Berwick Thought for the Week article: Lost Places

It was on the evening of October 3 that Brother Harold Palmer, a hermit following the path of Francis, died.

A little further afield than Berwick, but closer than Assisi, in the hills above Powburn, Brother Harold had a calling to turn a ruined farm building into a place of prayer and retreat.

In the over 50 years that Brother Harold lived, prayed and worked at the ruin-turned-hermitage that became known as Shepherds Law, people were drawn by his vision of a place to meet God in the beauty of nature.

In this, he followed the path of St Francis – who rebuilt several chapels in the countryside around his Italian homeland.

For both St Francis and Brother Harold, giving up comfort to work hard to create a space for prayer, there would be those who saw them as mad. Why give up comfort for the sake of rebuilding some abandoned by others? What’s the sense in hard work if there’s no profit at the end?

What St Francis and Brother Harold show us is that there are no lost places to God. We can struggle to see why or where God is in the world, but what a change it makes when we believe that all places are loved by God.

In that abandoned allotment or an old building once full of community life, rather than seeing it as lost because others don’t care, maybe God is showing us that we are being called to show his love for all lost places and peoples.

Rev Alex Firman is Assistant Curate in Lowick, Ford & Etal and Ancroft, living in Ford Village. Alex is originally from Suffolk and has lived in Northumberland for just over a year. His hobbies include making marmalade, walking and a random interest in history.