Walking to Bethlehem: 3rd of 7 Sundays in Spring... by Fern Smith

They say on a Vision Quest that you get the weather you need. You might wish for warm, balmy dry days and you get thunder, lightning and endless rain. For ‘Women Walking’, the third of the ‘7 Sundays in Spring’ gatherings, I was keeping my fingers crossed for a dry day. I am a person who likes structure and certainty. Like many artists I love the dreaming and visioning process (perhaps the most) and then comes the more precise work of ‘making it happen’. For me, this part seems to involve a lot of admin, time in front of the computer-screen, shaping the invites and even more time sending them out via email, making lists, doing my own ‘risk assessments’ (though I don’t normally call it that) and doing as much as I can to prepare for every scenario and eventuality. ‘The art of hosting’ which is a practise that sometimes looks effortless is something which I’m endlessly fascinated by and still learning. It is the product of many hours preparation.

Photo: David Perkins

These ‘7 Sundays in Spring’ represented my fourth and final ‘residency’ as part of my Arts Council of Wales ‘Creative Wales’, journey. Each Sunday involves a specific invitation to ‘all the women I’ve ever met’ to join me in a particular activity. We’ve had ‘Women Making’ in Swansea, ‘Women in the Woods’ in Dinefwr and this Sunday - 4^th March 2018 - it was ‘Women Walking’. Not just women walking anywhere, but a specifically chosen route that has significance in terms of making pilgrimage. All the Sundays have a particular intention, which given the location and the activity feels right. The intention for ‘Women Walking’ was: 

"Contemplate the importance of walking and making pilgrimage (as well as doing it!); reflect on our connection to spirituality, deep nature and the mystery of life and to consider and share what supports us during these chaotic and unpredictable times."

Photo: Pippa Bondy

I called this 3rd Sunday, 'Walking to Salem' - the  plan was to walk to ‘Capel Salem’ from Harlech. Specifically, from Theatr Ardudwy along the Wales Coastal Path to the beautiful pilgrim’s church at Llandanwg and then onwards to Pentre Gwynfryn’s chapel which is the site of the painting of the iconic Welsh painting: ‘Salem’, by Sidney Curnow Vosper. The painting was acquired by a wealthy industrialist and used to promote the Lever brothers popular brand of ‘Sunlight’ soap bars. Seven soap tokens could be exchanged for a reproduction of the painting. According to Wikipedia: “this ensured the painting became widely and uniquely popular amongst the working-class communities of Britain, especially in Wales.” It was after all a depiction of Welsh piety, even though the main subject of the painting, Sian Owen, is accused of having a devil up (or on) her sleeve. This is a fascinating place and story and the walk was originally suggested to me by Pauline Williams, board member of Theatr Ardudwy, who has been working tirelessly to negotiate the theatre to stay open in the hope of it in future becoming a thriving community hub. Theatr Ardudwy is possibly one of the most beautiful theatres in Wales in the most impressive of locations, sitting atop and over-looking the majestic sweep of Cardigan Bay with views across to the Llyn Peninsula on one side and the Snowdon range on the other.

Photo: Pippa Bondy

 

As part of my meticulous advanced planning my partner Phil, our dogs Betty and Jaffa and I carried out a recce of the walk in late January. The weather was beautiful. Clear blue skies, sun all day long and far-reaching views.  We spent time (dogs too) in the little Pilgrim’s church, taking advantage of being the only visitors by reading aloud the scary passages from ‘Revelations’ as well as some poetry by Mary Oliver from the pulpit. We then walked over the saltmarshes, inland, through snowdrop woods, via the pretty lanes and Cycle Route Number 8 (the great Lon Las North/South Wales long-distance route) through Pentre Gwynfryn to Capel Salem, final destination of our pilgrimage. We first spent time sitting outside the locked doors of the wrong church, before serendipitously running into Catrin Jones, the elderly custodian of Capel Salem (and keeper of Sian Owen’s famous shawl), who tells us that the chapel we want is another ten minutes up the road – but that’s another story… Capel Salem is really worth a visit. A reproduction of the painting is on the wall. The original clock, coat-hooks and wooden ‘sheep-pen’ chapel-pews are still there. The chapel is always open, clearly loved, well-maintained, regularly visited and still used for services. It felt welcoming and warm and not just because of the electric pull-string heaters. We spent time there, soaking up the atmosphere - Phil speaking aloud a few poems he’d learnt by heart.  I  cast a few weeks forward in my mind to Sunday 4^th March, imagining and savouring the final words, poems and reflections we ‘Walking Women’ would share at the end of our planned pilgrimage.

Photo: Pippa Bondy

As the day in question approached, less and less women are able to join. There had been 13 women for ‘Women Making’, 16 women for ‘Women in the Woods’. It looked like we were going to be 7 for ‘Women Walking’. The ‘7 Sundays in Spring’ project is less about scale than about creating a ritual activity over time. Many women are involving themselves in the project in different ways, by sending words from a distance, reading the blogs as well as actually coming on the 7 Sundays. The eventual plan is to write a book about the 7 Sundays project as part of my wider ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ enquiry. So, we were going to be small in number but we had all committed to walk. We had booked Bed & Breakfasts in Harlech, made travel arrangements, bought train tickets. The plan was to converge on the steps of the theatre. Originally, we were going to meet in the café of Theatr Ardudwy but since its untimely, recent closure our plan changed to meet on the steps and take it from there.

On Sunday 25^th February for ‘Women in the Woods’ we were commenting about the gentle weather and some of us enjoying snoozes under the trees of Dinefwr Park.

And then the weather came in…

The ‘Beast from the East’ arrived hot on the heels of ‘Women in the Woods’ and stayed for a week. It brought with it gale force winds, sub-zero temperatures with even lower wind-chill factors, sleet, snow, ice, frozen-pipes, burst-pipes, roof-high snow-drifts, cancelled trains and a milk, bread and fresh veg run on our local Co-op. Over a week later, food and fuel were still being helicoptered in to parts of Cumbria. 

And with the weather came uncertainty, unpredictability and insecurity. A trinity of most uncomfortable but most powerful life-teachers. On Wednesday evening, I began wondering if I was going to be able to make the journey over the high roads of mid Wales to get to Harlech. I had three options: carry on regardless; cancel; or re-think. There was little time to change plans though I didn’t want to cancel. Some of our group who had bought train tickets in advance and others who really wanted to do the planned walk told me they were still committed to coming. On Thursday, I got an email from Pauline, my ‘woman on the ground’ in Harlech. It said:

"Severe & dangerous winds today. No public transport. Criccieth High St shut due to danger of falling tiles. No electricity in the Harlech/Llanbedr area due to fallen trees (esp in Llanbedr). Until trees are cleared electricity board can’t restore power. Slates flying off roofs in Llandanwg. Part of the roof off at Ysgol Ardudwy. 

My family live in Harlech & are in touch with the community so are aware of the situation first hand. Risk assessment for walking = severe! 

Even my walking friend (an avid all-weather walker) is staying put today - and questions the viability & safety of the planned Sunday walk."

If I’d ever needed convincing, I was now convinced. And, of course I was disappointed… “My beautiful walk…” There followed two of the most uncomfortable days I’ve had for a long time. Sitting in uncertainty, doubt, failure even. The feeling of discomfort was bodily. Brene Brown, the American researcher onVulnerability, talks about the “warm wash of shame.” I’ve experienced this many times and it’s a brilliant and accurate description. This wasn’t a warm wash but I felt uncomfortable in my own skin, prickly, tender, bruised even. This was the bodily feeling of ‘not-knowing’, feeling responsible for things going wrong, feeling a failure (I know it sounds crazy) and as though I’d let people down. These 7 women had chosen to walk with me. They had spent time planning their journey as well as money buying advance travel tickets and deposits on B & B’s. I couldn’t do anything about it. The country was in meltdown AND I still somehow felt responsible! Sitting in the midst of uncertainty, discomfort and difficulty is something which I find near impossible. What if I cancelled and then the weather changes and we could actually have done it anyway?  There was no knowing. I had to make a decision without all the information. I didn’t have the whole picture. I had no way of casting forward into the future and knowing what was going to happen in the next few days.

I spent all day Thursday on the phone to my original walkers, explaining that Sunday might look a little different than we’d all envisaged. “Women Walking can still happen. We can walk with the same shared intention but we can walk from where we already are – even if that is just from our front door to the great wall of snow at the end of our garden….” I could hear disappointment in the voices of some, relief in others. The up-side of this new ‘self-organised, emergent’ plan, was that many others might be able to join us. I re-worded the invitation and on Friday and Saturday sent it out to a number of the women who’d taken an interest in the project from the outset, with an invitation for those women to pass it on to others. 

"Join me in a self-organised piece of walking art, a ceremony, a prayer... Walk at day-break, sun-down, one mile, as long as you can manage, walk with a poem, a song, a dedication, mark a threshold.. Or any, or all of these..."

 

And so, something else happened - entirely different from my best laid plans.

Instead of making a pilgrimage to Salem – which of course derives its name from Jerusalem - as the result of a week which was clearly teaching me to ‘let go of outcome’ and surrender to ‘what is’… I decided to turn things on their head and walk to Bethlehem. From a place associated with death and crucifixion, instead, to one of birth and new possibilities. I’d always wanted to go to Bethlehem – the mid Wales one. It was only a twelve-mile round walk from Dinefwr Park. “There’s nothing there” - my partner Phil warned me. The post-office closed down a few years ago, previously the site of chaotic activity once a year when throngs would descend on the village to get their Christmas cards stamped. (You can now get them stamped at the village hall – but that’s another story).

Photo: Fern Smith

And so, at dawn - 7am on Sunday 4^th March 2018 - I departed from my home in readiness for a 7-hour walk. The water gushing from the taps for the first time in four pipe-frozen days, as if in celebration of my pilgrimage. I walked alone. I walked with many. I walked with a Rilke poem

I live my life in widening circles

That reach out across the world

I may not complete this last one

But I will give myself to it.

I circle around God, around the primordial tower.
I've been circling for thousands of years

And I still don’t know;

Am I a falcon, a storm or a great song.

On this the 3^rd of my ‘7 Sundays in Spring’, I got the weather I did not want. But I think I got the weather I needed. Instead of 7 of us walking, we numbered 44 women and 1 man in total. As a result of a few invitations going out, within 24 hours, there was an immediate response to the call. Women were walking, connecting to one another across time and space with a personal reflection and a collective intention. Women were walking all over the country, solo and together in rural and urban surroundings - in the rain, the sun and the snow. Women were walking everywhere...

In the run-up to International Women’s Day 2018, I remember my original invitation to ‘All The Women I’ve ever Met’ to join me in this project:

"Yes, this is about sisterhood. Yes, this is about “hashtag me too.” Yes, this is about identifying as women witnessing the beauty and the sorrow of this time. It’s also about honouring the fragile nature of life at a time where things and people appear to be falling apart on a daily basis."

Photo: Phil Ralph

These words are dedicated, with gratitude and joy to all the Women Walking:

Andy walked in Bath 
Amalia walked in Cambridgeshire
Anna who walked in Swansea

Anne who walked in Cardigan

Annzella who walked in Gower

Avi who walked in the Dyfi Valley

Carol who walked in Hereford

Chris who walked in Swansea

Christine who walked in Herefordshire

Clare and Charlotte who walked in Hastings
Donna who walked in Swansea

Di who walked in Northumberland

Eleanor who walked in Leamington

Emily who walked in the Swansea Valley
Fern who walked in Carmarthenshire

Frances who walked in Yorkshire
Gilly who walked in Cardiff
Holli who walked in Gower

Janne and Sarah who walked in Pershore
Jasmine who walked in Ceredigion

Jay and Judy who walked in the Swansea Valley

Jenny M who walked in Bath

Jenny W who walked in mid Wales

Jess who walked in Ceredigion

Jessica and 2 friends who walked in Malmesbury

Jo who walked in Pembrokeshire
Judith who walked in Harrow-on-the-Hill

Louisa who walked in Eastbourne

Lucy C who walked in London

Lucy N and Anna who walked in Wells

Meg who walked in London

Micki who walked in Gower

Lucy who walked in London
Nicky who walked in Northumberland

Pauline, Anne and Maria who walked along the Menai Estuary
Trish who walked in Devon
Wendy who walked in London

…And to Patrick who walked in Whaley Bridge.

A few days later, the snow has disappeared. The big thaw has begun. Everything looks as if it is emerging from a mighty shock. I find myself reflecting on the events of this time. In one way, it was a complete failure - my planned walk did not happen. In every other way, it was perfect – the only and the best thing that could have happened. Earth Pilgrim and peace activist, Satish Kumar, who I’ve been lucky enough to walk and spend time with, talks about the difference between being a tourist and being a pilgrim: “A tourist expects whilst a pilgrim accepts.” Perhaps the journey of my walk was to move from the first to the second. It’s not the particular route or the destination that counts – the teaching is in the way one walks. Especially if the way is uncertain or unclear, improvisation is what is needed. When will I learn that plans are made so they can be surrendered? Yes, the plan is important – but I have a richer experience as soon as I let go of control, and truly understand that I never really had it in the first place.

Photo: Fern Smith

7 Sundays in Spring continues until 1st April 2018. Contact me if you would like to participate. 

Fern is Recipient of a 2017 Creative Wales arts Award.
For more information go to www.emergence-uk.org

Talks Walking 1: A Walk in the Woods with Lucy Neal

We met at 10am on Tuesday 26^th January 2016 at Chingford Station and prepared to walk together into the forest. I’d arranged with Lucy Neal, writer, theatre maker and creative catalyst to be my first companion on my ‘Talks Walking’ project in which I planned to interview pioneering arts practitioners engaged in ecological and social change. I asked her to choose a walk she wanted to do and my plan was that I would talk with her about her connections with soul, spirit and the sacred. I’d been inspired into ‘Talks Walking’ by reading Robert Macfarlane’s book ‘The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot’ which gave me the idea of the form and by Jacob Needleman’s ‘An Unknown World: Notes onthe Meaning of the Earth’, which provided me with my subject. Lucy’s chosen walk was a circular one through Epping Forest.

The plan began to unravel and reform itself in unexpected ways as soon as I’d made it. I worried that walking in Epping Forest, London’s largest green-space, might not be conducive to my interviewing Lucy. My fears were that we might spend too much time trying to orient ourselves along the right paths to avoid getting lost and not be able to give sufficient attention to our subject matter. I phoned her the day before our planned walk and asked if she’d consider instead a more linear, urban route along London’s canals. We would in this way at least be assured not to get lost in the landscape and be able to concentrate on the intended themes of our conversation.  Lucy was disappointed, saying she had never been to Epping Forest before and really had a yen to go. She had the right Ordinance Survey map (number 174) and was confident we would find our way both into and out of the forest, have time for our ‘Talk Walking’ and she would still be in time to catch the 14.40 train to Liverpool Street for her meeting in Hoxton at 16.00.

I decided to be fluid, let go of my original plan and just ‘see what happened’. I did wonder how we would be able to catch up with one another’s lives and projects and still have enough time to talk about my chosen themes from Needleman’s book - spirit, soul and the sacred. That morning I’d read a particularly significant chapter in the book entitled ‘The Real Reconciliation’. I imagined that as soon as she turned up at Chingford Station, that I would read it to her and then our conversation would evolve with me asking insightful questions, like: “What is the connection between creativity, social activism and faith?” And, “What is consciousness?” Or, “What is the role of a human being on earth at this particular time in history?” Instead, we left the station immediately, swept along with the happiness of seeing one another and walked in the direction of the Queen Elizabeth Hunting Lodge, with me clutching my printout of a four hour, seven and a half mile circular walk of the forest via Connaught Waters, Loughton Camp, High Beech and back to the Hunting Lodge and Chingford Station.

Queen Elizabeth Hunting Lodge, Epping Forest

We started off well enough according to plan, following the directions from my map, finding our way to Connaught Waters aided by asking some of the numerous dog walkers we met along the way. We then launched ourselves off  topic and off our planned route following our noses into the forest. I decided that Jacob Needleman and his questions might have to wait until another day. My quest to talk to artists about spirituality was perhaps destined to become more fantasy than reality.

Some time later, it started to drizzle. We sat down on a bench beneath a tree next to a portacabin café, not far from High Beech and had tea and flapjacks. Lucy started telling me of her recent work –leading ‘The Art of Writing Collaboratively’ for Arvon’s annual programme of residential courses, withCharlotte Du Cann. The invitation to do this came as a result of the publication of her book in 2015: ‘Playing for Time – Making Art as if the WorldMattered’ edited by Charlotte. This was their first experiment in sharing their collaborative writing practice with others. I listened to Lucy as she described some of the activities they had organised for and with the participants: being in dialogue with the earth; creating a fire walking ritual; publishing a newspaper (the first edition after a fictitious town’s major flooding); writing answers to the question, “What wants to happen through me”? and “What is my work in this world?” Even though Jacob Needleman’s book had not left my rucksack, Lucy started answering my unasked questions.

Later she spoke about Providence. How she leans into it and acts in relation to it, as it seems also to do with her. She spoke about the death of her mother and her finding herself going on pilgrimage to her mother’s grave, of her father’s interest in faith and theology. We spoke about a practice of art-making which is not just ‘creative change agent’ or ‘activist’, not just ‘space-maker’ or ‘documenter’, but which combines them all with an added deep connection to mystery. The word ‘God’ is not so much in Lucy’s vocabulary but ‘enthusiasm’ is. She appears to make the seemingly impossible happen. Lucy is often called an ‘optimist’ by other people – a word that appears to simple, too wide of the mark for what I believe she is. She agreed that this word did not sit comfortably with her. Instead she  talks about  it as simply, life happening through her. Her enthusiasm is perhaps a consequence of her life force. Watching Lucy is watching life in action. Full potential. The kind of energy that makes a tree a tree, a flower a flower, Lucy Neal, Lucy Neal. When she started to write Playing for Time she told me that she held some words close, almost like a mantra:

“If you will tell me why the fen appears impassable

I then will tell you why 

I think that I can cross it 

If I try”

There is something crucially important for Lucy about committing to and communicating her practice of ‘making art as if the world mattered’. She wants to encourage and create spaces for others to do this as well. ‘Taking our own permission,’ is one of the phrases I identify with her. However, she is a real permission giver for others as well as a permission taker for herself. She does not just tell stories, she creates a new language, a new structure and invites others to share in this. Lucy is appropriately named after the Latin for ‘light’ – she holds a torch, lighting the way for others to walk alongside, not just to follow her. She is a leader of a different sort – not one who is always in front but one who walks with you, pointing out the ladybird on the stone or the bluebell growing through the cracks on the pavement of a busy road.

We did not get to our destination. We failed at completing our seven and a half mile circular walk. It soon became obvious that we weren’t going to need the printout of the prescribed route, or the Ordinance Survey map, or even the GPS on my smartphone. We talked to people, the dog walkers, the people just out walking and taking the air, the perambulators, the forest guides. We became through our readiness to enquire, to not know, a part of a community – a temporary and fluid one but a community nonetheless. The forest gave us everything we needed. It held our enquiry, our searching, our desire to walk into the unknown, to take paths less travelled…

Finding ourselves back near the start of our walk at Butler’s Retreat, a café beside the Queen Elizabeth Hunting Lodge, we spoke of how not just her parents, but my mother, my father, and my brothers had also been a part of the day’s conversation. Earlier in the day she had named the notion that we have to bring our selves to collaboration. It can’t happen unless we do. The subject of my first ‘Talks Walking’ was intended to be Lucy. I had thought I might be the invisible, impartial interviewer. The walk had an energy and a direction of its own, as did the line of our enquiry. Our Talk Walking was a co-creation, not just with me but with the forest, the place itself. I had grown up in and around this forest, this area, been to school, attended church and become a teenager hanging around the streets near Chingford Station. It was twenty years, since my mother had died in 1996. Ten years before, I had been in this same café, about to embark on this same walk with my four brothers to scatter our mother’s ashes in Epping Forest. We had come out of the café – there, through the sun and drizzle was a double rainbow.

Four of the five Smith children (Scott taking the photo)

Lucy had chosen this walk. It had brought me back to my own mother. We spoke about both of our parents and why we might have incarnated though each of them. We knew we were privileged, drinking coffee in a café on the edge of a forest on a weekday afternoon. Neither of us had what could be referred to as sizeable incomes but we were privileged in so many ways and we knew it. What was the work that was being carried on through each of us – inherited possibly from our mother and fathers? How might each of us serve the Earth? How are we related to this living, interconnected universe, where we can speak of Systems and Gaia Theory but where it feels more difficult to talk about God?

At Butler's Retreat

I decided then and there to continue my ‘Talks Walking’ – to take this further, talk with other artists and to have Joseph Needleman and his book accompany me. Each of my companions would be given a copy of the book after the walk, but neither me nor Professor Needleman would prescribe where our conversation would wander. I would trust, as Lucy does in Providence. I would act in faith. I would lean into the unknown, the mystery, I would listen to what needs to come though me, through us.

Lucy got her train. The timing was perfect. We left Butler’s Retreat, and hurried back to Chingford Station, arriving two minutes before her train was due to leave. We then remembered that she was wearing my waterproof over-trousers which I’d lent her, to keep her red trousers from getting mud-splattered since she was going straight from the forest to a meeting with the Gulbenkian Foundation - her patent-leather smart shoes in her rucksack. With a minute to spare we both ran to her train, me outside on the platform, her inside the train, both of us struggling to get my trousers off her legs before the train left. We managed to do it and then both fell about laughing…me with my trousers, her pulling away on the train towards Liverpool Street. She texted me later saying “if we can do that we might be able to do anything…”

Earlier in the day I had asked her what she called herself given her role within the world of ‘transitional’ arts practice? She said, “Conductor”. “Lightening or Music” I had asked her, knowing she could be either?  Later in the same text, she said, “I think theatre-maker still stands, but in an expanded sense to include dramaturge and explorer of the story beat….I’m working on that….”

Lucy Neal is a theatre maker and writer. Her recent book is 'Playing For Time: Making Art As If The World Mattered' is published by Oberon Books

New Writing Course at Arvon 'Writing to Make Change Happen' by Lucy Neal & Charlotte Du Can

Fern Smith is an artist and Creative Director of Emergence