Stroudwater Canal

Another day of rain of varying intensity from dawn to early evening, After our usual Saturday pancake breakfast, we drove to Stroud in Gloucestershire to visit Clare's former colleague Jacquie for lunch. It was good to see her happily settled in her new one bedroomed house with its small terrace big enough for the round garden table and four chairs she brought with her from Dinas Powis. It's south facing, looking over  Froom valley woodland just ten minutes from the town centre. The small row of four houses sits alongside the Christian Community Anthroposphical church to which Jacquie belongs. 

Stroud and its environs has many Anthroposophists, contributing to its creative and social life, helping to create an environmentally friendly place with a hip alternative lifestyle, rated by the media as one of the attractive places in Britain to live. Five Cotswold valley streams meet here, so it became a world famous centre for woollen cloth weaving from the seventeenth century onward, thanks to water power, and the canal infrastructure. Those days are long gone and the factories, constructed from brick and Cotswold stone have been repurposed for other enterprises, social purposes or converted into apartments.

After lunch, I went for a walk alongside the canal flowing down the valley to the Severn Estuary, called the Stroudwater Navigation Canal. It was built in the late 18th century in order to link Bristol and London by water. At Wallbridge in the town centre is the junction with the longer stretch of canal through the Cotswolds that meets the Thames further east. From Wallbridge the Navigation runs to Framilode on the Estuary to the west. Boats of a specific length and capacity called Severn Trows went from there to Avonmouth and through the Avon Gorge into the city centre basin. The eight miles of waterway was abandoned in 1954, but is being brought back to life, restored by the Cotswolds Canals Trust. It's interesting that there's a footpath along its southern bank, but it's not a towpath horses could use. The Trows used sails but were hauled through locks manually. I walked eight kilometres in the rain, covering the stretch from Wallbridge to Ryford Double Lock, beautiful experience. My photos are here.

Thankfully, the rain was far lighter on our journey home than it had been in the morning, and there was less traffic. When we returned, I was relieved and pleased to find a package had arrived in the post, small enough to go through the letter box containing the fit-bit straps Clare ordered for me. The order took eight days to arrive from heaven knows where, but was scheduled to take from ten to twenty days to deliver, so I can't complain. Two packages sit in our hallway for neighbours nearby who have been away this week. Has The System figured out we're at home and answering the door more often than others? 

After supper we watched a fascinating Michael Palin travelogue about southern Brazil from a few years back, before the catastrophe of the Bolsenaro presidency. We started watching a French movie on BBC Four with a start studded cast, but gave up on it once we realised it didn't finish until late. Better to get an early night after a hundred and twenty miles of diving in the rain.

Farewell Russell

We had an early start this morning to be sure to arrive at the Cardiff and Glamorgan Crematorium for our dear friend Russell's funeral. Unusually for a man of 94,  two hundred people came to pay their respects in a service lasting sixty five minutes, over-running the double slot reserved., a measure of how well and widely known he was. Fortunately it was the only event in the chapel that morning, and place was locked just after the congregation dispersed. 

This is the first time I have been to the funeral of an Anthroposophist, led by a priest of the Christian Community, a group established by followers of Rudolf Steiner, guided by his writing. Her apparel was after the manner of an early 20th century German Protestant cleric in the era when the group was founded. The wicker coffin was sprinkled with water and enveloped by incense. More Catholic than Protestant. The liturgical content other than the ritual, I found original thoughtful, and poetic. Instead of classic forms of prayer addressed to God, meditative reflections were offered containing similar content, biddings reflecting the intention and understanding of what it means to entrust someone to God in an invitation to personal prayer. It's a similar approach to what I've heard from other reformed pastors at funerals but express in more lyrical and creative way. Anthroposophists are confident of the life beyond this world in a way historic European Protestants are not, since the reformation banned prayer for the dead to combat the monetisation of ancient prayer tradition by mediaeval Catholicism.

The priest told Russell's life story, and several others gave tributes or read poems. Here the element of appreciation and gratitude for a life well lived was expressed by different voices. Also read out was a personal testimony he'd written a couple of months before his death, a beautiful piece of prose poetry reflecting on his personal spiritual journey. A few months ago, we met for a chat and he shared this with me, so I was already acquainted with it. It seems he left copies of it in several places around the house, rather than just leaving it with essential documents, to ensure it wasn't missed. He'd been conscious of his impending morality for several years, and prepared well for his demise to make things easy for his wife Jacquie. This was his apologia pro vita sua, and expressed confidence in the spiritual adventure lying ahead of him in life beyond.

As a young man with an enquiring mind, he had encountered Steiner's teaching on experiencing life's  spiritual dimensions. He delighted in exploring these in church discussion groups and outside, but in the end, the elders of Congregational Church he attended declared his activity was unorthodox, and pushed him out, so his educative work went public into community centres and a home group which has continued meeting over the forty years since then. It's always been open, never exclusive, and hundreds of people have passed through it in their explorations and enquiries about the meaning and purpose of life ever since.

We often talked about his past, particularly his church's rejection of his unique kind of lay ministry, ahead  of its time in giving a central place to dialogue and enquiry about what Tillich called 'Ultimate Reality'. He never joined another church, nor did he condemn those who opposed him. He expressed bewilderment that they couldn't see his approach was consistent with a Gospel approach to religious faith and was never bitter. He realised 'all things work together for good to those who love God', and as a natural leader confident and comfortable with making progress by asking the right questions of others, he embodied the classic notion of priesthood of all believers in an admirable way. I certainly will miss our conversations.

The congregation retired to Penarth Pier Pavilion for a reception and buffet after the service. This was followed by the gathering forming one big circle and telling stories about what Russell had meant to their lives. I didn't have energy to sit still and listen for another hour, so I made my excuses and left for home, have acquired a lift with Farah a young Muslim woman who knew Russell through the Fountain School which all three attended in their early years before moving on to Llandaff Cathedral School. We had an interesting conversation on the way back - she lives quite near us - so we agreed we'd meet up en famille, to pursue our shared interest in the life of faith some time after Eid ul Fitr.

Inspector Montalbano returned to BBC Four in the evening, another watchable mystery, with humour, pathos and tragedy all mixed in. Apparently this episode aroused resentment towards author Andrea Camilleri from right wing populists in Italy, as it opens with scenes of the local police having to deal with processing rescued immigrants, involving two people traffickers in an on board rape case. In the first fifteen minutes drama the audience is exposed to the tragedy of some who are refugees and not economic migrants. Thoughtfully presented.

There was however a possible flaw later on in the story, when the death of a man in a love triangle is interpreted as suicide when it was murder. He is found drowned after a marital quarrel with his hands tied together - tying your own hands is difficult though not impossible, just implausible if the victim was drugged. It's possible the Examining Magistrate didn't think an autopsy necessary however, and presumed unjustifiably the death wasn't suspicious. It is possible that legal process in the north Italian province of Udine a decade ago in the story was so lax? It depends on context. The audience is left bewildered. If it's been published as a book, I'd like to read this story to see if a relevant clue or two wasn't omitted by the movie makers.

A good life's end

This morning, as we were finishing a breakfast of vegan pancakes, the phone rang. It was a friend of Clare's telling us about the death yesterday of our friend Russell aged 94. He was taken ill while out in his vegetable patch. He went indoors and slipped away peacefully. He'd been planting seeds and transplanting seedlings with a friend who helps him maintain the beautiful hillside garden around his house. It's a feast of rich colour at this time of year, as well as producing food for them. He often spoke to me about the divine mystery embedded in nature, what I'd call 'The world as sacrament'. There could be no better place or occasion to take his leave of this life.

It's just three weeks since he and Jacquie came and had lunch with us. He's been frail for some time, yet his mind was active and alert, conscious that his days were numbered, but still looking forward, questioning all that's seems to be going wrong with our world.  That day he gave me a book. He'd bought a dozen copies to share, regarding it as an important contribution to addressing impending global crisis. 'Team Human' by Douglas Rushkoff is about  the malaise of technologically induced social fragmentation and the need to re-fashion society around ideals of teamwork and collaborative partnership in which all are truly equal and power is shared. I look forward to reading it.

Most of Russell's life was spent working on team and community building, as an adult educator and engineer working in management. This was driven by his radical inquisitive faith in God, and a deep sense of the spiritual reality which pervades all things in this world as well as above and beyond it. Early in adult life, his questioning faith led to him being pushed away from a rather traditional conservative protestant church, towards the investigation of Rudolf Steiner's teaching. Wherever he found himself, he started an Anthroposophical Study group. He was keen to share his journey, but even keener to encourage others to pursue their own.

Our friendship has endured over the seventeen years since we returned to Wales and Clare became involved in the development of Cardiff Steiner Initiative. Jacquie is a Eurythmist like Clare and they work together in the Fountain School, so it was natural that their spouses should have conversations of their own. He was as practical as he was a thinking man, and gifted artistically also. He will be mourned by a great number of people in the UK, America and Europe whose lives he touched.

At the end of the afternoon we drove over to Dinas Powis to visit Jacquie. I had this idea of planting a lit candle in Russell's vegetable plot to honour the time and place where his passover began. Clare found a small glass lantern jar for a protective container which was suitable. Jacquie was pleased at this suggestion so we went into the garden and installed the light among the emerging seedlings. The words 'Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies ....' from John's Gospel came to mind, and we pondered on them for a while as we stood there.

We stayed for a while and ate supper with Jacquie and a friend who'd come to stay with her. The fact that his end came swift and peacefully was a surprise if not a disappointment, as if he was in a hurry as Jacquie said. Russell lived, however, ready and well prepared to go. He was used to living with daily pain and suffering, and conscious that any day could be his last. Not really in a hurry to go, he said to me once, but looking forward to the spiritual adventure that lies beyond. That's what I call a good life's end.