Day thirty-two

 1st June 2009 ENGLAND

Slow down you’re moving too fast

I wake up in the same bed I was in yesterday, again thank you to David and Patricia, a much better sleep last night… no dreams of rickety buses, shovelling daub from one place to another or of a ‘whensoever’ guy tumbling down a hill (…no need to dig out the brown paper and vinegar). Sitting on the edge of the bed, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes… do I grab a shower? I tilt my head and listen, somebody is in the bathroom, I give the shower a miss. While getting dressed some thoughts from yesterday evening creep back into my head… the building of a cathedral… the foundation stones of a kingdom… Hmm, I cannot help but wonder, are we any closer to creating that kingdom (in Christianity such a place would be called ‘The Kingdom of Heaven on Earth’… different faiths have different names for such a place… Paradise, Utopia, Promised Land, Shangri-la, Nirvana, the City of God and I’m sure there are many more names)… me being a truck driver, I think I’ll stick to the phrase ‘a better world’.

This morning I’m back at the kitchen table with David’s family, two other guests join us for breakfast, their names Eugene and Harvey... and like Rashioh the refugee from Sierra Leone that I had met yesterday, these two guys were also refugees that David and Patricia were helping, they had escaped the Rwanda Genocide that had happened in the late spring and early summer of ninety-four… it is estimated somewhere between 500,000 and 800,000 people from the Tutsi tribe were killed. I cannot imagine what horrors these two guys sat at this kitchen table witnessed, (…I’m not sure I want to imagine) they had both lost family and friends. It is easy to talk of a better world, truth and beauty, cathedrals and foundation stones, the druids of old, saints and sages, stories from the Gospels… not forgetting the many stories from other faiths. Stories that have been told and retold for a thousand years and more… stories that teach us / guide us on how to be better people… Yeah, it is easy to talk of such things (and I think it is good to do so)… only talk needs to be followed up by action, empty words don’t help anyone… what’s that phrase ‘for evil to succeed, it only takes good men to do nothing’. That is pretty much what happened in Rwanda, the world saw what was going on and did nothing…

… well, they are cheery thoughts to start the days walk with… Breakfast done, bag on my back, I stand at the front door with David, Patricia and Jonathan. We shake hands, I think I say Thank you a dozen times… and that is me, I am again a truck driver walking… I feel a little bit lost, both in head and on the streets, kind of feel a little like a truck without an anchor… or is that a ship without a handbrake… really need to get my thoughts out of the clouds and back on track… not really a city kid. I figure if I keep heading south, I’ll be ok. 

 I take the compass out of my side pocket to check that I’m still heading in the right direction, I hear a guy just behind me break into a laugh (it sounded like a Brummie laugh… can a laugh have an accent… probably not, my head is still someplace else)… the guy asks me if I am lost and where it is I am heading for (…in a broad Brummie accent with a tad of Jamaican thrown in). “Redditch” I say. He starts to tell me what number bus I need and where best to catch it from. “Thank you, but I’m not needing a bus, I’m walking”. I explain a little of what it is I’m doing. The guy finds it hard to believe that I had walked from the top of Scotland without a penny in my pocket… “that’s extraordinary… Why would you do that”. Lloyd falls in step with me, I share a little more, we talk about faith and this and that. A hundred yards down the street, we stop at a bus stop, Lloyd is heading north back into the city, me I’m heading south, as the bus pulls up, we shake hands, he steps on to the bus “Good to have met you Lloyd”. He holds up his hand, “You’re an inspiration bro, take it easy and may God walk with you”… “and with you bro” (… how is it when Lloyd said ‘bro’ it sounded pretty cool, when I said ‘bro’ I sounded like a guy trying to be cool… what’s that all about).

What you're doing is extraordinary… you’re an inspiration. Kind words, but I’m not so sure. Out of the ordinary maybe but not extraordinary… inspirational, not really, just a guy heading south, kicking stones (not even a ‘cool guy’… you know what I mean bro). I’m glad I met Lloyd, he had given me a nudge, my thoughts were no longer in the wilderness, they were back on track… again I am on a mission… to take the offering on my back down to the church I was baptised in… apart of that offering, was forty days… that gives me just over a week to reach the English Channel.

It takes near on two hours before I am properly out of the city and back in the world of open spaces, scattered woodlands and village greens. I think of the many hours I have spent sat behind the wheel of a truck, rumbling through the countryside of these islands, pulling a forty foot trailer… eyes watching the road in front (not forgetting the mirrors on either side)… yeah, and the wheels of the truck go round and round, as do the seasons… the summer sun fades as the year grows old… and darker days are drawing near… watching birds fly across an autumn sky… and still the wheels of the truck go round and round… much of the time it is from behind glass that I watch the world go by, many times lost in my own thoughts. If you get out of bed on the right side (and there is only one side to climb out of a bunk when waking up inside a truck) it is easy to see the beauty in this world, the long and hazy shadows created by a rising sun stretching it’s warmth over a brand-new day, the lay of the land beyond the hedgerows that run alongside the road, half way up a hill an old farmhouse and it’s outbuildings surrounded by a patchwork of fields and the sound of a tractor waking up to another working day, in the near distance the steeple of a church from a small village or hamlet reaches up to the sky… on a really good day I can see beauty in a tired looking bus shelters at the side of a country lane, I wonder at the stories it could tell.

Sometimes it’s good to climb out of that truck and take a wee walk (oh I don’t know, maybe the length of the country… I’m joking, a country park is just as good, a towpath alongside a canal, a climb to the top of a local hill, a nearby beach… someplace, anyplace that takes us away from being behind glass) do that and the beauty around us becomes that little bit more real… a little more intense… the smell of fallen autumn leaves when kicked or rain that has not yet fallen, the sound of waves crashing onto a beach, the noise of seagulls protesting about something or other, the taste of that bitter sweet bramble or maybe biting into a blade of grass, the touch of rock, bark, sand between toes, to take a closer look at the wild flowers alongside a country lane, the tiny droplets of dew caught on a spiders web, not forgetting the huge majestic clouds high above our heads. I guess what I’m saying, sometimes it’s good to slow down, many times we are moving too fast… sometimes it’s good to make the moment last.

Talking about slowing down, I think that’s me back up to speed… the day off yesterday seems to have done me good, feels like I’m back in a higher gear… still have all the aches and pains, but I’m not grumbling, blue skies again today. Seems like a long time ago now but I remember sitting in my flat with the idea of this walk still in my head, a map on the table, a mug of tea… walking thumbprint over thumbprint down the map, with no more than just an idea of a route (each thumbprint adding up to about twenty miles in distance, maybe a squidge over) and figuring it would take forty days to reach the south coast of England… as things are, it looks like I was pretty much spot on. I wonder if Captain Scott used the same method to figure out how long it would take him to get down to Antarctica or NASA when sending their guys up to the moon… maybe not… the moon is something like 285,000 miles from earth… using my scale of one thumbprint equalling twenty miles and a squidge… that works out to be something like 14,200ish thumbprints. The margin for error is pretty big… not sure Neil or Buzz would appreciate those odds.

It was about one o’clock when I reach the outskirts of Redditch… I see a McDonalds next to a roundabout… and I wonder… I step inside, find the manager, share my story and a moment later there I was sat with a burger, chips and a coffee. I am incredibly grateful… again I think back to when the idea of this walk was still no more than just a map rolled out on a table with a mug of tea holding down one corner, I kinda remember deciding, if I was to do this walk, that I would do it without money… the idea of how I would feed myself must have crossed my mind… it must have done…only it never stayed in my head long enough to give it any serious thought. I guess I figured some days I would go hungry and some days not, and that is how it would be… Well I got that wrong, I have been fed every single day (and given a roof over my head most nights)… how is that… if this was a fictional story, I don’t think many people would find such a script plausible. My thinking is this… and it's ok if you think I’m talking nonsense, because maybe (just maybe) I am… none the less, what I think is this… if we can put to one side preconceived ideas… and get our head and heart in the right place… that is, on the same page as (or in line with) the forces that underpin this universe, love, truth, goodness and beauty (be it for a day, a week, for the time it takes to walk the length of these islands or a whole lot longer) that invisible world (…again call that world what you will, ‘the spirit world’, ‘may the force be with you’ kind of world, or whatever… it doesn’t matter)… do the above and that world will stay one step ahead of you… Hmm, there’s a danger of all that sounding a little arrogant on my part… not for a moment do I think I am better than anybody else, I am as flawed as the next person, but for the duration of this walk I am trying to be the best person that I can be (…and probably failing at that to), but that desire (and the offering I make) is genuine… and who knows, maybe that invisible world understands that, and is ready to lend a helping hand.

That’s me rambling on again, my McDonalds is finished, as I’m clearing my table the manager asks me if I would like another coffee. “Wow, thank you, that would be great”, I am glad to sit down again for that wee bit longer… a bunch of workmen crowd around a table nearby, trays in hand and newspapers in back pockets… I catch some of the headlines, a passenger plane has crashed into the sea near Brazil, there is talk of collateral damage as the war in Iraq drags on, the world financial crises is still hitting people hard, a young child dies in a car crash… oh boy!! Earlier I spoke of slowing down, stepping out of the truck…It is from behind a windscreen that the world can sometimes move a little too fast… we see one thing and a moment later it is in the rear-view mirror and then forgotten. I think sometimes we also need to leave the newspaper on the table, switch off the radio, walk away from the TV screen… to many times we see a headline and before we have had the chance to take it on board another headline has taken its place… seems like there is no time to give some thought to the people caught up in those headlines… or maybe even a quiet prayer… the loss of life is more than just another number, it is somebodies husband or wife, a father, a mother, a child, a daughter or a son, a brother, a sister… a friend, a colleague. I remember in the very first essay of this blog ‘The Introduction’, I talked of seeing a father on the TV screen holding his dead child after a stray bomb had just hit a school, the father was utterly, totally and completely broken…how many times must the cannonballs fly… to many people have died… can we not hear the people cry. I sometimes wonder how it is the world holds itself together under the weight of so much heartache…

…best I make a move, I thank the manager of the McDonalds… when back on the road, I remind myself despite all the heart ache, there is also a lot of good things happening in the world… long term trends show there is less poverty and famine, medicines are getting better, more kids from around the world are going to school (especially girls), slums are on the declining, there are less wars in the world (yeah, I know hard to believe but it’s true), more people have access to clean drinking water and better sanitation, technology is making a huge difference… making the lives of millions a whole lot better.

By late afternoon I walk into the small village of Cookhill in the county of Worcestershire. There is a church just of the main road to the left, St Paul’s... I step inside, find a quiet corner, and sit, and that is all I do, letting the peace of the place wash over me, the muddled-up thoughts of the day fall away one by one. I must have sat for half an hour and more. Stepping back out of the church, I squint my eye, the sun is bright, and the sky is blue… and me, I am in a much better place, I feel lighter, somehow cleaner. I bump into a couple at the church yard gate and ask if they know where I might find the Minister, they don’t “Is there anything we can help you with, we are  both a part of the ministry team in this area”. While still standing at this open gate sharing my story, I somehow get a sense, a feeling, an idea... not sure what the proper word is... I felt two worlds were also standing at that open gate, this world and that invisible world I spoke of earlier  (don’t ask me how or why I felt what I felt... I'm a feet on the ground kinda guy... a truck driver). Did Bill and Janice feel that to... I don't know, what I know is they invite me to stay at their home. Back at their place I am shown a room told to grab a shower and that dinner would be ready in an hour… and an hour later we are sat in the garden sharing an incredible dinner and sharing stories… later that evening back in my room with a hot chocolate next to the bed. I lay awake and think of the people I had met today and again say a quiet thank you to each and every one of them, when I get to Lloyd I hear myself say "Thanks bro"... and your right, I still don't sound cool. I finish my hot Chocolate, close my eyes... the potential to turn this world of heart ache into a far better world.... an incredible world is there, it is just waiting for us to dig  that  little bit deeper... if only we knew, if only.