WIND IN MY WHEELS (hat tip to Josie Dew). And barely another sound. 16 miles round-trip via Mosedale – headed for the quiet and lovely (and, of course, oh so simple) Quaker Meeting House for coffee, soup and sandwich, where, not for the first time, I wondered, awestruck, about the generations who’d waited corporately and silently for God’s Spirit in that dale, and in that house, for 311 years – since 1702.
Memories, for me, for reasons I’ll explain, of boyhood church attendance and the – then rather novel – printed card bearing the words of Mattins from the Book of Common Prayer. I think that the words taken out of the book and set forth upon sheets of white card were the necessary qualifications for what was called the “Parents and Children Service”. I don’t think the BCP (even on a card) has quite the pulling power today. But I’ve remained glad of it.
Mosedale’s parents and children struck me as an inordinately peaceful community as I bowled along with only the sound of the wind in my ears, and a very occasional lowing. Brown cows, and some of the tiniest calves I’ve seen, lying peacefully in the shelter of miles of drystone walling, gazing through those hauntingly beautiful eyes, upwards to the high fell. Hence the memories of “Parents and Children”. Of mine, and of
I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills : from whence cometh my help. My help cometh even from the Lord : who hath made heaven and earth. He will not suffer thy foot to be moved : and he that keepeth thee will not sleep. Behold, he that keepeth Israel : shall neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord himself is thy keeper : the Lord is thy defence upon thy right hand; So that the sun shall not burn thee by day : neither the moon by night. The Lord shall preserve thy going out, and thy coming in : from this time forth for evermore.
Psalm 121
May God forever bless he or she who typed up that white card – that I can still see clearly in the mind’s eye, even, as then, without my glasses; together with the women and the men and the children who have waited and are still waiting upon God in the Meeting House in Mosedale. Memory, re-membering, quietness in green pastures “restoreth my soul”. They’re the Wind in my Wheels.
