August Blessings

“Lord, make me a blessing” I prayed as I began my third journey to Sherborne to visit a friend of many years. A pastor I know often says that “blessed people bless people.” I was certainly blessed by her hospitality, encouragement, fellowship, and simple adventures. After a very busy time of administering exams, organizing English camps, navigating my place in the schools where I worked and the church where I served, and endlessly questioning my intercultural and linguistic skills, my stay in Sherborne was relaxing and rejuvenating. 

 To be sure we did use our language differently. I adjusted to calling dessert “pudding”, though there was no pudding. I learned to call the sidewalk “pavement” and paved roads “tarmac.” We hung the laundry in the garden, which I would have called the yard. The yard, short for courtyard, is where we sat on sunny days to eat lunch or entertain guests who came for tea; I would have called it the patio. I already knew that my British friends called fried potatoes “chips” and potato chips, “crisps.” These were humorous differences in our language that did not interrupt communication. We laughed and good-naturedly teased each other about our linguistic differences, especially when I pointed out that her favorite crisps were in a bag marked “chips.” 

The unplanned, unexpected part of the journey included the adventures exploring my family roots. Places mentioned in my family tree are not far from Sherborne. My friend and her friends got excited about helping me research these places. One of these friends was a retired nurse and health worker who had driven all over Somerset and Dorset. She navigated our adventures to the Hundstone in Yeovil that marked the boundary between parishes and to St. James Church, the tithebarn, and farmhouse in Preston Plunknett built by John Stourton in the early 1400’s. She also found out about the priory where three generations of John Stourtons are buried. It is now private property, so we couldn’t go inside, but we could see it from the outside. 

Another adventure off the beaten path was finding a church and Lady’s Well connected to a wall hanging in the Sherborne Museum. Before being moved to the museum, it hung under 14 layers of wall paper at Donore, where my friend had been to some parties while her friend resided there. Guests hypothesized about the 250 year-old mural behind that wall paper. The wall hanging was about 2 feet by 4½ feet. Connecting the wall hanging in the museum to real places to explore began with an article that my friend gave to me to read. It described the painting (slightly different from my mind's eye) and how the artist fell in love with the crippled client who engaged him. They married in a small village church in Hermitage, which was, according to the story only six miles from Sherborne; according to Google, it was closer to ten. On our adventure, we found the church, which bears little resemblance to the artist’s. In his defence, he was painting from someone else's imagination. I found maps of footpaths of Hermitage and looked for the well, but did not find it.

 It was simple pleasures that separated weekdays from the weekend. On Friday, her friends would pick us up to go to eat fish and chips under the willow tree where a black cat came to beg. On Saturday, we ate Cornish pasties in the yard. On Sunday, we went to church. Our weekdays began with leisurely mornings. Sometimes I worked, getting ready for the new semester. In the afternoons, sometimes we would go on a drive to see the English countryside. Sometimes I would walk somewhere around the town. 

 This morning, I returned to Szeged. Soon I will return to the rhythms of my life here teaching, tutoring, going to church, and squeezing in meetings with friends. While there are no fish and chips or cornish pasties, the memory will linger as will the blessing of Sherborne in August.