Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me Liz Scott and I'm on the penultimate day of my pilgrimage as I follow the Michael and Mary lines across England starting out in Cornwall and finishing up now in Norfolk.
I finish tomorrow.
I'm recording this at the end of my day.
I've just walked from a place called Alba to here at Raveningham and the day has been rich with lovely walks and footpaths.
The ground is freshly moisturised with yesterday's rain and everything looks vibrant and healthy and green and just bursting with life.
The trees are coming out now in their leaves.
It's like the rain was the switch that just had everything burst into life here.
I'm on a little lane at the moment so there might be the occasional car that goes by and I think what I've really loved about today has been the variety of walking on lanes,
On footpaths,
Through woodlands,
Across fields.
It's just had such a wonderful variety and I've visited lots of churches.
I've been following the Mary energy current today and the Mary energy current goes through various churches or it might be probably better to say or more accurate to say that many churches have been built on the Mary energy current and it's been a real privilege just to walk inside the churches.
They were all open which was quite unusual so I've been able to go inside all of them.
My favourite church was St Margaret's at Hale which was such a simple church.
It didn't have a grand porch.
It had a thatched roof and a cylindrical tower which is very unusual for my eyes.
I'd never seen cylindrical towers until I've come here to East Anglia and it was just white walls.
There was minimal stained glass in the windows.
A little bit of the paint had been taken away so you could see some of the old frescoes on the wall which I just find fascinating.
That's been a feature of some of the churches I've visited in recent days and the paint is so faded.
It's sort of like a very faint orangey red colour but you can just make out some of the images particularly some of the patterns that were originally on the wall itself.
Here I am at Raveningham which was supposed to be the last church I visited but it's a private estate and unfortunately although you can pay to go into the gardens it's not actually open yet so I'm not able to go and visit the church and it's all fine.
I'm just gonna wait now for my lift to take me back to the campsite.
But one of the things that's become so clear to me today,
Which I really want to translate and take with me into my everyday regular life when I'm back,
Is just being open to whatever happens.
I have a tendency in my regular life,
In my non-pilgrimage life,
To have expectations about how things should be,
About things happening a certain way,
That if I make a plan it should happen,
People should behave a certain way,
Things should work out a certain way and I often find myself feeling a bit frustrated that life's not going the way that I want it to.
Now what I've really seen through the pilgrimage is just being very open,
Open to whatever happens or doesn't happen.
Of course I've planned this route and I've looked at different places I want to see and researched where I want to go but the truth is I am not in charge or in control of which churches are open or closed,
Which estates are open or closed,
Where I'm allowed to go,
What's private property and what isn't,
Which footpaths have been randomly closed,
Which detours I have to take.
What I've really noticed is I don't have any real seeming control over whether I'm tired or not tired,
Whether my legs go fast or slow,
Whether I am able to walk long distances or short distances,
Whether I have deeply spiritual moments or have none,
I don't seem to have any control over any of it and on the pilgrimage I've just realised that that's the way the whole of life works,
Not just when I'm on a pilgrimage,
That's the way life works.
I don't have any control over life,
Sure I make plans and I hope things might work a certain way,
But when I resist and rail against the way that life is turning up,
That is when,
That's when I suffer.
So for me today,
I've really just landed again for me today,
I'm repeating old lessons because I am a very slow learner but life just turns up the way it does and the more I am open to life and allow life to turn up the way it does,
The less I suffer.
That's what I'm seeing today.
