This Time, This Space: Retreat into Grace
A very short history of a Medieval Retreat House!
This time, this space:
this gift of grace
is balm to the soul:
where farmlands roll
to converge and enclose
where Abbots imposed
their tithing demands
on all those who rented their land.
Such wealth, such realms
with Oak, Ash, and Elm,
incited a King
to annexe everything
that was clerically owned
and could be handed on
to henchmen-at-arms,
who’d exploit those former church farms.
In time this place
became a space
where stillness might reign;
letting Moderns abstain
from their feverish rounds
and the clamorous sounds
of our time and place.
Indeed, a locale of great grace.
Trevor Thorn: Launde: January 2023.
A Reflection on This Time, This Space.
Last week, we just made it to Launde Abbey and its exquisite surroundings in a beautiful natural bowl of Leicestershire. I say ‘just’ because so much militated against us getting there. Our purposes of that journey were so Pam could join a Quilting group week and I could settle to the bliss of three and a half days for writing and editing some of my earlier scribblings.
First, I uncovered a virus in my laptop. Looked nasty – and no chance of our friendly local expert being able to attend to it before we left on Monday morning. Thankfully Pam would not be using her laptop whilst quilting, so I was able to access the essential tools of a thesaurus and a rhyming dictionary – but not my image library, nor some of those older notes I had planned to edit.
But, rather worse, on the Saturday before the Monday we were due to leave, towards the end of a longish journey, our car’s brakes began to grind in an unpleasantly gruesome way. A garage visit Monday morning confirmed my suspicions – the car should not be driven, other than to return home across our village.
Hiring a car at very short notice proved not to be possible, but our son-in-law was free and willing to transport us. How very fortunate – and what a blessing. We arrived only half-an-hour into Pam’s programme though the return journey would have to be resolved during the week.
Launde Abbey is undoubtedly a very special place for those who get to enjoy its ambience. On the morning following our fraught arrival, it felt right to celebrate its existence and its ministry. The following poem ‘This Time, This Space, This Gift of Grace’ emerged. It is a VERY brief history which could apply to several retreat houses around the UK: all of them are a blessing to most of those who can avail themselves of such opportunities, and whilst ‘balm for the soul’ may sound trite, I can’t think of a better phrase to describe a place…
‘where stillness might reign;
letting Moderns abstain
from their feverish rounds
and the clamorous sounds
of our time and place.
And since the pandemic struck, it feels that such places are even more important than they were before that challenging time.
With these thoughts in mind, whilst on a frosty and beautiful walk, I felt quite distressed to see just how weather has ravaged some parts of this lovely building. It did not need an expert to realise that stone window frames alone will soon need large sums of money to make them safe and weatherproof. As a former fundraiser, I began to speculate… I wonder if there are any seriously wealthy philanthropists out there who would adopt such a place and funnel adequate funds into one of them to secure it for, let’s say the next quarter century. She or he would be performing a service that many, many people would benefit from.
If this poem commends itself to you, you might find this link to a poem called Embracing Silence helpful
