So, we planned our walk carefully. The taxi dropped us exactly where we wanted to be dropped. The valley was spread out below us and it was a beautiful morning. Peaceful in the sunshine, nothing could go wrong – until we started for the path descending through the trees and down the contours to the valley floor – and saw the notice. A wildfire had made the path too dangerous to use so the authorities closed it and threatened a huge fine for in return for a breach of the rules.
While we consulted a map to solve this first world problem we explored the immediate area. A hillside shrine was obviously looked after by someone, and a little way off set in the rock was the figure of an angel. Ruth Duck’s hymn, ‘when we are tested and wrestle alone’ (StF 240) is about very different struggles from those of having a holiday plan thwarted, and yet the second verse still resonates: ‘When in the desert we cry for relief, pleading for paths marked by certain belief,
lift us to love you beyond sign and test, trusting your presence, our only true rest.’
When our plans do not work out it is easy to suffer an attack of self-pity and crave certainty about the path ahead. Our day ended quite satisfactorily despite some anxiety about where to go next, but we did have a walk and did see some phenomenal views.
The people who formerly traversed dangerous paths in the course of daily living had no warning notices and will have relied more on the good offices of the guardian angel than did we, with our maps and GPS locater and aversion to breaking the rule put in place to protect us. And then again, perhaps it was the guardian angel who put up the notice saying, ‘Footpath Closed’. Perhaps the notice prevented an accident as surely as the former generations trusted God to keep them safe when faced with risk.
If you search the internet for ‘Curral das Freiras’ you can find the history of the Nuns’ Valley in Madeira. I find it fascinating and the place beautiful – somewhere horror, harshness and hope all combine to remind us that not every problem was or is a disaster. When we need to see the way, it is worth pausing a moment to follow where God guides. I believe he uses notices and maps to help us just as he gives and always has given novel ideas and revealed secret places of safety to his people needing shelter.
A Prayer
God, in all the problems of lives, real an imaginary, may we remember to pause for long enough to pick up the path you have set for us to follow. May we rejoice in the tensions between horror, harshness and hope that remind us that where plans fail, faith delivers. Amen.