English Summer #9 (Final) - London to Fayetteville to Home

I was fortunate to have one final great experience in ministry before departing the United Kingdom.



Carol-Jean and I traveled by a combination of car, train and subway (the Tube) from Maidenhead to Balham, where we spoke at the Rev. Dr. Patience Kudiabor's warm and cozy church, Unity South London.






After a great potluck dinner CJ & I raced by subway and taxi to make the last train northeast out of London. We had already prepositioned our baggage via rental car at the Guest House of the RAF/USAF Mildenhall Air Base, but the trip back to the base by train took several hours and involved expensive taxis at both ends.

Then we learned that the space available flight which we expected for the next morning (Monday) was actually scheduled for Tuesday. I don't know if Monday being labor Day had anything to do with it, but we had a day of foot-travel around the smallish base and to the nearby Bird-in-Hand Pub for meals.

Tuesday Morning we were required to be at the Terminal--baggage in hand--by 4 AM. (You did not read that wrong. 04:00 hours. O-dark-thirty, as we used to call it when I was active duty.)

We were told the flight to McConnell AFB Kansas was full. Sorry. There would be four other flights, but none to the Midwest, unless you count Fargo, North Dakota, and there weren't any seats on that one, either. So, we opted for Plan C--Carolina. There was a flight leaving shortly for Pope AFB, Fayetteville, NC. They had room. Instead of leaving us an easy day trip from McConnell (Wichita to KCMO), this hop would deposit us 896 miles from Unity Village. We took it anyway. (See picture for CJ's reaction to my strategic planning.)

OK...now I have good news and bad news. The good news is this plane was a lot more comfortable and less crowded. The bad news is that we had to rent a one-way-drop-off car and drive home. We crunched the numbers and found that the combination of taxi fares and add-on charges for same-day airfares made it less expensive to drive. Besides, it gave me two more days of vacation and a chance to decompress from a whirlwind tour.

Driving through the Great Smoky Mountains, I kept thinking that, like Dorothy, I'd left Kansas and gone over the rainbow to a magical land full of strange and wondrous sights, warm and friendly people, and no wicked witches. Now, just like the story, I am even more convinced that there's no place like home...
[Last photo from Online Source.]

English Summer 2010 #6 - From the York Minster and Shambles to Herriot's House to Hadrian's Wall

We drove north from Huddersfield in a hired car--that's Brit-speak for a rental. About an hour later we reached the ancient city of York. If Manhattan, Kansas is the "Little Apple" and Manhattan, NY, is the "Big Apple" then this walled town must be the old apple tree. We wandered down the Shambles, a cobbled footpath between a row of shops and tea rooms, some of which were built before Columbus sailed. (Note the irregularly shaped stones in the street behind Carol-Jean.)


The interior of the York Minster is vast. The photo shows only one wing of the complex. A "minster" is a church that was considered a missionary post at one time, which includes even London's Westminster Abbey as a Christian outpost in Roman times. If some of my students are considering the option of pioneering a new church, I guess they could call it a minster... which is not too far removed from the common Unity practice of calling all centers of spiritual service a "ministry".

After dodging raindrops at York we headed northwest to the small town of Thirsk, made famous by its best-known citizen, the veterinary surgeon J. Alfred Wight, best know by his pen name, James Herriot.



Nice doggie...







<-- --->


Upon entering the surgery, I was fortunate to be able to say hello to Mrs. Pumphrey –whom all Herriot fans will instantly identify as the owner of an obese Pekingese named Tricki Woo. Apparently, she stopped by and refused to leave until Uncle Herriot himself attended to her pampered darling.



This was one of my favorite stops. CJ and I are great fans of James Herriot, who practiced veterinary medicine in the vicinity of Thirsk and other Yorkshire towns until he retired. We sat in a cafe eating scones, then walked the streets he traveled not many years ago before going to the building which served as the model for "Skeldale House" in Herriot's books. We were actually able to book a B&B across the street, so for one night the Herriots were our neighbors so to speak, a few decades removed.

In the evening we ate at the Darrowby Inn (see picture), a nod to fantasy by the tourism-savy locals, who recognized the benefit of identifying their village with Herriot's conflation of several Yorkshire locales into the fictionalized town of Darrowby. The food was basic pub fare, wholesome and tasty and bad for you, but the highlight to the evening came when I began casually chatting with a few older gentlemen sipping beer at the next table. They knew Alf Wight the vet, and you could tell they were respectful of this man who had so much money yet continued to work in the profession he loved. "Aye, that man were a gentleman," one of them said gravely.

During our tour of the Herriot House that afternoon we had seen a clip when Alf Wight was interviewed on American network TV at the height of his popularity. At that moment several of his books were on the New York Times Bestsellers List, and his BBC/PBS TV series was wildly popular. The interviewer asked what Alf would do now that he had all this money and noteriety. He said there wasn't time to do anything special, because he was a veterinarian, and that was a 24/7 job. It was the life he loved, and he never gave a thought to abandoning it just because he had wealth and fame.

I thought--what an fantastic prospertity lesson! Here was a guy who already had everything he wanted, so he was already prosperous. It isn't about quantity of stuff, or the amount of money in the bank, or how many admiring fans you have. Happiness and prosperity are about balance, about quality, not quantity. What fool would abandon a perfect life for mere money?

The next morning we visited the Thirsk church where Alf Wight and family worshipped and were treated to an impromptu pipe organ concert as the musician practiced for Sunday. Then we drove north to Hadrian's Wall (see pictures, below).


Carol-Jean and I have always wanted to see this 70-mile-long attempt to keep the Scots from conquereing Roman British towns. It was a masterful achievement in its day, built by soldiers and not by slaves or abducted locals. The guidebook says there were "Romans" stationed along the wall that came from every part of the Empire--Germans, Spaniards, even a detatchment of Arabs from the marshlands of the Euphrates valley. I stood on the wall at one point, near the ruins of a Roman fort, and said a silent prayer for the soldiers on both sides of this line who faced the terrorism of their day.

The Scots saw the Romans as foreign devils; the Romans saw the Scots as barbarians at the gate. Good thing we don't think like that any more, now that we're spiralized and civilized.

We've got minsters of consciousness to build, my brothers and sisters...

More later, from Windsor Castle.

Prepping to Jump the Pond for Unity-UK

Here we go again....

The above picture was taken in May 2008 during our last jaunt to England. Now, Carol-Jean and I are frantically trying to get everything done on this side of the Atlantic so we can journey to the British Isles for the whole month of August. I'll be teaching and speaking all over the place. Pub lunches. Old churches. What fun.




I am especially looking forward to re-visiting the many cultural venues which are uniquely available in Merry Ole England. (Example, left.)




The British Unity folks are gracious hosts; we are eager to asee them again. We'll be staying at the Silent Unity-UK headquarters, a three-storie brick building with a comfortable quest apartment on the topmost floor.




Look closely and you'll note the Unity wings on the sign.






However...the air travel arrangements are...uh..shall we say, Spartan?



As a retired US Army officer, I get to fly Space-Available on military aircraft.


Carol-Jean can fly with me, also free. Sometimes, we have flown on Military Airlift Command passenger jets, but usually its likely to be a cargo jet (see picture). We sit in sleeping bags on canvas benches, back to the bulkhead, and shiver in the badly heated cargo bay. Oh, and it's not insulated against noise, either. Major earplugs required.

But, hey, I told CJ I'd show her the world, and I keep my promises. (Sometime, I'll tell you about the FC-130 propeller plane we flew from Athens to Crete...)

Anyway, it's only 13 hours from Wichita to London. And you get a box lunch.

More later.

PS: CJ is threatening to start her own blog to tell the rest of the story.