Wood warbler

Wood warblers have arrived back in the UK after their migration from Africa. What a beautiful little bird, its song sounds like someone dropping a coin on a table.

Catastrophic decline in numbers, along with other African migrants like nightingales. The problem could be here or there, or both. Whatever the cause - climate change in sub Sahara Africa, population pressure in Africa clearing wintering grounds, change in habitats here etc - what a pity to lose this magnificent songster.

Reflection at Scottish Parliament

My good friend and Jesuit priest Fr Chris Boles SJ (Lauriston Jesuit Centre, Edinburgh) gave a reflection to the Scottish Parliament last week (see link to view it at end of blog). It is lovely and his message so important. He quotes from a poem called Inversnaid by Gerard Manley Hopkins, also a Jesuit priest:

What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet. Photo by James Broscombe

He also quotes from John Muir, the Scottish born naturalist and conservationsist who brought together spirituality and nature in such an inspiring way. John Muir is responsible for the setting uo of the US National Parks. He is acclaimed in the US but not so well known here, but the John Muir Trust does great work in his name.

210410_time_for_reflection.wmv

Mystical Matter

From Reflections of a Curlew

Teilhard de Chardin was a Jesuit priest and philosopher who had interests similar to my own - geology, paleontology and earth sciences. According to Wiki he took part in the discovery of Peking Man. He had a huge vision for the creation and evolution of the Cosmos which got him into trouble with the Vatican but has recently been bought to the fore again. He is now greatly acclaimed as a visionary and as having profound things to say about God and our role in the natural world.

I need to get to know his work a lot better. Thanks to my Jesuit friend Chris Boles who runs the Lauriston Jesuit Centre, for reminding me of this:

HYMN TO MATTER

‘Blessed be you, harsh matter, barren soil, stubborn rock: you who yield only to violence, you who force us to work if we would eat.

‘Blessed be you, perilous matter, violent sea, untameable passion: you who unless we fetter you will devour us.

‘Blessed be you, mighty matter, irresistible march of evolution, reality ever newborn; you who, by constantly shattering our mental categories, force us to go ever further and further in our pursuit of the truth.

‘Blessed be you, universal matter, immeasurable time, boundless ether, triple abyss of stars and atoms and generations: you who by overflowing and dissolving our narrow standards or measurement reveal to us the dimensions of God.

‘Blessed be you, impenetrable matter: you who, interposed between our minds and the world of essences, cause us to languish with the desire to pierce through the seamless veil of phenomena.

‘Blessed be you, mortal matter: you who one day will undergo the process of dissolution within us and will thereby take us forcibly into the very heart of that which exists.

‘Without you, without your onslaughts, without your uprootings of us, we should remain all our lives inert, stagnant, puerile, ignorant both of ourselves and of God. You who batter us and then dress our wounds, you who resist us and yield to us, you who wreck and build, you who shackle and liberate, the sap of our souls, the hand of God, the flesh of Christ: it is you, matter, that I bless.

‘I bless you, matter, and you I acclaim: not as the pontiffs of science or the moralizing preachers depict you, debased, disfigured — a mass of brute forces and base appetites — but as you reveal yourself to me today, in your totality and your true nature.

‘You I acclaim as the inexhaustible potentiality for existence and transformation wherein the predestined substance germinates and grows.

‘I acclaim you as the universal power which brings together and unites, through which the multitudinous monads are bound together and in which they all converge on the way of the spirit.

‘I acclaim you as the melodious fountain of water whence spring the souls of men and as the limpid crystal whereof is fashioned the new Jerusalem.

‘I acclaim you as the divine milieu, charged with creative power, as the ocean stirred by the Spirit, as the clay moulded and infused with life by the incarnate Word.

‘Sometimes, thinking they are responding to your irresistible appeal, men will hurl themselves for love of you into the exterior abyss of selfish pleasure-seeking: they are deceived by a reflection or by an echo.

‘This I now understand.

‘If we are ever to reach you, matter, we must, having first established contact with the totality of all that lives and moves here below, come little by little to feel that the individual shapes of all we have laid hold on are melting away in our hands, until finally we are at grips with the single essence of all subsistencies and all unions.

‘If we are ever to possess you, having taken you rapturously in our arms, we must then go on to sublimate you through sorrow.

‘Your realm comprises those serene heights where saints think to avoid you — but where your flesh is so transparent and so agile as to be no longer distinguishable from spirit.

‘Raise me up then, matter, to those heights, through struggle and separation and death; raise me up until, at long last, it becomes possible for me in perfect chastity to embrace the universe.’

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin SJ
Jersey, 8th August 1919

Planes, Ash and Politics

It makes all of us feel small and a little nervous, it has suddenly made the world seem a much larger place than it was last week, it has frustrated travellers and businesses in their hundreds of thousands - and there is NOTHING that can be done, it has caused whooper swans to sit it out in small huts and sheds instead of migrating and it is delighting those who live under runways or who love birdsong or who marvel at the sight of a blue sky with no white streaks.

For just a short while we are getting a glimpse of what a low carbon world will look, sound and feel like. We can't travel where we want when we want at any time. We can't assume fruits, flowers and vegetables will be flown in to stock the supermarket shelves and we will notice, just a little more, other life around us. Perhaps the recent surge in interest in grow-your-own will be very welcome if food stuffs really do have to be locally transported.

I feel truly sorry for those stuck in airports, or paying thousands just to get a taxi. It must be horrible. But once everyone is back where they want to be maybe we should all take time to think about this. Going to Barcelona for a weekend was so simple 2 weeks ago, very doable from Bristol. Now Barcelona, Teneriffe and Paris seem much further away and maybe we should think about short trips for pleasure and if they are really necessary. It takes SO many resources to get people around the world and it is so easy to take it for granted. But fuel for the planes, taxis, cars, buses etc to get people to places is not insignificant and it is very damaging.

The thought of fresh food being thrown away in Africa because the planes are grounded makes me weep - what kind of crazy world have we manufactured? Flowers flying from Kenya???!

Surely Kenyans can be better employed growing food for Africa - but every time I say that I feel it is so obvious there must be huge reasons I don't know about to make it not work. But if we had to pay for the sunshine, the warmth, the nutrients in the soil, the water and a true cost for fuel then they wouldn't be so cheap and it wouldn't be cost effective to fly them around the world. The earth provides resources for free - it is time we started counting the true cost of the way we organise our economies and our daily lives.

Here is a poem by the Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy:

SILVER LINING

Five miles up the hush and shush of ash,

Yet the sky is as clean as a white slate —

I could write my childhood there.

Selfish to sit in this garden, listening to the past

(A gentleman bee wooing its flower, a lawnmower)

When the grounded planes mean ruined plans,

Holidays on hold, sore absences at weddings, funerals ... wingless commerce.

But Britain’s birds sing in this spring

From Inverness to Liverpool, from Crieff to Cardiff,

Oxford, Londontown, Land’s End to John O’Groats.

The music’s silent summons,

That Shakespeare heard and Edward Thomas and, briefly, us.

Labour is the only party to commit to building a third runway at Heathrow.

Tina Beattie has just published a thought provoking and challenging article called "The Catholic Church's Scandal: Modern Crisis, Ancient Roots."
It is well worth reading if you are interested in a historical look at the mindset that could have produced such terrible abuse. It is a courageous article and I agree totally with Tina.

The Tablet is, and has been for weeks, full of articles/letters/analysis of the crisis and how it is being handled - for those of us who are lay believers it is all very distrubing. I personally feel this could be a time of great renewal and grace for the Catholic Church. A time to reassess what is important, who should be considered fit to lead and a time to leave behind an obsession with clericalism. My only hope at the moment is for justice and peace for the thousands who were affected by the abuse. A letter in this week's The Tablet explains beautifully why this man is still a priest and still holds dear to his beliefs. Fr Joseph O'Hanlon from Canterbury writes:

"I shall remain a Catholic priest. But it will be priesthood lived in sorrow and in repentance that such sins have been committed in the name of all that is holy. I shall live with the bewildered people of God who cannot comprehend what has been done by those raised to the altar, with a people scandalised by those who have covered up crimes which call out to God for vengeance. I shall continue to believe that Chris is risen. But I remain convinced we are not."

New Andy Murray

Ok - I know I'm a proud parent - but indulge me.

Open Air Swimming and Diabolo tricks!

Two short films we made recently. The first is my husband Julian doing a 1 mile open water swim for Hospice Care last September. It was all filmed by my son on his mobile - amazing what a phone can do these days!





This is same son doing diabolo tricks. He disappeared into the garden for a while and suddenly could do this.

Just Passing Through

I love the writing of Roger Deakin, who sadly died in August 2006 at the age of only 63. In his last book Wildwood - A Journey Through Trees he describes a shepherd's hut tucked away in a field, slowly being overgrown and returning back to nature. He often spent nights sleeping there - camping out and listening to the branches of an ash tree "which strokes the roof and plays tunes on the stove-pipe chimney." He says something very moving about camping out:

"There's more truth about a camp than a house. Planning laws need not worry the improvising builder because temporary structures are more beautiful anyway and you don't need planning for them. There's more truth about a camp because that is the position we are in. The house represents what we ourselves would like to be on earth, permanent, rooted, here for eternity. But a camp represents the true reality of things: we're just passing through."

I wonder if he knew he had a brain tumor.

Last weekend I went to Pembrokeshire in our camper-van and saw this lovely old boat, doing exactly what Roger's hut was doing - returning the wood back to nature.

From Reflections of a Curlew

I thought about Roger as I looked at it and wished I had his profound and deep sense of connection to nature. It grounds you in life and death like nothing else.

This is holy week and life and death are very much in mind. I thought again about Roger Deakin and his statement "the true reality of things, we are just passing through" and thought about Pilate's famous question (or statement) at Jesus's trial - "What is truth?"

Happy Easter.