Welcoming the unexpected

Monday 30th April 2011

Looking down the valley over Kielder Water

Nothing unexpected about Kielder Water except that the changes in the effects of the light are always unpredictable. 
     At Kielder School, though, we were trying to understand what pilgrimage means  --  and a large part of pilgrimage is exploration and discovery.  We may know roughly the route that we're taking beut we don't know exactly what we will find, who we will meet or how we will fee.
     We started outside near the garden shed where we thought about Jesus' birth in a stable.  What would it be like for him in that sort of place?  One little boy said  "Everything would be strange.  He wouldn't know what to expect because he had only just been born."  Hence the train of thought that led to my picture caption.

Kielder First School consider rivers

     Across the playground their teacher poured a bucket of water which flowed away remarkably like a river and helped us to remember Jesus' baptism in the River Jordan.
     After a reminder of Jesus' entry into Jerusalem on a donkey (by singing "We have a king who rides a donkey") we went into the garden area and told the story of Peter and John racing to the tomb and Mary Magdalen encountering the Risen Christ, at first mistaking him for the gardener.  The supremely welcome and unexpected esperience.

     The rest of the day degenerated somewhat in that I shut myself out of the house when the door slammed whilst I was at the shed.  In my pocket were the shed key and two pony nuts.  Husband away for the afternoon, neighbour with key nowhere to be found, neighbour with ladder unable to hear doorbell.  With the help of two other neighbours, I borrowed a long ladder and climbed through an upstairs window.   At the moment when we realised that the ladder didn't quite reach, one of the men said "You'll have to stand on the window sill" (about two inches deep) and I replied "Did I mention that I don't like heights?"  However, when I was a Churchwarden in the 1980's a resident of the local prison taught me how to climb a ladder onto the church roof.  If he happens to read this, he'll know his training came in useful!