Consider The lilies of the field whose bloom is brief:— We are as they; Like them we fade away, As doth a leaf.
Consider The sparrows of the air of small account: Our God doth view Whether they fall or mount,— He guards us too.
Consider The lilies that do neither spin nor toil, Yet are most fair:— What profits all this care And all this coil?
Consider The birds that have no barn nor harvest-weeks; God gives them food:— Much more our Father seeks To do us good.
This poem is full of trust! Let us take confidence from the Easter event and rejoice in the care Our Father has for us, in time and eternity. Let us spread that joy, day by day.
Just before we turn into Holy Week, here’s a reflection from Eddie Gilmore, now ensconced in L’Arche Ireland. I should have borrowed this earlier in Lent but it can remind us to focus on next week’s events, and set aside distractions, however good and right it would be to pay attention to them at other times. Thank you, Eddie!
If you click on ”L’Arche Ireland” below you’ll find the whole of Eddie’s reflection alongside much that is very interesting and even (just now) distracting. The rest of Eddie’s article is worth reading now !!!
What, I wonder, would Jesus have done with his smartphone if he had been going off into the desert for forty days in 2024?
He would probably have been tempted to take it with him. He was human, after all, as well as being divine. Ah, sure there might be an important message, he might have surmised. Or, like me, he might fancy having a little peep at ‘Sacred space’ or listen to some Taizé chants to get him in the mood for prayer. And then maybe, while he was on Youtube, he could just see a few of the goals from the previous week’s Premier League matches. A little bit of celebrity gossip? Hey, where’s the harm in that? We all need our bit of escapism, don’t we? You can’t be praying all the time.
And then, I like to think, the battery would run out on Jesus’ smartphone and that he would take a deep breath and feel perhaps a tinge of panic but then relief. And that he would walk further into the desert, where he would still face temptations: for power, prestige, acclaim. Temptations, big or small, will always be there. But perhaps, without the distraction of the phone, he could now face those temptations full on, and a little bit more aware and prepared.
I like to think as well that, without the constant pinging of that phone, Jesus would be a little bit more conscious of what was around him; for deserts can be bleak but they can also be places of beauty. And I like to think that he would take heart in the words of Isaiah (C. 35):
The desert and the parched land will be glad. The wilderness will rejoice and blossom. Like the crocus, it will burst into bloom. It will rejoice greatly and shout for joy.
And we can put flowers on the Altar again in just a few days’ time!
I think I’m stuck, for the time being, with my two phones but I hope that during this season of Lent I might have a bit more freedom around their use so that I can be a little better prepared for whatever battles I will have to face with the devil, and so that I can be a little more able to see the incredible beauty in what can appear at times like a bleak world.
I’ve half a mind to shake myself Free just for once from London, To set my work upon the shelf And leave it done or undone;
To run down by the early train, Whirl down with shriek and whistle, And feel the bluff North blow again, And mark the sprouting thistle Set up on waste patch of the lane Its green and tender bristle.
And spy the scarce-blown violet banks, Crisp primrose leaves and others, And watch the lambs leap at their pranks And butt their patient mothers.
This extract from Christina Rossetti’s poem, A Farm Walk is almost a poem within a poem. What will getting out of London for a day do for her – or the assumed ‘he’ who speaks here? One thing each of us could profitably do is shake ourselves, get out of the rut and breathe fresh air, look around and see – things we maybe overlook day by day. These white violets are hard to spot near the edge of a local park. In a couple of weeks, if you did not know where to look, they would be hiding, ever more successfully, under the grass and weeds that surround them.
Even the sight of the photographs shakes away a layer of stress! That earliest of orchids, rising amid the primroses; the companion planting arranged by nature in both pictures. If you can’t get out of town, make for your back garden or local park. Do it today, as part of your Lenten almsgiving to yourself!
Rossetti, in the rest of her poem mourns a lost opportunity, perhaps even the memory of an illusion of an opportunity. Let this passage sink in before turning to the complete text which you can find here. It is melancholy, as so often with Christina Rossetti!
We were sitting around the potting shed table, touching base and deciding on the day’s tasks. Lawrence said he had helped John the day before to cut back the rampant hops.
‘I noticed you’d done that,’ I said. ‘Then the hop flowers over the gate reminded me of how we sent a parcel of hops to my mum every year. But I’ll never do that again.’ (Three days before this we had interred my mother’s ashes alongside my father’s at Mount Saint Bernard Abbey.)
Natalie said, ‘I’m sorry if we awoke sad memories for you.’
‘Not at all; it’s always good to be reminded of her, and that she is still close. My wife threw a bunch of lavender on top of her ashes. We sent her lavender every year too.’
+ + + + +
After mother’s funeral we struck some cuttings from her rose bushes, and one of these will be beside her resting place. Hops, Lavender, Roses; all these will serve as stirrers of memory, bringing mum – and dad – to mind, and to prayerful and grateful reflection.
We had been to tend our friend’s garden and it was time for my colleague to make his way home. I was going to close up the Glebe garden, going the back way allowed a brief scan of our boundaries. All seemed well, no sign of any mischief.
One last corner, and I stood aside for a young couple with two children under three, but the mother had noticed the bedding plants I was carrying. ‘Lovely flowers, very pretty’, she smiled.
‘Thank you. I’m glad you like them but these were given to us, and are more than we need. Do you have a garden?’
The father answered, ‘We’ve just moved house. There’s a garden but nothing in it.’
‘Would you like some of these? We were given them by a friend.’
She, taking the tray of seedlings: ‘Are you giving us them all?’
‘If you can use them.’
He, reaching for his wallet, ‘Can I pay you for them?’
‘They came free, they can go free.’
She, ‘Thank you, I like that, ‘They came free, they can go free.’
He, ‘I’m a gardener, a landscape gardener. These petunias will go in the ground as soon as we get home, Thank you.’
She: ‘Petulas, I knew the name! Thank you.’
‘I hope you will be very happy in your new home.’
‘We will, thank you!’
Freely ye have received, freely give. Matthew 10.8.
Yesterday Mrs Turnstone and I sought the cooling breeze on the top of Wye Downs and were not disappointed. Since it was St John the Baptist’s Birthday, there was a little extra satisfaction in seeing his plant, Saint John’s Wort. You can buy expensive pills made from it that are said to enhance the mood. Perhaps a walk in a National Nature Reserve would be as effective, at least in Midsummer!
Ah, hush! Tread softly through the rime, For there will be a blackbird singing, or a thrush. Like coloured beads the elm-buds flush: All the trees dream of leaves and flowers and light. And see! The northern bank is much more white Than frosty grass, for now is snowdrop time.
Mary Webb, Snowdrop Time
Mrs Turnstone and I had just left the train at Edinburgh Waverley Station and were making our way into Princes Street Gardens. It was one of those warm February days when Scotland feels almost temperate. We walked down beside the Scott Monument and stopped as one. We were not expecting scent in February! The bank to our left, west-facing, was in full sun, with thousands of snowdrops at head height, releasing sweetness whether anyone was there to appreciate it or not.
Later in the week we visited the Botanic Gardens, by no means bereft of snowdrops. There was one, a specimen, that had a greenhouse all to itself. It was raised up on the shelving the better for us to see its golden stripe on the inner petals, gold instead of the classic green. I don’t know if someone deliberately crossed two flowers in their collection, or else got down on the ground, close enough to discern this special snowdrop. Thanks be to them!
Mary Webb’s north bank would, of course, have faced south, so plenty of time in full sun to add scent to the glory of the flowers’ appearance. Snowdrops do belong together in hundreds and thousands but it is worth looking at a singleton to appreciate its graceful form. Look, and see, and wonder; laudato si’!
Rime is a ground frost; the snowdrops here were growing in Fletcher Moss Park, Manchester.
While Mrs T took our grandson to the swimming pool in Faversham, I wandered the streets. I took myself to St Mary of Charity church for the first time in years. Although the tower with its ornate spire stands out for miles around, especially on the marshes, it could easily be missed close to, with the approach to the West Front through a narrow canyon of a back street behind a supermarket.
Once there I saw clumps of hollyhocks, some well over 2 metres tall, along the iron fence between the churchyard graves and the path. Lovely in the group, lovely each spire and individual bloom, and nature’s way of pushing the boundaries between tame and wild.
The church yard would be tidier without them but something better than tidiness would be lost. The ancestry of these blooms must be quite diverse – white, cream, yellow, apricot and magenta – but they also probably derive from a small number of parent plants, their seed blown around town till it found soil to root into. What were the great-grandparents like?
Let’s be thankful for beauty in diversity, in humans as well as flowers, and let us strive to make everyone welcome in our church communities.
Let us also take courage and find our own ways to push the boundaries in favour of beauty and of our climate.
The solemnity of today will be overwhelmed by the joy of Easter, but there were tokens of the coming feast for those with eyes to see.
Before the sun was properly up I was looking into the back garden. What was that hunched figure inspecting the flowerpots? A hedgehog woken from hibernation and going about its business, ridding us of a few pests. That was enough to mark the day.
After the prayerful L’Arche Good Friday service some of us found our way to the Glebe garden, where a shrine had been built of willow wands. If this was intended to be a place of quiet reflection it soon became a meeting place for people who had barely seen each other during covid; another hint of the resurrection to come.
Flitting across the garden was a brimstone butterfly, a caterpillar died but transformed into a creature of beauty no less wondrous for being totally expected.
Then to my task of adorning the church porch. The Easter garden needed the finishing touches, Mary’s jar of ointment and the grave cloths hidden behind the door (a scallop shell to be rolled to one side). What concerned me was the Easter lilies. We had some in flower the last two years, but it had been touch and go this time. Since today was warm, the first flowers were unfurling to be bright and white on Easter Day.
In the evening down to the Cathedral to hear Faure’s Requiem, with its upbeat finish: May the Angels welcome you to Paradise, may the martyrs meet you and lead you to the Holy City of Jerusalem.
Walking home from the Cathedralin the glowing dusk, under the Easter full moon, three blackbirds, singing their hearts out, serenading the new life hatched in their nests. They will be busy tomorrow, as no doubt will I, but by these tokens and by other sure evidence I know that my redeemer liveth.
Sheila Billingsley has had her eyes open! On the edge of Saddleworth Moor, spring has arrived! She gives this poem the title ’14th March 2022′. We hope Spring is enchanting your eyes, ears and sense of smell. Those cherry trees . . .
14th March 2022.
Today Spring arrived!
Slipped in!. . . Quietly!
Bright blue sky,
Pushing out thoughts of rain,
. . . until tomorrow!
The cherry tree in the lane is in blossom.
Delicate, tiny, hardly pink blossom.
Not the blowsy in-your-face Japanese,
Oh no!
Today the gardener arrived too,
To clear the detritus of winter.
Cheerful and happy within his whiskers.
Did many thank you?
Did many even notice?
That your world was still struggling to obey you,
Despite what we do?
At least your world obeys you,
While we fight and kill and poison.
Do they know that you exist ?
And love,
And forgive.
Do they know that you suffer?
I just wanted to record that Spring arrived today.
agnellusmirror 