"Lift high the cross..."

...and we lifted it high as we walked  through the  Norfolk meadows and lanes, along the old railway track that marks the Holy Mile at Walsingham. This was the annual pilgrimage of the Ordinariate of  OLW, with people arriving from across Britain, on a day of sunshine and  surging skies and glorious breezes.

We had set off from London at an early hour, crossing Tower Bridge in traffic-free splendour, Fr Chris leading us in the Angelus as we headed eastwards. At Walsingham, the big Barn Church was filled to capacity, and - as always at Ordinariate events - the hymns were a glorious and rousing sound. There was a solemn feel missing from previous years: Mgr Keith Newton preached about Saints Thomas More and John Fisher, it being their Feast day. They died giving witness to God's law on marriage, because they would not bow to the insistence of a ruler intent on imposing his own line on matrimony. They died witnessing to Christian marriage and to the unity and freedom of the Church...

Picnic lunches at tables and benches on the lawns around the shrine...it's all rather picturesque, with children running about, and friends glad to meet up, and cassocked priests with their flocks...

Then, led by a great processional Cross, we set off down the Holy Mile...the breezes sent great rippling waves through the tall grass and green corn, and rustled the silky spinach-like tops of the fields of sugar beet... the bird-cries and baa-ing of sheep were our only rivals as we  said the Rosary, the voices going back and forth.   Down into the village and the Anglican shrine, where we were welcomed, and where we prayed and were blessed with water from the well...

"Bring your intentions for prayer, and take them to Our Lady", we'd been told, and I took a good many: there is a box at the Slipper Chapel where you write your prayer-requests on slips of paper and drop them in. I had also taken along my final essay for my Degree course, intending to read it through  on the long journey home...I took it with me as I prayed, and laid it for a moment before Our Lady's statue.  Later, on arrival at the Anglican shrine, the two words carved into the stone altar stood out starkly:  the topic of my essay.

Tea - with scones and jam and cream - and then home in the coach: I sat with a fellow LOGS member and we planned and talked: our forthcoming Children's Vespers, Autumn activities, a children's trip to Walsingham next year? And more...

Later, at home, Jamie found "Lift High the Cross" on the internet and we played it... dealt with some  emails, tackled some domestic things, checked and -rechecked my essay and then went out late to post it. Done.