"If you believe . . .

. . . there's no mountain you can't climb,
'cause if you get it wrong, you'll get it right next time."

(Gerry Rafferty, 'Get It Right Next Time')

A Blessing Poem . . .

. . . of my own, to follow the Celtic blessing I posted yesterday:

Soft wing beats over the water,

the grey skies of evening,

salt on the air,

and the scent of saltmarsh flowers:

God's way be your way,

God's love be your beacon,

may gentle echoes of angel song

lift up your heart to Him.

This will be among the poems in my new collection, soon to be published.

Celtic Blessing

I came across this blessing today, at a funeral, and loved the imagery of the words.  I don't know who wrote it, but I hope I shan't break any copyrights by sharing it :-

May the blessing of the rain be on you,
the soft sweet rain.
May it fall upon your spirit,
so that all the little flowers may spring up,
and shed their sweetness on the air.
May the blessing of the great rains be on you,
may they beat upon your spirit
and wash it fair and clean,
to leave there many a shining pool
where the blue of heaven shines,
and sometimes a star.

My Three Favourite . . .

. . . Pink Floyd tracks:

(1) High Hopes
(2) Time
(3) See Emily Play

Thought For The Week

"Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass on a summer day listening to the murmur
 of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is hardly a waste of time."

John Lubbock

My Three Favourite . . .

. . . songs by Ray Davies:

(1) Waterloo Sunset
(2) Autumn Almanac
(3) Working Man's Cafe

Perspectives

I've just been watching that yogurt ad on the telly, where the pot of yogurt looks absolutely huge, as small people and their little machines stoke it full of goodness;  then at the last moment, a child and her mother run forward to the yogurt pot, and you realise it's all been a matter of cleverly applied perspective.

Perspective matters;  ask any artist.  Ask any politician . . . no, on second thoughts, it's rarely a good idea to ask questions of politicians . . . but nonetheless, the big statesmanlike decisions do require a keen grasp of perspective, a keen understanding of how things properly connect together and relate to each other.

And perspective matters in personal life.  There are times when, flushed with some small success, I feel all but invincible;  there are times when, after a slight or rejection, or when something I've tried has gone wrong, it's felt like the end of the world.  On both occasions there is a lack of perspective - the success wasn't that great (and usually the next thing after that feeling of euphoria is that something trips me up and I'm flat on my face again);  the failure wasn't that deep a pit - something of someone will help me rise up out of it again.

The sober reality, the true perspective, is this:  I may have done well, but that doesn't mean I shan't need the help and support of others next time;  or, alternatively, I may have done badly, but that doesn't mean that the help I need will be refused me;  all I have to do is ask.  As a Christian, I can express this as a faith message by saying that (1) there is never a point in my life in which I am so successful and so self-sufficient that I have no need of God, and (2) there is never a point in my life in which I am so wretched and degraded that God will withhold his love from me.  The single word that holds those two thoughts together is 'grace', the word Christians use when talking of God's free and unmerited love for us:  whether we're on an up in life, or whether we're on a down, God will never cease to deal graciously with us, as a Father to his child.

My Three Favourite . . .

. . . Beach Boys singles:

(1) Heroes and Villains
(2) God Only Knows
(3) Do It Again

Planting Geraniums

A friend gave me some species geranium offcuts, oh, ages ago.  I put them in water and waited for them to develop some roots so that I could pot them up.  There they were on the kitchen windowsill, and, to be honest, I think I stopped seeing them there.  Occasionally, I would top up the water, and think, "You know, I need to get round to potting these!" - but I never did.

I can think of many past occasions when the story above would conclude with my throwing dead or dying bits of geranium into the compost bin;  thankfully, not this time!  I got home today, saw them (oh, all right, had them 'mentioned' to me by Ann), and got on with the job of potting up.  Two pots in the greenhouse, some others set in a container in the garden.  Let's see how they do!

But there are so many things we fail to notice, things we could do but we don't get round to it;  people we almost call, but we'll do it tomorrow when there's more time.  Then one day there isn't any more time.  I find myself reflecting on the famous story of the rich man (Dives is his legendary name, though that simply means 'Rich Man') and the poor man (Lazarus, he gets a name in the actual story, recorded by Luke), as told by Jesus.

I always picture Dives, somewhat anachronistically, sweeping out of his Hollywood mansion in his white Rolls with the tinted windows.  He was a religious man, we know that;  perhaps, on his day, he was a kind man, as well, and prepared, in theory at least, to give handouts to beggars.  But to do that for real would need him to actually notice Lazarus, there, clearly in need, right by his gate.  It wasn't that he wouldn't have helped, as I see it - he just never noticed, just never took the time.

A bit like me, really, far too often!  For Dives, one day it was too late;  all his chances to do good had gone. The moral?  Just do it - don't put it off . . . and look, notice, be aware, react, respond!

And when it rains . . .

. . . there's a rainbow,
and all of the colours are black;
it's not that the colours aren't there,
it's just imagination they lack . . .

Paul Simon "My Little Town"

Thought For The Week

“Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet,

and the winds long to play with your hair.”

Khalil Gibran

Scent

Our garden is really quite small, but it's private, not overlooked at all, and a delight to sit, especially in on a sunny day, being sheltered from most of the prevailing winds.  It's also well stocked with attractive flowers, and especially with well-scented flowers.

This means that we do have to share our ground with the local bees and other insects, but on the whole I don't mind.  Locally, I'm told that many beekeepers have been having to feed their bees with sugar, as it's been too cold and wet for them to forage for pollen and nectar;  let's hope the improving weather makes life better both for the bees themselves and those who keep them.

For me, however beautiful a flower may be, it's only doing half a job is it has no scent.  When my wife and I are touring gardens, or for that matter just walking in the countryside, we're always pausing not only to admire blooms and blossoms, but to sniff at them.  But the colours and scents that we find lovely are also highly purposeful: plants wouldn't be doing these things if there wasn't a pay-off - and the pay-off is the sort of insect activity that not only keeps beekeepers happy but ensures a new generation both of the flowers we find so attractive, and of course the insects and other creatures that pollenate them.

Not all flowers smell attractive to us, of course.  Some need to attract the sort of insects that aren't attracted to the kind of smells we like - flies for example, that are much more enamoured of rotting flesh than of honey pots. The huge flowers of the Asian genus Rafflesia, for example, famously have "a penetrating smell more repulsive than any buffalo carcass in an advanced stage of decomposition" (Mjoberg, 1928).  Closer to home, the stinking iris (Iris foetidissima) really does do what it says on the plant label, and the quite attractive yellow archangel (Galium galeobdolon) which we use as ground cover at Brookfield Road has a specific name that suggests it "stinks like a weasel" which, though I haven't ever sniffed a whole lot of weasels, is probably true.

They all have their part to play, and a garden is such a good place in which to see the interconnectedness of nature at work.  Just now, with the evening sun still lingering on our shed roof and the sounds and smells of nearby barbecues suggesting a bit of summer has actually happened here at last, it's lovely to see the bees still busily at work on our lavender.

Recording

Ann and I have been sharing in a recording session tonight, with a local choir we sing with.  What an interesting experience!  We were at Gregynog Hall, near Newtown, in the music room, which is a small concert venue with excellent acoustics.  We have been there to hear The Sixteen, also the King's Singers - and our friend Andrey Chulovskiy giving a piano recital.  And we've sung there ourselves in the past.

But a recording session requires a very disciplined effort at listening to one another, and an equal discipline in not being heard as a single voice, but blending in.  Certain pieces had to be done bit by bit, though at least one was recorded in virtually a single take.  Sometimes a whole section would have to be scrapped, simply because one person held a note fractionally too long;  or certain notes hadn't been held long enough.  One short piano intro had to be re-done simply because someone was breathing a mite too heavily.

It's important to recognize that each voice is important, but none is more important than the others.  Together, we can make a blend that works, provided we're disciplined and aware, ready to support one another and absolutely fixed on our conductor. That's a good recipe for living, it seems to me, as well as for singing!

Rainbow

From the days of Noah, rainbows have always been taken as a sign of hope and promise.  Obviously, these days we understand the science and we know that what we have is simply a meteorological effect that can be fully explained . . . but each rainbow is still a thing of beauty, and, if I'm honest, for me still as much a spiritual high as a physical phenomenon.

Tonight's was really special:  we could see the whole bow (it came to earth at the local scrapyard, and I can think of nowhere better to look for a crock of gold!);  it had a faint reflected bow inside it, if you looked really hard, and a clearer outer reflected bow too.  It was extremely bright, and quite long-lasting, as we enjoyed a sunshower at the end of what had been quite a pleasant day - much more so than forecast, in fact.

I was talking on the phone to my mother when the rainbow appeared;  it lasted the entire conversation, and then continued to shine long enough for me to grab my camera and take a shot or two.  Ours has been a damp and dismal summer thus far, but maybe the rainbow is a sign of better and brighter and sunnier times to come.

Jackdaw

As the river turned black below the swirling willows

I turned my collar, hurried for home,

cursed the rain.  But cursing

isn’t really my thing, I don’t

do it very well;  certainly

it neither stopped the rain

nor warmed my heart.  And yet

maybe this curse conjured up something

(if you believe that sort of stuff):  a jackdaw,

young bird I suppose, crashed down in front of me on the path,

looked back in astonishment at my lumbering figure

but didn’t fly again, maybe couldn’t, or didn’t dare.

Instead, he busied along in front of me

till the path left the willows, to dive

into the shelter of some taller trees.

There I stopped, not as much breath

as I used to have.  And the bird stopped as well, looked at me again,

tipped his head to one side for a moment,

then hopped into a thicket of nettles and thorns

and was gone.

A dark angel to match me and maybe to cheer me too,

on this dark day?

Not all angels have white wings.  Or maybe we were

just kindred souls for a stretch,

man and bird, bird and man:  there’s

not that much between us,

two creatures of dust and ashes,

the product of our genetic chemistries -

except that he could have flown,

had he chosen to, or dared to.

Swithun

Well, we got through St Swithun's Day, yesterday, without any rain.  Today, however, it's been coming down like stair rods (as, for some reason, they say) - but we can't lay the blame on the saint.  Swithun - who had been a holy and generous Bishop of Winchester - famously did not want his tomb to be moved inside the cathedral;  he wished to lie where the rain could fall on his grave. When, some few years after his death, the saint's remains were moved to a new site inside the church, a heavy shower of rain marked the saint's displeasure.

In fact that story seems to date from long after the event, and there are no contemporary records (the grave was moved in the tenth century) to show that there was such a shower.  Nonetheless, the tradition that if it rains on St Swithun's Day it will rain for the next forty is long-founded.  And it is on the whole not without credibility, I think - not in terms of the miraculous intervention of a Saxon saint, but of the established patterns of British weather.

If a spell of unsettled weather has established itself to the extent that there is rain around the middle of July, it is, sadly, more than likely that similar conditions will persist through much of the rest of the summer.  And since it rained on Saturday and today, the fact that we had a miraculously dry day on which to celebrate St Swithun won't make much difference to the likely weather patterns on from this point.  (Anyway, it's a Leap Year this year - maybe the saint is a day out in his reckoning!) Where the weather is concerned, we get what we get, and just have to put up with it.

Having said that, there are signs that the jet stream (more to blame than any saint for our cool and rainy summer) might be moving to a more northerly latitude, and the weatherman I watched last night was prepared to hint that things could settle down and warm up later in the week.  Frankly, I'm not optimistic, and he certainly wasn't making any promises, but it would be nice for me, and the devotees of St Swithun, to be proved wrong.

Thought For The Week

"A garden was the primitive prison, till man, with Promethean felicity and boldness, luckily sinned himself out of it."
Charles Lamb

Roses Are Red . . .

Came across this little verse, and rather liked it:


"Roses are red,
Violets are blue;
But they don't get around
Like the dandelions do."

Slim Acres

In the Arms of an Angel

“In the arms of an angel”:

music playing,

sunlight slanting through leaded lights,

the chapel stark and half empty,

the black coats before him as the men walked slowly in,

the floral tribute trembling

as they carried the coffin forward.

“In the arms of an angel”

someone was singing.  He couldn’t see

any angels

but it would be nice if they could be

listening somewhere.

She had passed from here

while still in the grip of that incurable disease

we call hope, in which

the angels are always attentive

and we are the heart of their song.

He discovered, as he took his place in the front pew

that she had, after all, left a little of her hope behind.

“In the arms of an angel

may she rest already safe,” he prayed,

as the minister cleared his throat

to read the verses.

Clouds

What a wet summer it's been so far!  Looking out of my window this evening, all I can see over the housetops opposite is cloud - slate grey, rain-filled, louring cloud. We can get very depressed by clouds, can't we? ". . . but now they only block the sun, they rain and snow on everyone" ('Both Sides Now').

That song, of course, reminds us that there are two sides to clouds, as to most things. On a bright and sunny day, clouds can be the threat of thunder and rain, or they can be just attractive and magical shapes against the blue of the sky: "Bows and flows of angel hair, and ice-cream castles in the air, and feather canyons everywhere, I've looked at clouds that way" ('Both Sides Now', again).

In scripture, clouds are rarely gloomy things. Clouds are associated with glory; the voice of God issues from a cloud, and Jesus at his Ascension is hidden by a cloud from the sight of his disciples. Clouds are signs of blessing, as a well-known hymn reminds us: "the clouds ye so much dread are big with mercy, and shall break in blessings on your head."

In a rainy British summer, it can sometimes be hard to see clouds in such a way. On the grey days of our lives, we can sometimes be tempted to lose hope, and to think that nothing will ever come good and right again. The truth is that while there may be times when we are unaware of God's love, and of his provision and care for us, we remain held in his embrace. However far from him we may feel we are, he watches over us and watches for us, like the father awaiting his prodigal son.

And rain is itself a blessing.  When scripture tells us that "rain falls both on the just and on the unjust", we might think in terms of bad things happening to good and bad people alike. Far from it: we are being told that both the deserving and the undeserving are alike the recipients of God's blessing. The same blessing is there for all, even on the greyest days: the challenge is what to do with it, how to use it, how to give glory to the Lord of mercy.

Thought For The Week

"Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is the ash."


Leonard Cohen 

The Fullness of Joy

The fullness of joy is to behold God in everything.
God is the ground, the substance,
the teaching, the teacher,
the purpose, and the reward for which every soul labours.

Mother Julian of Norwich

Strange Sight

I was out last night for a drink and a curry, and got home (in the car, as I’d been on the soft drinks all night, first J2O I’ve ever had in an Indian restaurant) just after midnight, to see a strange white apparition on our neighbour’s drive. Weird, I thought, very strange. So I parked up, got out of the car, and stared at the apparition, which basically just stood there and stared back. It was . . .


. . . a white peacock. Completely white - crown, tail feathers and all.  Just in case this was some kind of strange mirage brought on by lack of alcohol, I fetched Ann out to see this strange sight for herself. The peacock was still there, though by this time it had strolled - or strutted, really - some way along the road. It glanced back at us disdainfully, and continued on its way in a sedate fashion.  To be honest, I half expected to see a dead white peacock in the road this morning, but thankfully that was not the case.  So I presume it just wandered off home (wherever that may be; we do hear them calling from time to time).

Weeds

Those who know me well will know also that I have a sneaking admiration for weeds - for those plants which so ably exploit our wild edges and forgotten bits, and indeed, any bit of soil we turn over, and then turn away from and neglect for a while.  I called to look at a garden the other day that I cleared and planted earlier in the season, and was amazed at how quickly weeds had carpeted the open soil.  There must have been plenty of seeds from previous years, just waiting for their chance to germinate.

Weeds get in the way of our crops.  This morning I've been hauling weeds out of veg beds for another client - often a very satisfying way of spending a morning (even more so when you get paid for it!).  But many of our crops were weeds to begin with, and some of our present-day weeds used to be crop plants.  I had to ask my client whether one particular plant next to her lettuces was wanted or unwanted:  it was wanted - but two other species in the same bed, condemned as weeds, would have tasted just as good in a salad bowl.

What's to admire in a weed?  The speed and efficiency with which they exploit opportunities, I suppose - I wish I could be half as good.  Then there is the persistence with which they hang on in there:  perennial weeds via their deep roots that you can't easily shift, annuals by the seeds which they produce both speedily and prolifically, and which often persist well in the soil, just waiting their time.  Many weeds are quite flexible, too, able to exploit a number of habitats, and to fight their corner in a variety of situations.

What's to disapprove of?  I suppose weeds are by their nature useless (from our point of view - even though as I've already hinted, the transition from useless weed to useful crop can sometimes be a short step).  But they do take up space that the gardener would want to use more productively, and I suppose in that sense weeds are in it for themselves, they are by definition selfish plants.

Though that raises another issue:  who defines that?  Whose right is it to say what is productive and useful, and what isn't?  And aren't all living things by nature selfish, in it for themselves?  Ecosystems are balanced states in which a variety of different species of living thing live together - but in practice that balance is a balance of mostly competing and only very rarely co-operating forces, so far as I can see, anyway.

So I seem to have talked myself out of using weeds as either a positive or a negative moral example.  No matter.  I still think they're worthy competitors.

Bullfinch

I was walking into town this morning after calling at a friend's house, and my route took in a section of canal towpath where the canal crosses a brook.  This is often a good place to glimpse grey wagtails (an unfortunate name, I always feel, for what is a very colourful little bird).  No wagtails in view today, but a pair of bullfinches, of which the male especially has to be one of the most brightly colourful birds we see in our gardens and parks.  Indeed, someone not so long ago who saw one in her garden insisted to me that "it must have been something escaped from an aviary, it was too bright to be a British bird."  The quite dramatic rose pink of the male bullfinch, coupled with his black crown and tail, white wing-bar and the white rump which is what I immediately had spotted as the pair flew for cover across my line of sight - this is an unmistakable combination.  The back of both male and female birds is grey - but even this is quite a rich and splendid grey; the bright rose pink of the male is replaced in the female by salmon pink, less striking, but still quite attractive. I think bullfinches are fewer in number than they used to be, but I seem to have seen quite a few this year, so they're certainly still in business round here!

Roses

The roses in our garden are a delight this year;  there are just so many flowers.  It may be all the rain - it's doing it again as I write these words.  Though I did also prune them pretty hard, and I've fed all the plants in those borders fairly well.

To be honest, I'm not a great fan of roses, or haven't been.  For me they've always seemed such a lot of work, and of course however hard I try I'll always manage to snag a thorn!  You have to prune them, once, twice usually, and then make sure they're properly fed, and that you remove any suckers that appear - which of course have even more thorns than the flowering stems;  they're a magnet for aphids, and then there's black spot on the leaves, all kinds of pests and diseases it seems;  and you have to keep dead-heading them to persuade them to keep flowering;  not to mention the fact that this one has tall stems that keep blowing down, and then spear you viciously when you try to stake or tie them back up . . .

. . . but this year I'm nearly persuaded it's worth it.  These are such tremendous flowers.  It's just a pity that it keeps raining, and I can't get out there and enjoy their company!

Thought For The Week

"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt."

Abraham Lincoln