The annual ‘
Walk of
Witness’ was rather different this year.
For a start, the weather was glorious with bright blue
skies, nary a cloud in sight, with tropical – well for Hove - temperatures of
16 degrees Celsius (61 F). Not bad for the tail end of March and a lot better
than last year’s cool and wet walk (see
last year's Walk).
Walker numbers were up too; in 2014, I counted 150 walkers,
last year 164 set off, and this year there was an increase to 182 (although
that had fallen to 165 by the end of the walk). Part of the reason for the
increase was the participation of the Chemin Neuf Community (a Roman Catholic ecumenical
community founded in France 43 years ago).
The number of stops (‘Stations
of the Cross’) was also reduced from seven to four. Instead of stopping
outside several of the participating churches, as last year, the stops this
year were at what may be loosely called ‘landmarks,’ ending as usual at St
Andrew’s Church.
Finally, we walked a few hundred yards more this year as the
procession started from the north side of Brunswick Square, rather than from
the traditional start outside St John the Baptist’s Church.
The First Station -
Jesus
is Condemned to Death – was at the top of Brunswick Square, which is famed
for its stunning Regency architecture. As the photo shows, there are
renovations underway and quite a lot of scaffolding in the area.
After the reading and reflection we sang ‘Crown him with Many Crowns’ a
composition by the prolific Victorian composer Matthew Bridges, written three
years after he became a Roman Catholic as a result of the influence of John
Henry Newman and the Oxford Movement.
Then we formed a straggling crocodile and, following the
cross-bearer, we strolled for a few hundred yards along the pavement beside
busy Western Road until we came to Palmeira Square, best known for its floral
clock built in 1953 to commemorate the coronation of Her Majesty Queen
Elizabeth.
At this Second Station –
Simon
of Cyrene helps to carry the cross – we listened to the Gospel and a
meditation and then sang (those of us that knew the tune!) the seventeenth-century
hymn ‘
My Song is Love Unknown.’ Among
the 182 walkers was a dog that attempted its own version of the hymn but was
dragged away by his unimpressed owner.
Then it was on to Hove Town Hall – and more scaffolding. By
now a few of the elderly walkers had retired and the line of walkers itself
stretched for more than 100 yards. Fr Kevin read the Gospel and gave a short
reflection for the Third Station –
Jesus speaks
to his mother. Then we launched into one of my favourite hymns ‘
Were You There when they Crucified my Lord?’
It was probably composed by African-American slaves in the 19
th
century, likely before the American Civil War. The lyrics are simple, moving
and beautiful while the tune has a call-and-response structure and the pained ‘
Oh’ that begins the third line is sometimes
sung with such a hold and slur that it sends goose-bumps down my spine.
Brrrr!
Finally, the home stretch, past the pavement cafes, past the
gawping shoppers of George Street, the procession made its way to the
Anglican Church of St Andrew, beside the busy Church Road. The
church is of a striking Norman-influenced design and is surrounded by a lovely
old churchyard, replete with impressive gravestones and memorials. It is the final
resting place of many prominent Hove families as well as Sir George Everest,
who gave his name to the world’s highest mountain, and George Westphal, the
last surviving officer to serve on Nelson’s flagship, the Victory, at Trafalgar.
And in this fittingly serene and weighty space we prayed the
Fourth Station –
Jesus dies on the Cross.
After the meditation we sang another favourite, Isaac Watts’ timeless classic ‘
When I survey the Wondrous Cross,’ still
going strong after more than 300 years. They say that Isaac Watts was a sickly
and unattractive child - but he was also something of a genius, studying Latin
from age four, Greek at age nine, French from 11 and Hebrew from 13. He also
had great skill at rhyming and – despite his father trying to thrash ‘
this rhyming nonsense’ out of him, he went
on to write more than 600 hymns.
For all of us, particularly the wilting elderly and the waning youngsters, it was time
for refreshments in St Andrew’s Hall.
(A belated apology to some of my friends if I ignored you today:
if you saw me behaving strangely, muttering to myself, I was just trying to
count the number of genuine walkers. It’s not easy, you have to discount the ‘fellow
travellers’ who walk alongside; in the end I restricted the numbers to those
who carried the hymn sheet and their companions.)
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