Nightcaps

Now Janet is most of the way up the road which follows the western flank of the beautiful Howgill Fells.

On the way, Janet passed the Friends Meeting House at Brigflatts. We discovered that in the early days, Quakers would take nightcaps to their meetings – so that they would be more comfortable when they were imprisoned. In our times too, Quakers are sometimes arrested for actions taken in the name of peace. Would that I and more Christians of other denominations could have that kind of courage.

The burial ground there has headstones all the same size: in death, as in life, people are equal. How unlike the Chapel burial grounds of West Yorkshire, dominated by flashy memorials to the mill owners.

Later we passed through Sedbergh, where the school is embedded into the town.

God give us grace
to respect all people, 
all created by you, 
all deserving of honour:
strong and vulnerable, as we are, 
prone to wrong,
and nursing the seeds of goodness, 
as we are:
help us to know Christ
in others.