Ben Lawers Nature Reserve and Landscape Art

A whole journey

I am caught between thinking of journey as a tired metaphor and the conviction that it is a much needed one. It holds together the whole of life, from childhood through to old age, and offers a metaphor of layered meaning for the passage of faith.

Our day out in August at the Ben Lawers Nature Reserve outside Killin reflected some of this chronological reach with young children to 50 year old olds walking, talking and eating together—a merry troupe of 23 in all. The theme was developed materially for us as we listened to Tom Ingrey-Counter describing the new installation that replaced the much derided Visitor Centre.

Tom Ingrey Counter

Discreet and sunk into the landscape at the base of our walk up to the Tarmachan ridge there is a new shieling. This shell of a dwelling is made of turf, stone, thatch and mattress. Within its walls, open to rain and wind and sun, stand a variety of chunky stonelike pieces of art. Text is chiselled into their surfaces reflecting on the rich heritage of journey that is mapped through people’s movements and in the seasonal variations in the landscape of peat and bog, lochan and rare plants. They, plus the flowing floor-stones, bear the messages of journey: ‘Shelter’ and ‘nourishment', the ‘extreme highs’ offered by the terrain and ‘adaptation’ and 'pioneer’ required of its travellers. Its thresholds encourage us to pause and reflect. They welcome and wave off walkers with their final words ‘look well to each step’.

Tom Ingrey-Counter

The Bible is etched with journeys, at once both physical and mythical – Abraham’s, Moses’s, the Exile and Paul’s, of leaving and arrival, of endings and beginnings. All or many are about transition. These are reflected upon by scripture itself (as well as by saints down the ages) and regarded as archetypal. They depict spiritual movement as longings of the soul and embed them in the trials and joys of life. Longings leap out of our skin impelling us towards, towards what? The trout yearns to climb, the geese to convoy – our souls too migrate. Journey stubbornly offers the notion that there is somewhere to go, that there is home, yet also that we are destined to roam and wander, as the pilgrims would say, for the love of God. My muddy boot had come down upon the word ’adaptation’, and a mark was left upon me. Do any of the highlighted words above bear a message for you about the journey that awaits you?

Andrew Hook

Badgers and the stature of waiting

A large silence

It started with something we were going to do. An intense, intent leaning forward, a silence we were trying to hold. All to induce a movement, an appearance or at least not to be a distraction or an obstacle. It ended with being held by a larger silence and arms that were wider than our own. Something was being done to and in us. We try to still our bodies and attain the optimal posture – to settle. Gradually we drifted into a hushed silence. We were held, together, by the silence of the wood, of the gently swaying bush and the dark holes. We step into its own patience, it own waiting, and we relax. Muscles untensed, gazes took in a greater sweep and breathing became easier and more measured. What was this sense of being purifed, of being washed, of bathing?

Waiting for badgers

I knew little of badgers. A few of my companions it appeared had hidden a long standing fascination since childhood for these elusive creatures. We had crept into this city centre wild park as darkness threatened to descend in the hope of catching sight of a badger set at domestic chores or letting its hair down in play. As we sat perched atop our hard and cold rocks strategically dotted around this small natural amphitheatre what gradually dawned on me was that what we waited for was other. Not really known, different, yes other. There was no reason for the badgers to appear bar their own volition and desire. We did coax by dint of nuts, a tempting bribe we hoped. We’re here, now, we say! Thirty minutes passed by, of shifting and balancing our weight considerately between buttocks. Thirty minutes of apparent nothing, yet at the same time of everything. It’s said that the true self, the soul is a shy animal. To face our own restlessness, to feel our own target fever is best avoided perhaps? To stop and to wait. Offensive four letter words. To attend and be attended to. And after a while it had felt that it mattered little whether a flash of a black and white streak was caught. I was ready, alert and sated. And oddly cleansed.

Shyness

Clearly this had taken on not merely a description or illustration of prayer but an experience of prayer too. Ignatian spirituality lays significant weight on noticing the movement of the heart, the point where the hearts quickens. It has detected or rather responded to something deep and recognises its own – deep calls to deep, spirit to Spirit. God is about and the heart has noticed it and stirs from its slumber. The welsh poet priest RS Thomas would suggest, I think, that our only resource is (our) emptiness. Put another way evacuation, of the din of inner and outer voices, for the Other. We sat in that clearing. Waited respectfully, humbly for a God who like the badger may prove to be shy. That night nine badgers, young and old, emerged to nuzzle root and twig. Maybe not so shy then.

Andrew Hook