Holywell

https://insearchofholywellsandhealingsprings.com/source-first-series-contents/the-holy-well-at-st-john-the-baptist-church-holywell-cum-needingworth-cambridgeshire/

(Extra - ‘are you having a laugh?’)

The weather was dismal so a rather randomly spontaneous day ensued along the line of P’s and my little abiding mantra from Forster, ‘only connect’.

From the moment I was given a lift by the vicar, who drove like the proverbial bat out of hell on the longish journey down the high hedged, winding Norfolk lanes, from my father’s funeral at the local Saxon church to his cremation at the less beautiful 1980’s crematorium, we struck up a bit of a bond. We were short of time and as we rounded the bends on two wheels I felt I was probably in the best possible company if this was going to be ‘it’, even if I was a dyed in the wool agnostic. As we hurtled along she suddenly said, ‘I’d love to keep in touch’. I kind of felt we were likely to be heading into infinity together at that particular moment in time, but over the years, we have. She went on to do my mother’s memorial service and then moved on to a new parish. The link lost the connection of place but we exchanged an email or two during covid and then as I was heading down this time I checked out what she was up to and noticed there was to be a ‘Vicar of Dibley’ style service today for humans and animals but also that, for various reasons, she was about to move on again. I felt that our connection would be lost so rolled up today as her agnostic groupie. Fortunately, my entrenched agnosticism/atheism doesn’t seem to bother her one bit ... and vice versa. I was telling her about Richard Holloway’s programme, and also Galway Kinnell’s poem, which would have been ideal for her service.

Heading back I thought I really ought to pick up a holy well on my way. This one was rather lovely, pre-Christian, overlooking the wetlands that it feeds and where watercress used to be grown.

Saint Francis and the Sow - Galway Kinnell

The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don’t flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as Saint Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.