Harvest Festival

Another early Sunday start, with an eight o'clock celebration at St Catherine's, which Clare attended, and read lessons for me. After a second breakfast together of coffee, pain chocolat and pain au raisin, bought from the Co-op on the way home, I went on to celebrate the Solemn Mass at St Luke's. I got back right on time to collect Clare for the trip to Llandenny for lunch with Chris and Wendy Bowler before ascending the Grwyne Valley to preach Harvest at Patricio for a congregation of twenty. 

Autumn colours are only slowly emerging. There's still a great deal of greenery owing to the warmth at the end of summer. Clare was much impressed with the beauty of the valley and its ancient church secluded high up on a wooded hillside with fields falling away steeply below it. After the service apple cake and biscuits were offered, along with a drink of locally pressed apple juice. We'd had quite a differently flavoured apple juice to go with lunch. This is an area whose farms and gardens still harbour many old varieties of fruit, and evidently they are valued.

One of the churchwardens, Rob Yorke is a freelance country loving journalist, describing himself as a 'hunter naturalist'. We had an interesting conversation arising from some of the things I mentioned in my sermon. Such a discussion is quite a rarity for me these days, going beyond "Nice sermon Vicar" at the church door. I enjoyed just listening to the voices of local farmers chatting with their soft Black Mountain accents, a bit like Herefordshire but not quite. It was great to catch up with Chris and Wendy too, and savour their enjoyment of rural ministry while facing the challenge of new formed 'mission area' grouping of parishes.

We heard the Sunday edition of 'The Archers' on the way home in the car between Newport and Cardiff, and after supper watched a documentary programme about Mammoth Science, describing the forensic and molecular biological investigation of mammoth remains now being uncovered, not just fossilised, by preserved in Siberian permafrost, now thawing due to global warming. An amazing new body of knowledge, now offering indications that it wasn't the end of the ice age that killed them off, but early human hunters. 

Sadly the programme presenter had a habit of repeating herself in a way that added un-necessary length without additional information, as if viewers lacked the intelligence or attention span to take it in first time. This seems to be a deficiency typical many modern factual TV programmes. It's bad enough when a subject is dumbed down un-necessarily, but it comes across as poor video editing, or, that there's enough substance for a thirty minute programme, but it has to be spun out to fifty minutes, as that's what the team was hired to produce.

The cure for excess mental exercise

It's Michaelmass today. No opportunity to get to Mass, so the liturgical readings of the day had to suffice as food for the soul. The alternative Old Testament passage is from the story of Tobias and the Angel (in the deutero-canonical Book of Tobit). It's not about Michael, like the mainstream passage from Daniel, but about the Archangel Raphael, who ministers healing. It's quite a beautiful poetic passage, which I can't really say I've noticed before, perhaps because this was not a book I ever studied during training.

Another bereavement visit this morning, followed by several hours of work on preparing services and eulogy/obituaries on behalf of the families, as in neither case did anyone feel able to take on the task. Then I had to prepare for the Wednesday morning 'school Eucharist' at St German's, honouring the patron saint himself whose body arrived back in his native Auxerre on 1st October, after his death in Ravenna, sixteen centuries ago. A nine hour road journey today took sixty one days that long ago. 

Then I had to start work on a Harvest festival sermon for next Sunday afternoon when I preach at the lovely Patricio church, at the head of the Grwyny Valley in Monmouthshire's borderland. So, there was no time to spare to complete the painting job, and barely enough time to start preparing supper before I went to Chi Gung class. I felt pretty tired and stressed out, but the hour's workout was just what I needed to get me down out of my head and on to my feet.

     

Faith in such a beautiful place

Yesterday afternoon I took a camera out with me, and on my way into the office I took some photos on the Hayes to provide me with some decent quality material to edit for use on the new website I'm building at the moment. It wasn't quite as easy to get what I wanted as I thought it would be, knowing that I'd be changing the proportions of the picture, and needing to get people and iconic buildings into it as well. Nothing like a challenge, and the nice thing about digital photograph, is that I can return and try again if I'm not satisfied with the finished product.

Today was somewhat different. A visit to Chris, one of my former St Mike's students, now working as a country parish priest with a group of three mediaeval churches to look after on the edge of Gwent's Black Mountain border country. He lives in the hamlet of Llangenny, population 100 with church and working pub, and a stream running through it that has trout and where salmon return to breed. A delightful place, and lively for such a small place.

He drove me up the Grwyney valley to show me the ancient church at Patricio, on a high hillside overlooking the upper reaches of the valley, and mountains beyond. The ruins of Llantony Abbey are eight miles away, but Patricio is special in its own right. There's been a place of worship here for a thousand years, to judge by the age of the font, and the present building originates in the 12th century but was elaborated subsequently, down to Elizabethan times. It has 15th century chancel screen and rood loft intact, and three ancient stone altars still in place, having survived reformation iconoclasm in this remote place, five miles away in the mountains above Llangenny.

It's dedicated to Merthyr Issui, the celtic Saint Issui hermit and martyr whose dates are unknown. Only fragments of his story survive. There's a holy well in the hillside below the church, and a hermit would have lived close by and ministered to passing travellers. One murdered him. The well still flows with spring water. Its little walled enclosure and surrounding trees are littered with an odd collection of votive offerings - ribbons, money, drinking vessels, new-age trinkets. Local Boy Scouts visit annually for a tidy up session and to clear the spring of silt. 

Attached to the church west wall is a separate chapel with a mediaeval stone altar, a squint window looking into the church and a modern statue of St Issui by Llandaff sculptor Frank Roper in an ancient niche. This may have been built as a shrine chapel to house his bones after the church itself was built.

This has been a place of popular pilgrimage for centuries, and attracts many hill walkers who take their leisure in this part of the world. All the surrounding land is still being worked by sheep farmers and breathes an air of being lovingly cared for. The views of this place and the views from this place make it one of Wales' hidden treasures. Chris is very happy to have this as one of his churches, not least because it has a lively congregation and many visitors, people who evidently feel the effort of getting there, either by foot or by care is well worthwhile.

Chris' wife Wendy joined us for lunch at home. It was great to see how happy they both are with their new life and all the opportunities it presents them for sharing faith in such a beautiful place. 

More photos you can find here.