I don't believe in miracles. Not at all. Not really.
At Cockley Cley, a tiny village in Norfolk, England, there is an old flint-walled chapel: older than the big church across the stream in the main part of the village; older than the village itself; older than most ecclesiastical buildings in England; so old it may have been visited by the great King Raedwald, or his son. Centuries before St Mary's was first built the Romans established their own place of worship on the edge of a great swathe of marshes and reedbed, a well dedicated to the water-spirit of the area in the sort of place they often absorbed into their own polytheistic religion when they found barbarians worshipping some little deity. Only the name changed as the sprite was transmogrified into a Roman goddess, was domesticated and assimilated. It was a good place for a temple: the main roads in East Anglia crossed near here and this part of the world was rich farmland, producing grain to feed Rome's armies.
The years passed. So did Rome. The temple fell into disrepair, became a few stones and an underground cellar choked with rubble, smothered in ivy and nettles.
Then it was the turn of the Christians to take the place and dedicate it to their own God. It was so early in the conversion of England that the Syrian missionary who built the little flint enclosure we see today may have fled from Persian persecution to Rome and thence to England. He could even have met St Augustine, had his faith ignited and fanned by the holiness of that great saint when he set out to convert the Saxons. He would have needed all his faith here in the wilderness, with the surly fens just over the hill and the wild wood lapping against the cultivated lands, the pagan temple beneath his feet as he laid the flints one on the other, the big-boned, fair-haired, pagan farmers staring as he went about his work. Beneath his chapel there are still signs of that original Roman place of worship, but now the cellar walls are shored-up with breeze-blocks, and the genius of the spring, if she was ever there, is gone. But something is there. Some places feel different from our everyday world: the tomb of the mother of the Prophet in Cyprus hums with the devoted prayers of centuries; Stonehenge is silent, with unknown forces lending an electric tension to the air; St Mary's is quiet, full of peace, scoured of paganism, empty of the stress and bustle of everyday life, dreaming among the trees.
On the north-facing outside wall is a coat of arms complete with a rather beaky helmet, a memorial of the time when the de Nerfords, Norman knights, reinforced the flint edges with stone. There is something pleasing about these ancient refurbishments to a building that was already several centuries old. Then another church was built in the village, bigger, grander, more fitting for a Church triumphant. For a while St Mary's became a dwelling for priests, then, for hundreds of years, the chapel was a cottage. In 1948 it was derelict and due for demolition, but just in time someone found it marked by its original name on an old map. The cottage was chipped away from round the still-solid centre and the original, with its Norman additions, was revealed. The roof, alas, is corrugated iron.
The chapel seen from the south. The semi-circular apse looks strange in England, but every little village in Byzantium would once have had a church like this.
Standing in the nave looking east. The wooden structure covers the grave of the hermit whose body was discovered buried in the apse.
From the same spot looking west. The window reveals are curiously asymmetrical, being angled to catch the sunlight throughout the year.
The picture on the left above was taken about 30 seconds before a second try when the sun came out and lit the apse wall with a pleasing splash of brilliance. Do you believe in pictures of the Virgin Mary on the glass windows of apartment blocks in Florida? Nor do I. Do you believe that the name of God may be vouchsafed to us when we cut open an aubergine? No, nor do I.
However, there was something odd when I zoomed in on the triangle of light at the centre of the second picture. I can see figures in the sunlit stones, one on its back, chin lifted as the head falls back limply. Another figure leans over the first. Above, a winged being hovers, its face blank. Everything glows with light.
It is a pieta.
However, there was something odd when I zoomed in on the triangle of light at the centre of the second picture. I can see figures in the sunlit stones, one on its back, chin lifted as the head falls back limply. Another figure leans over the first. Above, a winged being hovers, its face blank. Everything glows with light.
It is a pieta.
We live in an age where miracles no longer happen. There is an argument which explains this: miracles were needed to convince the pagans that the Word was actually true, that the missionaries who spread the Word were not charlatans and that there really was a beneficent Being behind these oddly-dressed and wild-eyed preachers of God's new message. Now, of course, we need no miracles. Who could respect a God who forced us to believe?
This photograph was taken about 30 seconds after the first nave picture. The sun has come out and the interior of the little chapel has taken life from the light through the trees. (click to see original jpg)
This is what you see if you blow up the original second picture looking into the apse from the nave.
(click to see the original image)
(click to see the original image)
Here is an interpretation, painted by the well-known East Anglian artist Chris Gamble, of the picture on the left. We talked at length about the flints and she made me this icon-like image as a gift.
We live in an age where miracles do not, do NOT happen. We have medicine, we have air ambulances and science and doctors and paramedics and nurses. We have fully-equipped eye hospitals packed up into jet aircraft and flown around the world. We can cure the blind, make the deaf hear and the lame walk. We have science and scepticism on our side. Sometimes, of course, they are not enough: science and medicine cost money, and the poor, the halt and the blind cannot afford the treatment they need.
I was touched by Chris Gamble's generosity. I had asked her to paint a picture for me, had said I was happy to pay a proper price for a work by someone so skilled and professional. She gave me her interpretation of the figures on the flint wall and refused payment. I was uncomfortable with this, having always found it difficult to take presents, but then an idea occured to me -- I would give money to Orbis in lieu of her fee, passing the gift on.
It's a good charity, Orbis. Medical teams fly around the world and operate on people with eye problems, giving sight to the poorest and most desperate of patients. It may be conditional sight, may need the cured to wear thick and ugly lenses for the rest of their lives, but we're not talking miracles here, not real miracles, we're just talking of science and medicine and nurses and doctors giving their time, of charity donations and dedication, of publicity and hype. It's all very modern, all very twenty-first century. Nothing to do with miracles.
Nothing to do with miracles. But the sun shone through an arched window in a little East Anglian chapel that has drowsed for thirteen hundred years amongst its trees and violets, shone onto flints laid in a bed of mortar by hands long dead and gone. Because of that chance assemblage of stones the blind see, somewhere in the world the blind see. A contingent miracle then: an artisan laid a flint wall; the sun broke through the clouds at just the right moment; a chance photograph was taken; an artistic muse was fired; a few pieces of paper changed hands; figures went down in one column of a bank ledger and up in another. No miracle at all, not really.
But still, somewhere, the blind see.
I was touched by Chris Gamble's generosity. I had asked her to paint a picture for me, had said I was happy to pay a proper price for a work by someone so skilled and professional. She gave me her interpretation of the figures on the flint wall and refused payment. I was uncomfortable with this, having always found it difficult to take presents, but then an idea occured to me -- I would give money to Orbis in lieu of her fee, passing the gift on.
It's a good charity, Orbis. Medical teams fly around the world and operate on people with eye problems, giving sight to the poorest and most desperate of patients. It may be conditional sight, may need the cured to wear thick and ugly lenses for the rest of their lives, but we're not talking miracles here, not real miracles, we're just talking of science and medicine and nurses and doctors giving their time, of charity donations and dedication, of publicity and hype. It's all very modern, all very twenty-first century. Nothing to do with miracles.
Nothing to do with miracles. But the sun shone through an arched window in a little East Anglian chapel that has drowsed for thirteen hundred years amongst its trees and violets, shone onto flints laid in a bed of mortar by hands long dead and gone. Because of that chance assemblage of stones the blind see, somewhere in the world the blind see. A contingent miracle then: an artisan laid a flint wall; the sun broke through the clouds at just the right moment; a chance photograph was taken; an artistic muse was fired; a few pieces of paper changed hands; figures went down in one column of a bank ledger and up in another. No miracle at all, not really.
But still, somewhere, the blind see.
Today the chapel is tucked away among horse chestnut and birch and hornbeam, with violets under the trees in spring. Walking towards it in the sunshine is a disturbing experience. There is a scent of flowers. Sunlight dapples the ground. Old flint walls stand grey at the end of the path. There is nothing else, just the one little building and flowers and trees. It could be any time, any century. It feels... strange.Under the floor of the apse was found the tomb of a hermit, brother to St Fursey who is mentioned by Bede. There is a folding chair on the dirt floor just beside what was his grave. Sitting there in the silence, with the smell of violets wafting through the arched windows, it is almost possible to hear the bones speak of a time of faith and of miracles.
Rose Cottage would have looked more or less like this from the time of the Reformation until 1948.
The chapel is part of the Iceni village display and there is a fee to walk round. It's worth going to the village once, not least to see the map of how the Wash has diminished over the centuries: I've been back to the chapel itself several times and the custodians now give me a discount as a frequent visitor. The money goes to a good cause when you buy the leaflet about St Mary's, and in it you will find more details of this fascinating and ancient place of worship.
