James

James was invalided out of the Navy when he was struck ill in his 20s.  He was confined to home for nearly a decade.  Then one day he set off for Dover and the ferry to France.  He was expected home shortly but James had the travel bug and was away three years, travelling the length of France and on into Italy.  He swam in the Mediterranean, climbed the dome of St Peter’s in Rome and walked round the crater atop volcanic Mount Vesuvius.  On to the Rhine he went and then home.

A greater trip beckoned.  James was off to Russia and China!  Starting from London his ship became locked in collision with a coal barge on the Thames near Gravesend.  The captain was grateful James was aboard, for the ex Naval officer took the wheel and with the captain’s help extricated the ship from its distress.  The ship took him to St Petersburg where he began an epic journey across Russia into Siberia.  No railways, no cars - just a cart.  Added to these problems was the fact that he was alone and spoke no Russian.

The journey was a mixed success.  Having reached far into Siberia the Czar accused him of being a spy and this thwarted his plan to reach China.  Dressed in coats and layers of wolf skins he endured a sledge journey back  to Moscow in temperatures 50 degrees below freezing only to be deported to Poland.

Back in London his travel writings became best sellers and his journeys multiplied.  His travels were published in four large volumes and it was said that he had travelled more than the three next most travelled people put together!  He did eventually reach China, but not before he’d been to South America, Australia and India.  He almost always travelled alone which made his feats of walking 500 miles along the South African coast and hunting elephants in Ceylon all the more admirable.

Yet what really caught the eye of the public, the King and any number of his books’ readers was the almost unimaginable fact that James Holman, since leaving the Navy, had been completely and permanently blind.  A blind helmsman, a blind spy, a blind elephant hunter, a blind explorer and a blind travel writer!

To say that James Holman was amazing would be an epic understatement. 

I wonder.

We live in an age of amazing travel.  Never have so many people travelled so far physically or via technology.  And yet do we see the nature of things?  The user who can google a billion pieces of information but trace the hand of the Creator in none of them (when it is somehow in all of them) is travelling a remarkable journey. And travelling it blind.

John Pac

The death of John Paculabo this week takes to glory a man who was a pioneer of folk worship which, for better or for worse, is now the standard form in evangelical churches the world over (yep, that includes Hillsongs . . .).  I first heard John Pac and Parchment in isolated halls in the middle of the Suffolk countryside.  No self-respecting church would let the likes of them near a town sanctuary.

Still in the depths of Mission Praise you can find Colours of Day, a folk song that I never really understood then and still don't (so I doubt it's a children's song as performed here).  But what a great tune to inject into lives previously lived in the parameters of Free Church Victoriana.  Thanks, John!

 

 

24/7

As we disappear into a frozen, snowy freezer of a weekend it is possible to think that Christmas came early and should have waited for the snow.  Not the Christmas of the Bible of course (because we don't know when that came) but folk-festival Christmas with its See amid the winter's snow and snow had fallen snow on snow.

The Internet has done many things to change our lives.  One of them is that Christmas never needs to stop, rather like those Christmasophiles who never take their Christmas decorations down.  Now that a guy with an Internet connection and time on his hands can start an Internet 'radio' station there are plenty of places where you can have Christmas all day long, all year long.(link).

If the thought of Christmas all year is not quite focused enough there are alternatives.  A favourite (sorry, favorite) of mine (in the sense of bizarre interest) is Amazing Grace 247. This, one might say, does what it says on the tin.  Every minute of day and night it plays a version of the hymn Amazing Grace.  So, unless there is a commercial playing right now go ahead to the link and listen and you'll hear John Newton's hymn until you never want to hear it again.  With a small leap of the imagination you can almost hear Newton banging his head on a wall in despair.