...described below, was a most wonderful experience, and the memory of the beauty of the countryside, and the sound of the young people singing, will stay with me...
Each evening, we sang Evening Prayer together, and then had supper and a time of chatting and preparing for the next day's walking. Then Night Prayer, which was especially beautiful with the candles glowing...we used the Dominican form of the Office, which has some special things like a slightly different Confiteor, mentioning "our father Dominic"...and we were blessed with holy water and then went off to our sleeping quarters...
Walking each day, we kept up a steady pace: the pilgrimage is very well organised, with heavy luggage (sleeping-bags etc, along with all the food) going ahead of us by van. At Castle Acre, where we had Mass in the ruins of the old Priory, there is a gift shop and office, all run by English Heritage with a pleasant lady in charge. There are books about castles and knights and abbeys and monks and so on. Given how little history children are taught in schools in Britain at the moment I think these touristy places do rather a useful job. It's heartbreaking - bright, intelligent young people can't tell you when the Napoleonic wars took place, or who won at Waterloo or Trafalgar, or who Gladstone was, or Disraeli, or why English is used as a common language in India, or when the English Civil war took place...let alone anything about Bonnie Prince Charlie or the Wars of the Roses, or the Princes in the Tower. They do odd bits of "theme history" - "medicine through the ages" or whatever - but they are mainly made to study the 20th century and the Second World War over and over again.
The young people on this pilgrimage were enthusiastic about their faith, and quite well informed about it. They are involved with groups like Youth 2000 (and some will be returning to Walsingham for the big annual Y2000 event held there later this month) and with World Youth Day and its associated activities. Several expressed interest in following a religious vocation - the Franciscan Sisters of the Renewal were mentioned, and also the Dominicans. They are the "Generation Benedict" and they will bring much vigour and hope to the Church. But they are conscious that things are going to be tough - affirming the Christian understanding of marriage in a country which has just legalised same-sex unions means being prepared to be strong-minded. But they perhaps do not know how much they have been deprived of a sound grasp of their own country's history, and of a rich heritage shared by previous generations.
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Reading your complete profile, I think you`d like some of the children`s novels by Cecily Harnett which are set before the Reformation. Tons of accurate historical research combined with gripping plots and lots of Catholic references...`The Load of Unicorn` is about the advent of printing and its effect on the scriveners; ` The Wool Pack`: the wool trade - wheeling and dealing in Oxfordshire; ` Ring Out Bow Bells`, also recommended. Not so keen on ` The Writing on the Hearth` which strays into witches etc., and there are two post-reformation novels, written from a protestant perspective: one Elizabethan and one 17thcentury.
Still waiting for the Brits to secede from their government schools from which they emerge knowing more about condoms than Cornwallis, and adopt American-style homeschooling. The technology necessary for doing so has never been better or this ubiquitous, while its becoming all the more obvious that waiting for the current system to reform itself is itself a form of child abuse.
Umm.....Bonnie Prince Charlie, you say??? ;-) I've been spending a lot of time with him in my writings lately!
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