A Bittern and a Bishop
(two endangered species)
"I’ve been Chaplain to the Broads for ten years now
and never heard a bittern boom’. I made this confession at
a supper party one evening last May. My host looked concerned even
shocked. ‘How can this poor man hold his head up in polite
society if he has never heard the boom of a bittern?’ I could
see he was thinking. ‘You shall hear one now’ he declared
and before I knew it I was swept away from my coffee, bundled into
a Land Rover and was bouncing over the marshes into the murk of
a May midnight. We walked a good half-mile in total silence without
benefit of torchlight. The thought did cross my mind that I might
be walking into an Agatha Christie novel. Would Miss Marple find
us in the morning face down in a ditch? I put such unworthy concerns
out of my head. It was far more important to concentrate on the
present as Chinese water deer scuttled, widgeon took wing and mallards
exploded at our feet. We stood still in one of the last wildernesses
this country has to offer. It was pitch black, just a faint glow
on the horizon towards St Benet’s, a mere coot call away.
Then, right on cue, it happened - a low murmuring sound as if someone
was blowing across the top of a beer bottle. I was transfixed and
I knew that this was a moment that I would never forget. We were
in the presence of a booming bittern.
"As Broads Chaplain I now felt I had arrived. I stood in the
long tradition of those who had sailed these waters ever since the
time the monks first came to settle on these marshes at the behest
of king Canute. St Benet’s is the oldest monastic foundation
in England and it stands sentinel over these wetlands witnessing
to generations of seekers after solitude and stillness. We sometimes
forget, in our noise and clamour, that for centuries our ancestors
were able to hear and recognise sounds that we never hear because
we are so distracted by the din of every day life. The Broads celebrates
that heritage every year when the abbot of St Benet’s visits
the abbey ruins of the only monastery in England not to be dissolved
by Henry VIII. The bishops of Norwich have remained abbots of St
Benet’s ever since Henry VIII appointed Abbot Rugge as his
Bishop of Norwich.
"If the sound of a bittern booming below St Benet’s
is bizarre then the sight of a bishop in full canonicals perched
on the prow of a wherry is no less surprising. Yet that is what
you will witness if you visit St Benet’s on the afternoon
of the first Sunday in August when the Lord Abbot and Bishop sails
into his abbey for his annual Visitation and open air service. Some
years ago I took advantage of this spectacle to challenged the present
bishop, Graham James, to a water borne race to the annual service.
The reason was pragmatic; I needed to raise some money for toilets
at St Lawrence’s Arts Centre at South Walsham. He sportingly
took up the challenge and I’m glad to say was magnanimous
in defeat as I pipped him to the post in my rowing dinghy while
he bore down on me in his stately wherry below the ruined gate house
of St Benet’s. Later, he graciously came to bless the completed,
newly restored St Lawrence’s, which can now boast some of
the best conveniences in Broadland.
"Such is the life of a Chaplain to the Broads. When I’m
asked what the job involves, I’m tempted to say that it is
a ministry of waving and smiling to people as I sail by on my chaplain’s
boat ‘Wild Goose’. I do keep a log, which I enjoy, illustrating
and filling with some of the bizarre events that I witness. The
job has to be squeezed into the busy life of a country parson with
five parishes and I’m lucky if I can get afloat two or three
times a month. However, that experience is a total delight and an
opportunity to draw closer to the silence of this wilderness in
which the voice of God can boom like that of a mysterious bittern.
"The annual St Benet’s service will take place this
year on Sunday 3rd August at 3.15pm.
A Bittern and a Bishop (two endangered species),
Phillip McFadyen
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