Keys to Heaven: Planning…

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Baldrick, famously, hatches cunning plans which always back-fire.

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Dick Dastardly, equally famously, hatches devious plans which always back-fire,

and he usually has to be saved from destruction by his pet dog, Muttley.

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So, what is it that they are doing wrong?

The plans they hatch purport to deliver the best possible outcome

but from their own, limited perspective, alone.

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But surely, having some form of plan

is better than having no plan at all?

The key may be in the phrase, ‘some form of plan’.

Meticulous planning to the ‘nth’ degree is destined to fail

if it leaves no space for spirit…

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Before we convened on Runswick beach at dusk, for our

inaugural ‘ritual’, the first of four, we visited St Oswald’s Church in Lythe.

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We had been to St Oswald’s before, one bitterly cold January day,

on our way back from our first stone inspired foray

into Scotland, which was now, almost five years ago…

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Curiously, neither of us recognised the spire of the church,

even though we, were on the right road and, were

expecting it to be where it was.

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St Oswald’s is famous for its ‘Ginger-Bread-Man’.

A depiction of the Norse God, Odin, swallowed by wolves

at Ragnarok, carved onto a Viking, Hog-Back, gravestone.

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The image is justly iconic and we speculated on its relevance to one

of our themes for the weekend: Unity from Duality.

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Were the wolves, swallowing, or regurgitating the Wide Wanderer?

And does it have to be wolves, in the well known fable it is a fox?

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Alongside the display of old stones were photographs

of the old church with its old spire, which, almost impossibly

is how we had remembered the church even though it had

not looked like that for over one hundred years.

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