What to do on a rainy Bank Holiday

Rain pattering on the conservatory roof (my desk and workspace are located in the conservatory) was until a moment or two ago making quite a restful sound.  But now it's beginning to get heavier and more intrusive, and the wind is beginning to rise as well, so that soon the roof of the lean-to greenhouse next door will start to creak and groan in ways that always alarm me.  One thing is sure - my gardening and DIY plans for today are well and truly shelved.  So what else to do?

My newspaper has helpfully supplied a pull-out section of puzzles, clearly anticipating a bank holiday wash-out.  That'll take care of an hour or so, I suppose.  And then I could go out for a walk.  My all-weather walking gear could do with an outing, and so could I, having eaten rather too well over the weekend.  When the rain first started, I was being put to shame a bit by the honey bees which, despite the weather, continued busily to visit the lavatera flowers, which they love, just outside my window. Mind you, they do seem to have given up now.

I have a book I'd like to start reading, but whether Henning Mankell is a good choice as an author for a dark and gloomy day I'm not so sure.  Maybe a chapter or two over coffee, and that will probably be quite enough.

Of course, I could simply do nothing, which, I suppose, is what bank holidays are for.  In my case my options are limited today by an ear infection which is both painful and somewhat destablising (though it is showing signs of getting better), so a trip to visit family and friends will be, sadly, out of the question.  I'm not up to driving that far, and the weather's against me, too - so I am thrust back on my own devices and my own company.

I do find it frustrating when there's nothing much to do.  I suppose for many of us it's hard to escape the whole Protestant work ethic thing - and when I'm idling (itself a loaded word), I feel guilty and it feels wrong.  And yet I know that the rest of my week is going to be a very busy and quite demanding one, so, logically, a day today doing nothing or not very much - especially as I'm still a bit under the weather - would probably be just what I need. If I can do it.

Many of us spend too much time doing, and not enough just being.  Perhaps I should see how much 'just being' I can manage today.  An alternative thought for the week, then: "Don't just do something, sit there"!

Thought For The Week

"The world is a book, of which those who do not travel read but a single page."

Augustine

Ice Cream Castles

Some words that resonate with me, from Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now" -

Bows and flows of angel hair
and ice cream castles in the air
and feathered canyons everywhere -
I've looked at clouds that way.
But now they only block the sun,
they rain and snow on everyone,
so many things I could have done
but clouds got in my way.
I've looked at clouds from both sides now,
from up and down, and still somehow
it's cloud illusions I recall -
I really don't know clouds at all.

Not Being Strong

People around me need me to be strong, reliable, inventive, resourceful, happy.  I think - I hope - I'm managing to make a decent attempt at all of these, but inside I don't feel very much of any of them. Yesterday I wrote something about how I envy those who are content with where they are; today I was gardening next door to someone who is exactly that, and yes, I do envy him, and why wouldn't I? He has a good home and a good job, in a place where he feels content and well supported, with his family around him.

And yet for me that could never be enough. Am I wired wrong, somewhere inside? Why, when I clearly want to be content, can I not be? I find myself reminded of the Peggy Lee song "Is that all there is?" - written, I think, by Leiber and Stoller. Everything is ultimately disappointing for Miss Lee, who, I think, sang (and recited) the song so well because it chimed in so closely with something in her own personality.

"You look so much happier these days," people have said to me recently on several occasions. "Oh, I am," I usually reply. True. The pressure is off, I've nothing really to worry about, I do enjoy the things I do, and I am surrounded by good people who love me and support me and sustain me. But, though it surely should be, somehow it isn't enough.

So here's the question really, I suppose: am I the exception here, or the norm? Is it me who's a bit odd - or is the odd one out the content and happy person with a sorted and settled life? The existence of art and music and poetry, or the human desire to push back boundaries in science, or exploration, or sporting achievement, might suggest that it's that ache to have more, to go further, that worm of discontent within us, that is the norm. And that is also, for some of us, the motivation to search for God.

Sweet Baby James

This is one of my favourite James Taylor songs, and though there are reasons why I find myself feeling sad as I listen to it, I still choose to do so.  It's a sort of cowboy song, and at the same time a sort of lullaby;  I believe he wrote it for his baby nephew and namesake.  As a song it has a sense of disconnectedness from the world that, when I think about it, is a feature of many of the songs I count among my favourites.

We are waiting for a baby right now.  A grandson.  Not James, but Alex (the name, by the way, of the father of the James in Taylor's song).  He's a bit late, having been expected a week ago (though I suppose that's our schedule, not his!).  As a family, we're operating according to a sort of interim programme, or working timetable, that will need to be immediately and drastically revised once we get the news.  In other words, we're all on tenterhooks.

Back to the song, though.  I suppose I find appeal in the solitariness of the singer, and the sense as he sings of an almost timeless journey just beginning.  I envy the contentment of those who are quite secure and settled in their own little bit of the world, and their set routines and established customs . . . I see them and often I'd like to be like them, but I can't be, it isn't me.  I have a troubled and questing mind that isn't for settling down, and a sneaking sense of a truth glimpsed in the dream times that I can never catch and hold in this world however far and wide I search.

An almost timeless journey just beginning: every next moment is adventure and possibility, and never more so than at a time like this, when we wait together for a new birth, and a new child's first cry.

Thought For The Week

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."

Aristotle

Music

I enjoy participating in acts of worship that do not involve music, but I could never make that my staple fare. To me, music is vital to my expression of faith and indeed to my perception and understanding of faith.  The funeral I assisted at yesterday was small and quiet, but I was glad that (unlike the much larger funeral I attended on the previous day) it included an opportunity to sing.  Some people are not singers, of course, and for some to sing will be a difficult and even perhaps distasteful activity;  but for most of us, to sing together is not just a harmonisation of voices but of hearts and souls - or so I feel.

My good friend Andrey has written a tune to accompany the words I wrote for the 'original hymn' section of the Minsterley Eisteddfod this year.  I'm pleased to say that they won.  But that was a hymn for Trinity Sunday, and words and tune were not matched together in time - we managed to do it only this week, when Andrey and I spent half an hour together at his keyboard.  So I have written a new set of words with harvest in mind.  I offer them below, but of course the tune remains the property of Andrey Chulovskiy.

Lifting our voice as one body we sing

in harvest celebration;

lifting our voices we gather to bring

gifts of our Lord’s creation.

He is the Maker of all things; his love

our life and our salvation:

we join with the song of the angels above

to sing our Harvest Home.

Praise to our God for the works of his hand,

and for the season’s growing.

Praise to our God for the fruits of the land,

his gracious spirit showing.

We who give praise for the power of his love

should seeds of love be sowing,

to join with the song of the angels above

and sing our Harvest Home.

Lord of the Harvest, that all may be fed

we bring these gifts for sharing.

We too are Harvest; with you as our head

to walk in faith we’re daring.

You send us out to the world in your love

to do your work of caring;

at one with the song of the angels above

we sing our Harvest Home.

Giving Up

I spent all yesterday feeling down and despondent.  I can't really say why, exactly, it wasn't in itself a bad day, but sometimes things just all build up and get to you, and you feel like giving up.  When I take the trouble to think things through, I know that my blessings add up to a much bigger pile than the other stuff, and I do need to discipline myself to do that addition sum on a regular basis!  Also, I know that there are people about who value me, need me, and are ready to support me . . . and to whom, quite apart from the self-centred way of approaching this, I have obligations and responsibilities.

So, let's get myself back on track.  But here's another way of approaching the situation :-

A Visit to Cors Dyfi

My nature notes piece for the coming month, as published in a trio of local magazines . . .

Last Saturday we decided to call in at the Montgomeryshire Wildlife Trust’s reserve at Cors Dyfi, just along the road from Machynlleth.  Although there’s a county boundary between the two, Cors Dyfi isn’t far from the RSPB reserve at Ynys Hir, from which this and last years’ SpringWatch programmes were broadcast.  Ynys Hir’s wildlife potential is huge, and there many interesting birds on which the SpringWatch presenters could focus - but there’s one species that is a Cors Dyfi speciality - it’s one of the two places in Wales where ospreys presently nest.

The terrible weather we had in late spring and early summer has meant that many birds have failed to produce young, or haven’t produced the broods one might have normally expected.  That’s been true of the ospreys too, in their second year of breeding at Cors Dyfi.  Only one chick survived out of the three eggs laid, and then only because Wildlife Trust staff intervened at a crucial moment when the parents birds had ceased to feed their hungry but unresponsive chick.  Birds like ospreys feed in response to stimulus, and this chick had grown too weak to ask for food.

Monty, the father, may have been a chick from the successful osprey nest near Welshpool a few years ago.  He is unringed, and the chicks in that nest couldn’t be reached for ringing - and ospreys will often return to the area where they were raised.  They spend winter in West Africa, which seems eminently sensible, and Nora, the mother bird, had already left on her migration when we were there, leaving Monty to provide for the needs of the chick, named Ceulan.  Ceulan is fully fledged, but has not so far begun to hunt for himself.  When we were there, Monty had caught a fish, brought it to Ceulan, then taken it away again to eat himself.  Was this a tactic designed to encourage Ceulan to have his own try at fishing, I wondered?  We were told that the parent ospreys do not actively teach their offspring to fish, and sometimes the chicks will start their migration south having to learn that skill as they go - quite a risky endeavour. 

After a while, we were pleased and relieved to see Monty bring the uneaten half of his fish (a mullet, probably, caught in the estuary), and present it to the very hungry Ceulan.  We could see the actual birds from the hide, but the CCTV images in the visitor centre were excellent.  Cors Dyfi is exactly what it says on the tin - marshy bogland by the River Dyfi (and kept marshy by the water buffalo the Trust use).  So there is no great show of birds other than the ospreys - but we were also delighted by the tits, siskins and lesser redpolls using the feeders by the hide.

Thought For The Week

"There is no dark side in the moon, really. Matter of fact, it's all dark. The only thing that makes it look light is the sun."

Gerry O'Driscoll, doorman at Abbey Road Studios
(part of this quote formed the closing words to the Pink Floyd track 'Eclipse')

Sunshine

It's been a lovely sunny day today, and I've made the most of it, spending time in four gardens and working pretty hard in each one.  Next week doesn't look so good, so I need to do what I can while I can! Anyway, Ann and I went on to have a very pleasant meal out (in our local Greek restaurant) after my hard day's work. In between pulling weeds, I've been reflecting on all the stuff I wrote about yesterday.  I closed my comments yesterday with a reference to the need for prayer.  So what shall I be praying for?

I think the intention of my praying must be to clarify my relationship with the Church and my relationship with God.  They are not one and the same.  The status of priest is mine because the Church has made me a priest;  and because currently the Church denies me a licence, I am a priest who cannot be a priest, in any practical way.  But the beginning of that journey to priesthood has to do not with what the Church says to me, or asks of me, or recognises in me - but in my sense of God's call and prompting.  What the Church does with that is to interpret it as a call to ordination.  Usually the Church is right in its interpretation, and sometimes it is wrong.

Right or wrong, what then happens is that the individual person is locked into a relationship with the Church within which, if all goes well, that sense of God's call can deepen and become fruitful.  But sometimes what happens is the reverse of this, and a person becomes stifled and cramped, imprisoned by the Church as institution.  The bird that should fly free is instead locked in a cage, however gilded that cage may be.

I find I am not worried or distressed by yesterday's letter.  I shall not have sleepless nights, or I hope I won't anyway.  There've been enough of them over the past months.  I am a little unsettled, perhaps.  I don't expect, or even want, particularly, any sort of instant resolution - but I do hope that the coming weeks might bring me to a sense of being in process, of having some kind of programme ahead of me.  I've been strung along often enough, and for long enough.  So I hope to be treated fairly, prayerfully, considerately, and as me, as who I am, not just according to some formula.

Very Slightly Ajar

I am a gardener who used to be a vicar.  Simple statement.  Gardening isn't the only work I do in fact, as I also work for a funeral director . . . but I'm self-employed as a gardener, I have the interest and the fairly steep uphill learning curve of trying to start a small business (and in a recession!), and I am to a degree fulfilling a dream and a calling, as I have always enjoyed gardening, was educated to degree level in botany, and am, on the quiet, something of an expert on weeds.

But I also had - and have - a dream and a calling that is to do with the ministry of a priest.  The reason why I'm not currently operating as such is complex and painful, though not - I would dare to say - scandalous.  I hit the buffers, let us say;  I hurt some people, perhaps in the end myself most of all, and I let some people down.  I also - thank God - had good friends who stood by me and walked with me, and good advisers who let me talk and, where necessary, talked to me, sometimes in pretty hard words.

And I find myself to be in a good place.  I enjoy the view from Brookfield.  But the dream and calling are still there.  Is there a way back?  No, not least because I don't want it.  I shall be very happy never to be a vicar again (a vicar being someone who has the job of running one, or these days very often many, church parishes).  But I am still a priest;  I'm not sure I want to be, exactly, but it is what I am, and what I ought to be, it is something that God is still calling out of me.

I have investigated whether there is a way forward, into a new stage of priestly ministry.  I could be used;  I could be useful;  I have my hopes. Or had. A letter this morning rather suggests that - in the short term at least - my hopes may not be well founded.  I have felt very discouraged, reading it . . . or at least, on first reading it.  But it is not an unfriendly or unsympathetic letter;  and, even if only very slightly ajar, a door remains open.  There is the chance to talk.  Before that, though, there is also the need to pray.

Gardening

I seem to be in demand as a gardener, which is, I suppose, a good and honourable occupation for a retired clergyman.  The recession does not seem to have greatly affected - as yet - the desire of people to be surrounded by well-kept gardens, and their readiness to pay someone to do it.

It helps, I suppose, that I know fairly well what I am doing.  I'm not a garden designer, I don't lay paths or install decking or put up fences;  I don't even cut lawns and hedges if I can help it (though I do do some).  But I do know my plants, and I can distinguish a weed from the sort of thing people want to keep, and I am hard working and thorough.  So I'm getting work, and therefore getting paid . . . more to the point, I really enjoy what I'm doing, which is worth a lot.

I'm also quite a quick learner.  I don't pretend to know things I don't, and I always try to be honest and open about my lack of knowledge, and any deficiencies of technique I may have.  The most obvious of these, I think, is that I'm far too kind as a gardener.  I cut things back too timidly, and when garden plants stray into the 'weed' category by being too invasive and crowding others out, I'm loth to remove them.

A certain hardening of my heart is therefore needed, along with, perhaps, a bit more confidence in the ability of plants to recover from being cut back or weeded out.  In gardening, as in many other areas of life, there really are times when you have to be cruel to be kind.

Of course, I also have to listen to my client - views vary a lot!  For some, Welsh poppies (to take one example) are a pest of the first order, to be rooted out on sight;  for others, they are a delight, to be treasured.  The truth lies some way between the two, for me anyway:  The Welsh poppy is a lovely and delicate flower, and a floral symbol of the nation even if not one of the two 'official' ones . . . but there's no denying their ability to spread, and the annoying deepness of their tap roots.

"Treat this garden as if it's your own," I was told in one place.  I wouldn't dare!  Each of the gardens I visit and work in is different and special, and in some way expresses the character of its owner.  My job as a gardener begins always with listening and learning.  And it's worth (to close these thoughts) reflecting on the fact that mission and ministry also should begin with listening and learning;  so much damage is caused by those who rush in, sure they have all the answers, and creating for themselves at first glance a version of the truth that then remains impervious to all subsequent information.

I have encountered this myself - been a victim of it, I suppose.  I hope that on my part, as a minister, just as in my gardening work, I can remember to take the time and the trouble, and have the humility of spirit, to begin by listening and learning.

Ants

As I sit in my conservatory / study writing this, I am surrounded by the tiny corpses of small winged black ants.  We have reached the time of year when ants fly in order to mate, and so hundreds of small winged males, and a smaller number of larger winged females have been leaving the nests, and climbing to the highest point they can, before flying upwards, where the highest flying male will mate with a female to begin a new dynasty.

Sadly, for one local nest, one of the highest places to crawl to seems to bring them through a small crack in the wooden frame to the inside of the window by my desk.  Theirs has been a doomed quest.  Dead ants litter the windowsill (I shall clear them away after writing this);  others have flown into the spider webs on my windows - left there because I am (a) fairly scruffy and (b) extremely tolerant of spiders:  they have been quickly spirited away by the local spiders, to provide a protein-rich diet for the foreseeable future.

The ants that do make it into the open air also have a fairly uncertain future.  Birds converge from far and wide on a column of flying ants, and you suspect that more will be eaten than escape.  The male ants don't last long once they return to earth, either, whether or not they've been successful in their mating endeavours.  They aren't needed any more, and for the remainder of the year an ant colony is entirely female.

So we learn of the prodigality of nature, revealed in so many ways.  So much seems to be wasted, so much is sacrificed so that the few may survive.  How this impacts on me as a Christian depends on how I'm feeling at the time, to be honest.  I can allow the prodigality of nature to act as a parable of the prodigality of the gracious God who pours into our lap "good measure, pressed down and running over."  But sometimes - quite often, in fact - it can be hard to go on believing in a kind and loving God, when his living creation seems to include so much which to our eyes is wantonly cruel and wasteful.  Certainly, it takes some effort to, as Tennyson wrote:
(trust) God was love indeed
and love Creation's final law,
tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw
with ravine, shriek'd against his creed.

Of course, this difficulty is nothing new.  It is addressed in the creation narratives in Genesis, as well as in the prophetic words of Micah and Isaiah.  Human life begins in the orderly tranquillity of a garden (though even then, the serpent, himself one of God's creatures, is waiting round the corner);  and when that peace is attained that is God's design for his people, "the lion will eat straw like the ox".

Anyway, no resolution to this discussion here.  I remain a believer, while having some sympathy with those who can't be.  Maybe what helps maintain this line of belief within me is the innate capacity I seem to have to appreciate beauty in things that are not of themselves beautiful, and to identify as cruel and wasteful events in the biosphere that, to the cold eye of biological analysis, do not in fact have moral content.  They are just the way life happens.  Meanwhile, I have some corpses of ants to tidy away from my window.

Thought For The Week

"Flowers . . . are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Silence is Golden

A cover by the Tremeloes of a Four Seasons song, I think;  the Tremeloes' biggest hit, and one of the first singles I bought (the first, by the way, was 'Cast Your Fate to the Wind' by Sounds Orchestral, which is still one of the tracks on my mp3).  I loved the song 'Silence is Golden', and still do, though that isn't among the tracks on my mp3 player.  'Silence is golden, but my eyes still see,' the singer tells us.

I'll not bother looking it up now - it's far too late at night as I sit here writing this - but I'm fairly sure that it's the apostle James, among the New Testament writers, who gives us his opinion on the human tongue as a means of doing great damage.  We are beginning to realise that bullying, in school or in the work place, is just as real when it's words, rather than fists, that are used to belittle or harm or ridicule someone.  A word out of turn, carelessly spoken, can have immense repercussions, and we should all be careful to guard our tongues ('Do not initiate vocal chords without first engaging brain' is a good mantra to hold to).  A word deliberately spoken with the intention to do damage is, for me, something quite reprehensible - even if what is said is true, if it is said in order to do harm rather than with good intent, it would be better left unsaid.

Silence is golden.  But perhaps the song is more about seeing some harm being done, seeing someone sad and hurt, and keeping quiet about it, saying nothing.  We do that so often, not wanting to poke our nose in, and influenced perhaps by the stories one hears about those who do get involved and speak out getting nothing but trouble for their pains.  Or else, of course, we just want a quiet life.  'It isn't really my concern,' we might say, and in the next breath, 'but it's a crying shame someone doesn't do something!'

How often we just sit and let things happen!  Evil comes into the world (as someone said, I've no idea who) not so much because bad people do bad things, as because good people let them.  So how golden is silence after all?

Steam

One of the nice things about living in Welshpool is that we have a steam railway, narrow gauge, running the eleven miles or so from Welshpool to Llanfair Caereinion.  It's been a while since I last actually travelled that route by train, and I must get round to doing it again sometime soon.  It's very attractive, running along by the River Banwy for part of the length, and through rolling and wooded Welsh countryside throughout . . . and many of the trains - most, I should say - are hauled by one or other of the two original locomotives "Earl" and "Countess", named for the Earl and Countess of Powys, through some of whose land the railway runs.

It's the whistle of the steam loco that I really love;  just now, you can hear them through the day every day, as the railway is at its busiest season.  I'll miss that sound when the season ends.  I suppose it takes me back to my childhood, when the sound of steam trains was so familiar.  I love all kinds of trains, and enjoy travelling on the modern high-speed lines, but steam engines are almost living beings, there is a breath running through them.

The W & Ll train moves only very slowly, especially when travelling out from Welshpool.  Golfa Bank is pretty steep, even on the gentler gradient the railway makes, and it's long, too.  Next month Welshpool Rotary Club will be sponsoring its second 'Race The Train' event, when cyclists will pit their muscles and pedals against the 11.15 from Welshpool.  They'd beat the train easily if they raced along the main road all the way;  instead, though, the cycle route takes in some narrow lanes, and rather more in the way of gradients, both up and down, than the steam train will face.  It'll be quite a challenge even for fit and active racers - and it would be far too much of one for me, I know!

My challenge is to help organise the event.  There's a lot to do in the next six or seven weeks!  I toured the route yesterday, and now I have loads of paperwork to get through.  Then we need to get word out to cycle clubs and the general public . . . and then - well, let's just hope for a dry day!