We had just driven for miles through a landscape of valleys and hills, passing flock after flock of sheep, most of them with lambs. After the cup of tea and fruit loaf in a busy Hawkshead Tea Room, a wander around St Michael and All Angels.
A single panel stained glass image of the Good Shepherd, with a transparent panel each side looking across the village to the fields. A coincidence of image and the real world, of art and story, and a moment in which spirituality becomes a fusion of our own experiences, a remembered story, an artist's imagination, a biblical text, and a world in which sheep and lambs are crucial to the local economy.
Oh I know, the stained glass window can be dismissed as Victorian sentimental wish it were so; and quite right, it isn't high art, though I personally think it is both naive and effective.
But on a May afternoon,
in a church that has stood here since 1300,
and recalling my own background in farms that had cows and sheep,
and that meandering car journey along single lane roads,
there I was,
looking at and through this window which was itself a moment of prayer –
not of words, but of memories and mood,
emotion and remembered experiences
of being one of those the Good Shepherd knows, and calls by name.
Now all I needed was an organist to play Bach's "Sheep May Safely Graze." But not to be, so I hummed it a bit
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