on the floor. See the sign with a Saxon statement,
‘In this place the Word is revealed to you’.
In the altar, three stones are embedded.
The left from Lindisfarne, where Cedd was
raised, trained and commissioned. The right
from Lastingham, where he was buried.
The middle, a gift from Iona, the centre
of the Celtic missionary endeavour of which
he was part. The crucifix, by Francis Stephens,
commissioned for the first modern pilgrimage
in 1949 after World War II; the chapel by now
an iconic building of great symbolic significance
for the new see of Chelmsford. Whether medieval
or modern, the pilgrims come and the Word is
revealed in disruptive, difficult and radical
‘human places’ of Christian worship, sanctuary,
and cultural production at this major site of
place-specific ‘in the field’ transtemporal and
transcultural estuarine exchange.
Asked what had drawn him to this ancient Chapel,
Steve Whittle says it’s almost impossible to put
into words; a primal and immediate connection,
a powerful pull, has had him return again and again.
Charcoals, pastels, paintings and collages portray
the extraordinary sense, or spirit, of place –
remote, lonely, glorious and powerful –
the austere silhouette of the Chapel
monumental against the sea and sky.
The sky a deep, rich clear jewel-like blue,
the chapel with the tactile quality of
ancient stone, the grass rasping with
spear-like texture – as if in recognition
that the nature of this remote landscape
cannot be truly tamed. The awe
of monumentality found in a place of
pilgrimage, peace and spirituality, which
has been standing against sea and sky
for centuries, set in contrast to
wild nature at the edge of land and sea.
There the world was revealed.
II
I come with artists. We awaken
to the presence of God here in
this ordinary place, yet make our Morning
Prayer in the spirit of Anglo-Celtic Saxon
saints. We seek the thin thread of grace
by which God holds all, knowing
that love of victory or profit and pride,
even in our perceived holiness, will close
our ears to his call. Like guilty Pilate washing
and watching, washing and watching,
we need grace and confession.
Our Evening Prayer in the sacred
dark closes the ragged wound, as
soft curtains drawn on a day when
healing and hope are welded as one.
I come with musicians. A celebration of faith
and music which included: ‘Here is love’,
‘One of us’, ‘The Lord’s my shepherd’, ‘Fix you’,
‘Hallelujah’, ‘I will sing the wondrous story’,
and ‘I’ll fly away’. A coming together of music
and context; harmonies echoing from our
discordant lives linking all perplexèd meanings
into one perfect peace. An unrepeatable moment
in history, with a date and a time, in which
all things come together enabling us
to feel God’s pleasure.
I come with parishioners.
As worker ants seek food,
as forager bees source pollen,
as deer thirst for water brooks,
so do we long for you.
To slake our thirst,
find sustenance within,
to share Your sustaining Spirit.
Our deep-seated longing
for meaning and identity,
met only in You; the Word revealed.
The aching absence – a God-shaped hole –
within, filled with a Word that is sweet
as honey from the honeycomb.
Honey to sweeten the lips, tongue
and palate of those tasting the
bread of life and imbibing
the warming, healing wine.
III
One vivid afternoon was all it took for
Norman Motley to come under the spell
of this ancient building and the whole area
of the Blackwater Estuary, this uniquely hallowed
landscape. The cry of the curlew was heard,
and a variety of maritime flora and many sea birds
seen on land which is almost a peninsula, with
the mile wide estuary to the north and Bradwell Bay
behind – and all round, and curving to the south,
the North Sea; and withal, a great silence.
There, he said, one can breathe. The moment
he entered St Peter-on-the-Wall, Essex’s
first cathedral, he felt at home. His search
was for a cell of good living, an experimental
community where the spirit of questioning
and searching for a new way of being
could be renewed. With a comradeship
that lowered many social and religious barriers
and a welcome for completely open
discussion of life, the universe and everything,
his fledgling community, based in the field
next to the hauntingly simple little barn
of a church on the edge of the Essex
marshes, took the name of the older
settlement on that site – the Roman fort
of Othona. Set up with tents and
ageing army huts under the mantra
of work, worship, study and play,
in Othona alongside St Peter’s
the Word in the world is revealed.
Othona, an open and inclusive
Christian Community, welcoming
people of all ages, abilities,
backgrounds and beliefs to share
in a daily rhythm of work, worship,
study and play. Pilgrims come
to this place of spiritual exploration,
where the beautiful coastline is also
inspiration; a place for the deep peace
of the running wave, the flowing air,
and the gentle earth. Living in harmony
with nature, seeking personal renewal and
glimpses of the sacred, encouraging
one another in caring for the world
and its people – more-than-human
perspectives on care, stewardship,
temporality, conservation and change.
In this place the world is revealed,
so, the pilgrims come.
.
Jonathan Evens
(Part I quotes from ‘In the Marsh a Desert’ by Rev Simpkins from Saltings and adapts text from: J. Dale ed., St Peter-On-The-Wall: Landscape and heritage on the Essex coast, UCL Press; the website of the National Churches Trust; Aleteia website; the Britain Express webpage on St Peter-on-the-Wall Chapel, Bradwell-on-Sea; and M.L. Banting, ‘Steve Whittle: A Review of Recent Works’, Southend Echo, Friday 14th July 2017, p.35. Part III is adapted from: Janet Marshall, Norman Motley: Portrait of a Man of Vision; and the website of Othona, Bradwell-on-Sea)
Jonathan Evens is Team Rector for Wickford and Runwell. Previously Associate Vicar for HeartEdge at St Martin-in-the-Fields, he was involved in developing HeartEdge as an international and ecumenical network of churches engaging congregations with culture, compassion and commerce. He is co-author of The Secret Chord, an impassioned study of the role of music in cultural life written through the prism of Christian belief, and writes regularly on the visual arts for national arts and church media including Artlyst, ArtWay and Church Times. He blogs at joninbetween.blogspot.com.
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