some small heaven: advent walk…

This Advent I’ve been using Ian Adams’s excellent book “Some Small Heaven: Seeking Light in Winter”. It explores a path through Advent, Christmas and Epiphany and seeks to discover the light within the darkness of winter through a series of daily reflections.
Although I have indeed been using the book on a daily basis, I also decided to use it for an Advent Walk around Bristol – relating some of its words to places on my walk, to the people I encountered and to my own somewhat confused (and sometimes pretty bleak) thoughts during this festival period.

As Ian writes in his introduction: “Winter tests our hope and resolve… Some Small Heaven  seeks to discover the light within the darkness of winter – and within all our winters – to find some small heaven each day, even when life comes at us tough, hard and bleak”.

I undertook my walk around Bristol over the course of two days – with no particular planned route, but all the time endeavouring to relate ‘stop locations’ to places and situations I’d been reflecting upon in the book (I’m well aware that I’m posting this well before the end of the Advent, Christmas and Epiphany festivals, but I’ve read the entire book several times over the past couple of months!).

Here are just a few extracts (not exhaustive by any means) from Ian’s book - incidental lines that have particularly struck me in the course of my contemplations and the things that happening in my life (as a reminder to ME, the numbers relate to reflections in the book):

03: “In the valley of shadows you were fearful. You felt alone. Was anyone looking on you with favour?”
04: “You can feel overwhelmed by the hate in the world. By the bitterness. The cynicism.”
07: “Your breathing is hard. Fast. Erratic. You flail… Begin with the breath. Deep, long, slow. And a pause…”
08: “To speak tenderly to others first speak tenderly to yourself.”
09: “When the powerful manipulate the truth, when the powerless are exploited, and when we who seek good seem incapable of bringing change, where is hope?”
13: “It’s about choosing not to allow fear to shape you.”
15: “You keep looking down. And looking back… But you are looking in the wrong direction. Turning in a way that is sending you off balance.”
27: “Resolve to create more sacred space like this. To Listen, to explore, to allow the spirit of creativity to surface.”
30: “What if your task today is to see, and to bless?”
33: “Study the sky. Keep on looking up.”
35: “And if on this pilgrimage you are no more than a sign pointing towards the Love, this will be enough.”

I found my “Advent Walk” hugely valuable, insightful and, at times, quite surprising. As you might recall, I’ve undertaken a similar exercise in the form of a Bristol pilgrimage (adopting the pilgrimage format and reflections I used when I stayed on Iona for a couple of months in 2012). Unlike my ‘pilgrimage journeys’, undertaking a walk around my city in cold December meant that I generally kept on the move and didn’t sit and reflect for 30 minute periods(!), but nevertheless it worked very well.

I’d highly recommend Ian’s book (in fact, it can be read and used at any time, not just for Advent)… he wrote the reflections each day in real time in Advent, Christmas and Epiphany a couple of years ago – through his own challenges and experiences of that time. Powerful and beautiful.
Photo: I took photographs on my walk (surprise, surprise!) and have used some of them to compile a montage as a vague visual backdrop to my experiences.