Day 27 – Champlitte to Dampierre-sur-Salon

Have the trumpet sounded everywhere… Leviticus 25:9

Friday 27/4/2018

Distance 21.2km Total Distance from Canterbury 678km

When I am talking to people who ask what I am doing, two things cause surprise. One is the distance. I don’t think the distance is really that remarkable in that basically it is 25-30km per day, (roughly 15-20 miles). You just keep doing it and it adds up! The bigger question is how do you get the time? And the answer to that is that I am enjoying a sabbatical year. What is that?

Back at the front end of the Bible, and in fact on page one, you may remember that God created the universe in six days and rested on the seventh. And so, in a sense, the Sabbath (the seventh day) was born. This occurs just after the end of Chapter 1, in 2:1-3.

By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.

If you continue to read Chapter 2 of Genesis you will find a different account of creation. We have already looked at that, it is the one where a man is created out of clay and then a women out of his rib. These two accounts are different and complementary, rather than contradictory. They are alternate ways of trying to explain a deep truth. They are different creation myths because they were written by different authors before being collected (a long time ago) into what we now know as the Bible.

So is this why we have seven days in a week? No. I think seven days in a week long predates the Bible by a long long way. Ancient peoples were remarkably good at astronomy. They were expert in observational astronomy. They noticed how the skies changed, the sun and the moon and the stars – a very prominent feature of the Creation story if you look at the first few verses of Genesis chapter 1. They didn’t understand what these lights in the sky were, or at least not in the same way that we do. But they could see patterns and could use them to make predictions about ‘times and seasons’ which were helpful once they started farming, or when they lived near a river that might flood in the rainy times. And they were able to incorporate their understanding of these changes into religious observance. Newgrange in Co Meath in Ireland is but one example. It includes a passage grave which is aligned with the rising sun on the morning of the winter solstice. It dates from around 3200BC. (This was a very long time before the Bible was written, although the stories in the Bible were old by the time they were written down).

I think we find it hard to understand how good ancient people were at understanding astronomy because we see so little of the sky. I went to stay in rural Africa for the first time for some months in 1978. I arrived on Maundy Thursday and the moon was full. (Easter is ‘fixed’, if that is the word, as the first Sunday after the first Full Moon after the Spring equinox. It is a bit more complicated than that but let’s not go there! It is why though there is always a full moon very shortly before Easter.) I walked to church the night I arrived, after dark, with no difficulty, because of the bright moonlight. I don’t think I had ever seen bright moonlight before, nor known just how bright it can be. It doesn’t happen in Liverpool! I lived in that same place again from 1982-84. There was no electricity and obviously no street lighting. It was dark from 7pm to 6am every day of the year, with almost no seasonal variation in day length. And so the sky became familiar. I came to understand a little bit more about it. And for the first time I understood something about the phases of the moon. I came to understand what my ancestors in Newgrange knew well, that there are (approximately) 28 days between new moons. Twenty eight is a big number to keep in your head, while four sets of seven is easier, and I think that is the basis of the seven day week. It gives order to things. Always when teaching Genesis to students from as many as 70 or 80 different countries or cultures, I asked them if they knew of people who had other than a seven day week. No one ever came up with an example, but in fact I had my own. In that place where I lived, there was a traditional week of four days. Eke, Orie, Afo, Nkwo in Igbo. I think this is really the only other division that works. Four weeks of seven days or seven weeks of four days can be grasped. Two weeks of fourteen days would be unmanageable and fourteen weeks of two days would be quite impractical. One thing that always struck me was that on (Western) Sunday at church, the priest would always announce when the next Sunday would be, as it came around on a different day every Igbo week. The base for counting in Igbo is 20 and when you get to twenty twenties, that is pretty well the end of counting. After that things are traditionally uncountable. Please note that the culture in Igboland is every bit as advanced as the culture in the West. The hospital where I worked was well-equipped, with operating theatres and an X-ray machine and we could do blood transfusions for instance. This was despite the lack of mains electricity. Kerosene powered fridges and deep freezes were another great revelation to me in Africa! Igboland is just as much part of the 21st Century as you and I are. But possibly much more in touch with its traditions than you and I are. People in Igboland know what their names mean for example – I think this is generally true in Africa. People in Africa generally find our western attitudes to the care of the elderly largely incomprehensible. But that is for another day. (I use the term Igboland, as Igbos do, simply to refer to that region in the Federal Republic of Nigeria where Igbo is the traditional language. For a while, fifty years ago it sought independence as Biafra, but that is long ago.)

The idea of sabbath becomes developed in Biblical times by the Jewish people and is laid down in the Book of Leviticus. Not many people read the Book of Leviticus. It is not big on plot. And it can seem rather repetitive and legalistic. But it has its own fascination with complex and logical rules about what animals are clean and what are unclean for example. I have (in a box, a continent away from me) a three-volume commentary on the Book of Leviticus which is about twice as long as the Bible itself. I miss it!

So back to the Sabbatical Year. Leviticus 25 says

The Lord said to Moses at Mount Sinai, “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘When you enter the land I am going to give you, the land itself must observe a sabbath to the Lord. For six years sow your fields, and for six years prune your vineyards and gather their crops.But in the seventh year the land is to have a year of sabbath rest, a sabbath to the Lord. Do not sow your fields or prune your vineyards. Do not reap what grows of itself or harvest the grapes of your untended vines. The land is to have a year of rest. (25:1-5)

It is an idea whose time has come again with the growth in interest in sustainable farming. Ancient wisdom. That seventh year is the sabbatical year. A year of rest.

And then it is developed into the idea of Jubilee. Seven times seven is forty nine and the fiftieth year is then a year of jubilee.

Count off seven sabbath years—seven times seven years—so that the seven sabbath years amount to a period of forty-nine years. Then have the trumpet sounded everywhere on the tenth day of the seventh month; on the Day of Atonement sound the trumpet throughout your land. Consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you… (25:8-10)

That is where we get our own notion of jubilee from. The original Jubilee is fifty years. A time of restoration and cancellation of debts. The word comes from the Hebrew word yobel which means a ram. The ram’s horn is fashioned into the shofar, the trumpet like instrument used to call the assembly and proclaim the jubilee year. We call fifty years a Golden jubilee – that is our own culture. And twenty-five is silver. That is non-biblical, just half of fifty. And as it happens I am celebrating my own silver jubilee of ordination, which is how I come to have a sabbatical year. We will return to jubilee.

I slept well in my caravan and awoke refreshed and had something new to this trip – coffee in bed. The bar on the campsite was not open so I had to head into the town again for breakfast. A much easier walk than the same stretch at the end of the previous day. As I left, I read the noticeboards. I have to read all notices in all windows, all noticeboards, all fliers, just to be sure I am not missing anything. So I was interested to see that there was something about a Garage Mort, which sounded a bit ominous. The English version was not reassuring: it is translated as Dead Garage. I suspect it must be a technical term in caravanning.

As i mentioned above,from 1982-84 I lived in a small market town in Nigeria, called Afikpo. Afikpo is about 5 degrees north of the Equator, and it is in what would have been tropical rainforest, if the forest had not long ago been cleared. I was working as a paediatrician in the Mater Misericordiae Hospital there. It was exceedingly well set up and well run by Medical Missionaries of Mary, from Drogheda in Ireland and had a long and interesting history, and a rather sad history during the Biafran War, of fifty years ago. Around the hospital and especially in the operating theatre, there were pieces of equipment with little plaques on saying they had been donated by the UK government or by the Government and People of USA. There had been a huge relief operation during the Biafran famine.

In more peaceful times, foreign aid continues. In the village administration compound there were a couple of snow ploughs, a fraternal gift of the Russian people, whose grasp of geography and climate was somewhat lacking. In the village there was a library building, which had a generator for electricity and so had light at night to allow youngsters to study. There was no public electricity in the area at that time. The library had a small and eclectic selection of books and when you opened them they often had an inscription to show their origin . So there were, for example, donations from the British Council. Three titles stand out in my mind. There were half a dozen copies of Camping and Caravanning in Europe a comprehensive paperback. There were also eight copies of a Biography of Morecambe and Wise, at that time at the height of their popularity as comedians in UK but not known elsewhere. You had to imagine their biography had not sold well at home. And even more extraordinary there was a mint condition brand new copy of the then standard British textbook of Paediatric Cardiology. Even then it must have cost nearly 100 pounds. It was not there because of me although I was the only person within at least a hundred mile radius who would have found it remotely useful. I popped down to consult it from time to time. And I fondly imagined being on a camping holiday in Europe. So my connection with camping and caravanning has a long history!

As I said, I went into the village for breakfast and found a bar which had coffee but nothing to eat. It was the most expensive cup of coffee I had found in France to date, at 3 Euros, but nonetheless welcome. I suspect the bar owner had considerable expenses. His last remaining strands of hair were pulled back into a ponytail and then dyed luminescent lime green. I can’t imagine this is cheap. There was an interesting large collection of beer signage, including this. Beamish is like Guinness, but is produced locally in Cork in Ireland.

So back on the road. I had been advised by my friend at the Tourist Office yesterday that I would be able to get pilgrim accommodation at the next tourist office when I got to my destination and she assured me of the opening hours.

There is not a huge amount to say about the journey. It was straightforward, according to the book, and involved no getting lost. It was though a rather hot day again. As usual I stopped at church doors and tried them hopefully. Two had a big impact on me that day.

The second was just before Dampierre sur Salon, my destination, the parish of St Leger. It was full of the usual array of Saint Joans of Arcs, and St Therese’s, and St Catherine with her wheel. But there was something new. I really liked this of a a very stylish hunter with his dog , blue lederhosen, a hunting horn, a crossbow and a wonderful hat.

If you have time do read his story here. It is more interesting than some! He is the patron saint of hunters, and is the patron saint in particular of ethical hunting whatever that may be. Maybe only hunting animals that want to be hunted and killed?? Anyway. His dates were 656-727. After his wife died in childbirth he devoted himself to hunting, presumably to ease his sorrow. One Good Friday as he was hunting he was amazed to see a stag with a cross upon its head. He heard a voice telling him to turn to God and mend his ways. Which he did. And subsequently became a priest and then a bishop, so he managed to continue his attachment to special head gear.

The stag was a talking stag – why are we not surprised? And during the vision it is said to have lectured Hubertus into holding animals in higher regard and having compassion for them as God’s creatures with a value in their own right. For example, the hunter ought to only shoot when a humane, clean and quick kill is assured. He ought shoot only old stags past their prime breeding years and to relinquish a much anticipated shot on a trophy to instead euthanize a sick or injured animal that might appear on the scene. Further, one ought never shoot a female with young in tow to assure the young deer have a mother to guide them to food during the winter. Such is the legacy of Hubert who still today is taught and held in high regard in the extensive and rigorous German and Austrian hunter education courses. You will never be disappointed if you look into a church!

The other church I wanted to look into was in a village called Framont. There are two churches in Framont, because two villages were combined into one, not all that long ago in 1972.Here I went up to the church and found the door locked, never a surprise. But a voice behind me said did I want to get in for a look. Yes I said. I have the key he said, and he went into his house, next to the church and came back bearing a large old key of which St Peter himself would be quite proud. And he opened the door and showed me in. It was not a very special church as churches go, but was well kept and obviously still in use. I asked him how old it was and he said he didn’t really know but together we scrambled into an old disused room to one side and found an inscription on a wall saying 1759 which marked a time when it had been repaired in the past.

We came out and went back to the garden where he and his wife had been carefully planting out a tray of very large-flowered Bizzy Lizzies. You see them in B&Q and they are called New Guinea variety. We chatted for a few minutes. and she told me it was their wedding anniversary that very day. Not only that, it was their fiftieth wedding anniversary. Their Golden Jubilee. And here they were in the garden together, as they had been I suppose countless times before. No big excitement, just obvious contentment. I congratulated them, and they asked me to bless them, which I did. Then I asked them to bless me, which they did. And then we were all overwhelmed with fulminating hay fever with tears streaming down our faces. It was an enormously touching experience. Here they are, Madeleine and Michel.

Everyday is someone’s jubilee. You don’t have to wait 50 years to join in the fun. Make the time now, celebrate, rejoice and, if you need to, put things right – restoration is a big part of jubilee. Sound the trumpet!

Happy and sad, I said farewell to Madeleine and Michel. I hope they had a wonderful evening with their family. The next village was called Achey. I am not making this up!