The Lark Ascending, Kingcups and Frogspawn

Standing outside Shrewsbury Town Football Ground this afternoon, I was delighted to hear above the traffic sounds of that side of town the crystal sounds of a lark, invisible high above me but very audible. This used to be a much commoner sound than it is now. Much of our farmland is no longer suitable for skylarks, so you need a good spread of permanent pasture, or an area of heathland or moorland, to stand much chance of hearing them.

Fortunately, there are quite a few places round here that seem to fit the bill. And in particular I remember a wonderful sunny day a few springs ago on the Stiperstones, when skylark song seemed to completely surround me, with many birds singing away all at once. I felt sad to think, though, that in childhood days I could have heard something similar on farmland near my home - not any more.

Later on in the day, Ann and I walked a length of the Montgomery Canal to a point where we would expect to see kingcups in flower - one of the largest and showiest of the buttercup family in our countryside, and a marsh and poolside specialist, of course, the marsh marigold. And gold it certainly is, you could never describe this flower as merely yellow. The marshy bit of woodland where we expect to see them had been badly hit by the storm winds of the past winter, with some of the trees mangled and split apart - but the kingcups were well out, shining like golden beacons across the dark water.

Walking back along a newly laid path, I was pleased to see that the distinctive pale violets that are a feature of this section of the canal had survived the earthmoving process that had been taking place. In the water, frogs were actively mating, which will provide a useful food supply for the local fish, but also, one hopes, enough surviving tadpoles to give a new generation of adult frogs. The only fish we saw today was a dead pike, floating belly up a little way out into the canal; normally we see quite a few, but the water today was very dark and turgid.

Dawn Songs and Poetic Thoughts

I woke early this morning and decided just to open my window and listen. The good thing about having woodland just behind us is that I don't need to travel anywhere in order to listen to the dawn chorus - and it was beautiful. Of course, it's as yet incomplete, as most of our summer visitors haven't yet arrived, but I was able to pick out several of the singers, which included a song thrush, not a bird I've actually seen in the garden for quite some time, but obviously they're not too far away!

For me music is essential to life, and I sometimes wonder how, or if, I might cope with deafness, should it happen to me. Perhaps I should take refuge in poetry, and find a music there that I could still hear. I enjoy reading the poems of others, and I feel compelled to write my own. This afternoon I gave a reading of some of my poems, something I hadn't done for a little while, and I was reminded how much I enjoy sharing my verses with others, but also how scary it can be to do that, for each poem is in some way an expose of myself, of my soul.

Sadly, I have struggled to write of late. One or two poems have made it onto these pages, but to me they don't seem the equals of those I've published over recent years. I have tried to work out why this may be, but as yet I have no answer. Perhaps my life just now is too settled a place, though somehow I doubt that's it. If there was a magic wand to wave, I'd wave it; instead, I'll just keep slogging away, and hope for a flash of inspirational light or for the songs of angels, or dawn birds perhaps, to revive a flame within me.

Blossom and Birds

We're starting to get a bit of blossom in the garden, with the Japanese quince the first to show, though we've a couple of trees that will be out before long, and a rhododendron well in bud. We've also quite a lovely pale pink and sweetly scented bush by our front door, but I've no idea what its name is. Anyway, with the blossom coming I realise that one snag about feeding the birds through the winter is that, come spring, they're right there on the seed to attack your buds and blossom. But I don't mind too much; I think there'll be enough to go round.

This morning our pair of bullfinches was joined by a second female; I don't know whether this was a menage a trois, but I have to say they all looked pretty chummy together. This is the first time we've seen more than two bullfinches at a time. Anyway, they showed no interest at all in our feeding station - they were there for the buds, and were having a whale of a time processing through our little row of four blossom trees.

How could I really protest, though? Even the fattest, greediest bullfinches can't take all our blossom, and the fruit bushes, which I might worry about, are all safely contained within a cage. And the bullfinches are quite the showiest birds we see, so I'm glad they're there.

There are something approaching 200,000 pairs of bullfinches in the UK, and they have increased in numbers in recent years after a distinct fall in population numbers previously to this. The UK resident population is increased by overwintering bullfinches from the continent, but I'm pretty sure those in our garden are resident birds.

Closing words

As a person of faith, it can sometimes be quite a challenge to put together appropriate words for a secular funeral ceremony. Sometimes I need to, though. While I think my own faith allows me to lead the ceremony in a sensitive and inclusive way, and I certainly would not want to use words that presume a faith that is not there in the family and friends who have gathered, and perhaps wasn't there, either, in the life of the person remembered, there are times when I wish I could say more than I do, not about the certainty of anything, but at least about the possibility.

In fact, for me the most difficult thing is not how to start the ceremony, nor the words to use as people reflect on the one to whom they're saying farewell, or as the curtains close around the catafalque (in any case, they may very well be using music at that point, so I don't need to say anything). It's how to close it, when at an overtly religious event I would be using words of blessing.

Anyway, here is a sort of secular blessing that I shall use at a ceremony this week :-

The challenge of our lives is to live vigorously and beautifully, to live with courage and care. At the end of a life we give respect and dignity to the one we mourn not only in our grieving and remembering but also in our commitment to live our lives to the fullest, for the best of all answers to death is that we continue to affirm life. So for us who go out from here, may the love of friends, the joy of memory and our hopes for the future give us strength and peace and blessing as we travel on.

Windflowers

One of the things I love most about Spring is the way that things happen all of a sudden (or, of course, maybe it's just that all of a sudden you notice them). For example, yesterday . . . this is yesterday's post, really, I was just far too tired by the time I got in last night! . . . yesterday I drove past an area of woodland I pass very often, where there is always a good spread of wood anemones, and, while I swear that a couple of days ago as I passed there was nothing to see, yesterday the ground was carpeted with these beautiful and seemingly delicate flowers.

I say seemingly delicate, but I suppose in fact they must be as tough as old boots. Like many woodland flowers, their job is to get going as early as possible in the year, before the leaf canopy blocks out the light and get their flowers open and their fruit set. Our mild winter will have given this year's anemones a good start, but they need to get going whatever the weather - anyway, it's a treat to see them, and each one of these new signs of Spring growth is, in a way (even though of course I know they're all going to happen) a welcome surprise.

I love the way people say, as they do, "Oh, the days are opening out!" as though they had never expected it would happen. Somewhere at heart, despite all our scientific knowledge and worldly sophistication, we do still have a little sliver of primaeval uncertainty: will the spring really come, will the sun really grow strong again? - to which the anemone as it suddenly carpets the woodland, is able to speak.

Last Contact

(Something I'm still working on) :-

No-one had come in. The office door
remained closed against the cold March day.
Outside the window, the world bustled on - yet another delivery van
revving up in the yard, ready to go: all as normal.
And yet there had been someone there, he was sure -
someone standing at his shoulder,
someone he knew, who knew him. They had spoken.
What had they talked about? He could not remember,
no words, anyway; just a sense of something about
long-ago times, long-ago familiar faces, names and hopes and dreams.
A shadow fell softly across the bright window, and
for a moment, the traffic noise outside was hushed. A tear
coursed its salty way down one cheek, and it seemed to him
a hint of incense lingered a moment in the air.
He shook himself awake,
as the next delivery van manoeuvred into its space outside,
rattling the window, with the spring light cold and bright once more.
He stood, brushed some unexplained dust
from his jacket, went to put the kettle on
for coffee. The telephone began to trill;
he let it ring.

Music

I'm sure I heard some one in holy orders say - perhaps it was on an edition of 'Songs of Praise' - that for her God and music were more or less the same thing. Something like that, anyway. It's probably heretical, and likely to get one cast into prison in more puritan times, but to me it makes sense, even if I might strive to be more careful and say that nothing inspires and enables my awareness of God as much as music.

I am surrounded by sacred music, currently. 'Olivet to Calvary' is playing full time in my car, as I prepare for a choral performance (well, three, actually) of this work at Passiontide, and I have just returned from singing the Credo, or part of it anyway, there's rather a lot, of Rossini's Petite Messe Solanelle, to be performed in May at The Hafren in Newtown. And I'm loving it, although my throat is hurting just a little.

"Where words fail, music takes over" - so says a fridge magnet we used to have, though it seems to have disappeared or been filed away during one of our house moves. It's true, I'm sure; it's also true that where words don't fail, even so music gives them wings and lifts them higher. The story of the Passion is immensely powerful and moving however it is told, but music somehow helps its deepest meaning to slice straight into the heart. For me that's true, anyway.

This year I have said yes to too many requests, and I am singing too much. Those are the plain facts, and my poor old sore throat knows it's all true, in a purely physical sense. But another side of me knows that really I can never sing enough, there can never be enough music, let alone too much. It is hard work, but it is also a beautiful thing to be able to sing with others, and bring these great works to life; I'm so glad to be part of it, and immensely grateful to the conductors and accompanists who make it possible for ordinary folk in a small town and the surrounding villages to be doing so much music together.

Chiffchaff

I always look forward to hearing the first chiffchaff of the year. It is always one of the first summer migrants to arrive - a month or so ahead of its close relative the willow warbler. Chiffchaffs do not travel as far on their migration as some of our summer visitors, with many of "our" birds wintering in the Mediterranean area. A small but increasing number of chiffchaffs overwinter in the UK in fact, in southern counties - these I think are mostly Scandinavian and other continental birds, though some may have spent summer here. Its cheery repetition of its own name gives me quite a lift when I first hear it, and goes on doing so through the summer.

This morning our male brambling was back in the garden, looking resplendent with his black head and rose pink flanks. He'll be on his way north soon, but I heard chiffchaffs today for the first time this year, not in our little bit of woodland as yet, but in two other wooded areas not a great distance away. Spring is with us, summer is on the way (though caution is advised, as tonight will be one of the coldest for some time).

The other bit of good news is the reappearance of the male bullfinch at our feeders. I hadn't seen him since our sparrow hawk visit the other day, and had wondered whether his boldness and bright colour had made him an obvious target.

Brambling

Lovely to see in our back garden this morning a male brambling in more or less full summer plumage. Whereas it might be possible to confuse winter-plumage bramblings, females especially, with the chaffinches with which they flock, the male in summer is quite unmistakeable, and very attractive.

We've had only very small numbers of bramblings among our quite large flocks of chaffinches, and I don't suppose we'll have them with us much longer; they'll be heading north to breed in Scandinavia and across to Siberia. There are very occasional breeding records in the UK, mostly with a north-eastern bias, but the fact that this one was already in breeding plumage does not suggest bramblings breeding in Welshpool in 2014!

Sparrow Hawk

Despite the large numbers of small birds that regularly visit our feeders, one bird we have not seen all winter is the sparrow hawk. A couple of weeks ago, I was ninety-odd percent sure I saw one flying over the woodland to the back of us, in a typical sparrow hawk cruising flight, but I hadn't got my glasses and the bird was some distance away. Today, however, I was called urgently by Ann to look at what was on our shed, and there sat a sparrow hawk, a male I should think from the size (the female is considerably larger in build than the male), surveying the scene.

Sparrow hawks will often find a vantage point from which they can scan the area before, in all probability, launching into their trademark swift and scything flight into a place where perhaps smaller birds are not being as attentive as they might be. Our shed provided a fairly decent vantage point, but would I think have been rather too obvious. Then again, had the hawk sat there for long enough, one or two birds might well have ventured to the feeders without paying attention. That didn't happen in this case, as the bird us peering through our kitchen window, and quickly flew off. I suspect he'll be back, though.

There are some birds I'd hate to lose, chief among them either of the bullfinch pair; having said that, though, predators like sparrow hawks are part of the natural balance of things, and if I am feeding the finches and tits, I have to be prepared for some of those smaller birds to be taken by predators. Sparrow hawk numbers vary quite precisely in accordance with numbers of prey species, and so a balance is always retained. The same may not be true of magpies, and I may return to that topic - but I do welcome sparrow hawks, even if at times through gritted teeth.

A Nice Morning

Ann and I took Mum-in-Law, Evelyn, to hospital this morning; she had an appointment at outpatients', to check on heart function, things like that. We were due at the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital, Gobowen, at 10 am, so a fair old drive from home in Welshpool. Traffic was light, however, so we got there in plenty of time.

Following on from my post yesterday about the way in which we need each other (and my rather twee final statement about seeing everyone as a potential friend), can I just say that the hospital in Gobowen is not a bad example of this thought being translated into practice. As I walked through the hospital, I was conscious of the ready smiles of many people around me, and was cheerily greeted by hospital staff. One or two people I knew were also attending outpatients, as it happened, so I spent some time chatting - and everyone had the same positive things to say about the helpfulness, politeness and general cheeriness they had experienced from staff and fellow patients alike.

Of course, the hospital is not a general hospital, though it does fulfil some of those functions in the Oswestry area. Its orthopaedic specialisation means I suppose that a higher proportion of those attending as in-patients are (a) programmed admissions and (b) not in a life-threatening situation, and I suppose that makes a difference. The pace of things is not as frenetic, either, I suppose.

But isn't it also true that cheeriness breeds cheeriness, and that what we take out of this world balances with what we put in? "And in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make," as the Beatles sang. At all events, something is going right in that clean, bright and cheerful hospital, and long may it do so. A peacock appeared at the doorway (outside the main entrance), just as we were sitting down inside with coffee and scones - that was nice too. I'm reminded of a small cottage hospital I used to visit where the hospital cat was often on the ward - not a good move I suppose if a patient is, like my wife, allergic to cats, but a big plus for most of the patients. Pet animals and cheery smiles are probably worth as much as many of the drugs we take, in terms of helping us to feel and get better.

Needing Each Other

"No man is an island, entire unto himself" - familiar words, and very true. Some people maintain a wide circle of friends, others have fewer, sometimes very few, but we cannot exist without the interplay of human relationships, even if those relationships be entirely to do with service or commerce. And, surely, without family or friends the individual is greatly diminished.

Christians are called on to 'love neighbour as self', something I touched on in a recent posting on this blog. I return to it now because I have always been attracted by the thought of the neighbour as holy; why? because our neighbour gifts us the opportunity, day by day, to be of service to our Lord. 'Neighbour', of course, is not the same thing as 'family and friends' - I may have neighbours on the other side of the world whom I shall never see or know, but they are my neighbours nonetheless, because one definition of neighbour that is very true to, for example, the parable of the Good Samaritan is that my neighbour is anyone I have the power to offer help to, or turn away from.

It follows, then, that the definition of neighbour will include, as it did for the Good Samaritan in the story, people we would not regard as friends or feel any family attachment to - except that they like us are human, which in one analysis means they have a right, in their need, to whatever help I can offer. As a Christian I might add that they are loved by God as his own, and therefore I should strive to love them too.

That's an interesting thought, to me, which takes me further than the broadly humanist sense of duty towards one's fellow man and woman, attractive though that is in its own right. I am required to love people I may find it impossible, or virtually so, to like. That would seem to me to be a very challenging project indeed, but it may well lie at the heart of what Jesus was doing in the wilderness at the start of his ministry: it seems to me that that process was a testing time directed to ensure that in his ministry he would not be presenting himself in any flashy way, however plausible a strategy that may have seemed to be, but simply loving people who needed to be loved.

Those people include me, of course, loved though I deserve not to be. With that thought in mind, and claimed as I believe myself to be by grace, I will do my best to live, to behave, as though every person I meet is potentially at least, my friend.

Tree

There was quite a substantial fall of trees in the strong winds that hit us a month or so back, and, as I travel around, the shattered or fallen trunks and the gaps in the hedgerows are still very visible. Somewhat to my surprise, very little damage was done to the trees in the little wood behind us, though. Perhaps this was because they are sheltered and protected from the full force of a south-westerly storm, by the natural topography and by the houses along the street, including our own.

My favourite of the trees behind us is a tall and well-ivied oak, which is of course teeming with life. Our oak trees probably support more life forms per square inch (or whatever measurement) than any other. Most of these creatures can't be seen from our patio, but the birds (and the squirrels) are very visible indeed just now, and I love to watch them: wood pigeons crashing about the canopy in an abandoned fashion; the running battle at one point in the winter between (or among) quite a crowd of jackdaws and carrion crows; and the mixed bands of finches and other small birds that now fill the tree with song and excited chattering. And soon there'll be chiffchaffs, blackcaps and wood warblers - they can't be far away now.

One bird I've searched for all winter in vain, in and around our garden, is the tree creeper. That's disappointing - the previous winter saw a tree creeper regularly out and about in our garden. Perhaps it's been too mild; last year's tree creeper had been forced to search for food away from its normal habitat, on our brick and stone walls and in our garden shrubs, but this year, perhaps, they've not needed to do that. I'm sure there will have been one in our great oak, from time to time, so I guess that, for all my searching, I've just been unlucky and missed it. By the way, someone I used to know claimed to have a tree creeper that regularly visited the feeders in his garden. I refused to believe him, as this wasn't something tree creepers do so far as I was aware, but when I called to see him, yes indeed, there it was. I've never known one do this anywhere else, though.

The Best Laid . . .

Today has not gone as planned, despite the enjoyably warm and sunny weather. The plans included lunch at a favourite country pub, for example, which didn't happen. The plans did not include calling out the emergency doctor, which did. Well, here's to tomorrow, so far as all that is concerned; let's hope for better things. Meanwhile, it's worth just making three observations, the first of which is the old saw that "life is something that happens to you while you're busy making plans." The making of plans fools us into believing that we can control events and even destinies; we can't, of course, though from time to time we may manage to impose some vestiges of order here and there.

But, secondly, when things do not go according to plan the events of life do still include blessings and benefits, and these are sometimes all the more welcome for being unexpected and maybe undeserved. There were quite a few bits of today that seemed to include no trace of blessing at all, and that I felt screwed up about, really - but not everything was bad or sad. In particular, and this is really my third point, even when things go wrong and are difficult and painful I find I am often lifted and warmed at heart by the kindness of others, some of them friends, some of them strangers, who just say and do the right things at the right time, and quite often are prepared to go the extra mile. They have been present today, and I am glad of that.

Finally, in the bright sunshine of today, my favourite spring flower (and Wordsworth's), the lesser celandine, has been quite beautiful, with sheets of glossy yellow to reflect the sun here and there along the edge of the wood. I think the name celandine relates to swallows, so this is a flower supposed to bloom at the time the swallows come. In reality it's in flower rather earlier, but on a day like this you know it won't be all that long before they are with us - and I am already listening out hopefully for the first singing chiffchaff, not here yet but surely not too far away.

Garden

Busy in the garden today - a bright and sunny one, and at times while I was out there, I was all but deafened by birdsong. Blackbirds especially were singing very competitively, and from time to time meeting up to battle physically as well as vocally, though usually that amounted to no more than a bit of hostile wing-flapping. Yesterday, though, as I drove along a country lane, I was able to watch two blackbirds continually trading places: one would be perching on the top of the hedge, the other in the lane, then the one in the lane would fly up and displace the other down into the lane. The two birds swapped places about four times before my vehicle got too close and they both flew off.

The wood behind our garden was alive with birds all day. I was delighted to see a wren exploring the base of the old elm just behind us in quite a proprietorial way. There's quite a lot of brush and other cover just there, so that could be a nesting site. In a previous garden we had around twelve newly fledged wrens zooming about in all directions, and it would be nice to repeat that experience. I am pretty sure I saw a sparrow hawk drift across, but it was only a glance and I can't be sure. Up to five buzzards were riding the thermals high overhead, and two herons flew across, my gaze attracted by their harsh cry. They nested not far away last year, I think.

The woodland falls away sharply behind our garden to the stream below, the drop being I suppose some twenty-five to thirty feet. The heavy rain last winter has taken away some of the bank, and local pet dogs from along the road have been burrowing in where the ground is disturbed, so I've been trying to rebuild and stabilise things, not that I think there is any danger of major ground movement. Access into the wood is easy, via the gate pictured below; movement through the wood is much harder as the bank sides are so steep, so the wildlife is more or less undisturbed, except for the busy dogs that are occasionally let loose there.

I love gates, which to me always carry with them a flavour of possibility and opportunity. The one in my picture at the title of this blog is in one of my favourite places, Arnside Knot, on the edge of the Lake District and overlooking Morecambe Bay and the Kent Estuary - the picture was taken on my last visit there some two years ago.

Both Sides Now

I attended two funerals today (in a professional capacity). Both were well attended, very moving, very personal (and I remember with some sadness and shame how impersonal funerals tended to be when I started out as a minister many years ago). Both were very well taken, one by a humanist celebrant, the other by an Anglican priest. Both, I think, addressed the need both to celebrate and affirm a particular human life and the person who lived it, and also to look, each of us there, at our own life journey and how we are using what we have and are.

I have great sympathy with humanism, which at its simplest states that it is not necessary to believe in God in order to live a fulfilled, useful, moral and caring human life. I can't really argue with that, even though personally I do believe in God. The fact is, I don't connect well to the pedantry that seems to be a feature of much theology, and have never been conservative, still less fundamentalist, in my approach to the Christian faith, since my sense is that to do that takes me away from the example of Christ, rather than leading me to him. As I read the Gospels, what I discern there is that how I live is clearly more important than what - in detail - I might claim to believe.

Yet I am a Christian. Ultimately, I do take that leap, or sometimes just a step, of faith, so that if I am a humanist, I am a Christian humanist (and isn't that where humanism began?). My non-believing friends may accuse me of weakness, needing to have God there as a backstop or advisor or imaginary friend (that last being a taunt that gets thrown around quite a lot by those who believe that atheism and growing up are one and the same. I don't).

I on the other hand find myself feeling sorry for those whose limitations as regards vision, imagination and spiritual awareness mean they can't take that step into a wider and deeper sense of things that includes, ultimately, not only a sense of myself as spiritual but an awareness of God that, with time and practice becomes not only idea and philosophy but also relationship. Is it that I can't live without that prop or security blanket? It certainly does not feel like that to me; indeed, I sometimes think it would be such a whole lot easier all round if I didn't believe (and, by the way, I could do with the Church making things easier for me sometimes; I read the letters page of Church Times, and despair).

Of course, there is the whole heaven and hell thing - well, heaven mostly, we'd rather think that we go somewhere nice, wouldn't we? One funeral today spoke firmly about this life being all we have; the other included a rather lovely story that was intended to steer us toward a belief in life after physical death. I am sufficient of a mainstream Christian, despite the Church's best efforts, to have a living and settled faith in the resurrection of Christ, and this not as a one off but (quoting Paul) a first-fruits; but life after death doesn't play that much of a part in my personal thinking. I tend to want to live as though this life were all, and hope perhaps to be surprised by the hereafter. Anything else, and perhaps I run the risk of losing or wasting those precious days and  hours and minutes that - for me - are God's gift, born of his creation, and given to me to use lovingly, wisely and well.

Having said all of that, even the first funeral, the humanist one, spoke of the ways in which we live on in memories, in our genetic inheritance if we have children and grandchildren, and in the impact we have made on others by our friendships, our work and the way we have lived. From a Christian perspective, I say amen to that, and would hardly want to say anything more; after all, I know I can't earn my way into heaven, nor do I want to be scared into being good by the threat of hell. I want to live well and lovingly because I believe that is the highest calling on me - to live as though other people matter as much as I do (and other creatures, too, I think I'd want to add). The Bible tells us that if we love God, we prove and demonstrate that by loving our neighbour as ourself - these two loves are the one and greatest commandment, according to Jesus. And to love my neighbour as myself would also seem to me to be a profoundly humanist thing to do.

Man versus Squirrel (6)

Peace has broken out at our feeders! It can't last, I suppose, but for the moment all is sweetness and light. I have placed a feeder conveniently for the squirrels, and for the most part, since squirrels like an easy life as much as the rest of the world, that's where the squirrels are staying, allowing the birds to use the main feeding station in reasonable peace. So far so good, anyway.

Meanwhile, the female bullfinch unusually came alone to the feeders this morning. There were no other birds there at the time, so I was interested to see whether she would still head straight to the fat ball pieces (see my post yesterday). She did - so her choice of feeder certainly isn't just because other feeders are in use and she's shy. She clearly is shy, though - a coal tit, hardly the world's most threatening bird, came to the nearby peanut feeder and that was enough to send her away. It's interesting to see the male and female of the same species having such different food preferences, though - the female bullfinch always at the fat ball feeder, while the male never goes there. I'm reminded of the old tale about Jack Sprat and his wife!

Time

I came across Edna St Vincent Millay's powerful and moving sonnet about loss in a collection I was looking through the other day.  I think it was first published in 1931.  Millay, active as a poet in the first half of the Twentieth Century and winner of the Pullitzer Prize for poetry in 1923, was a particularly fine composer of sonnets. It's not a style I've tried, but perhaps I will.

"Time" isn't an easy read, I suppose. The first two lines make that clear enough:

'Time does not bring relief; you all have lied

who told me time would ease me of my pain . . .'

It speaks very clearly to the human experience of loss, the yearning for what has been, and even for what never had the opportunity to be: the shunning of those places that carry reminders so as to avoid the pain, and, conversely, when thankfully coming to a place that holds no reminder:

'I say, "There is no memory of him here!"

and so stand stricken, so remembering him.'

When such deep thoughts are placed and expressed within the strict literary limits imposed by the sonnet form, they grow in intensity and gain new power, I think. The writer's pain is accurately defined and transmitted, in a way that - for me, anyway - cannot but connect with and expose my own sense of loss.

Diet

Lent is upon us, and I've decided to cut out two of the things I really love to eat - cake and chocolate. This time I mean it . . . so none of the weaselling out seen in past years, such as giving up cake but excluding scones and flapjacks from the definition of cake, or giving up chocolate but still consuming it when used to coat a digestive biscuit. Well, it's been a week so far, and the resolve is holding, and the money saved will go to a good cause, as yet to be decided.

Watching our garden birds, it's clear that different foods suit different species - well, we knew that, of course - but also that different birds of the same species seem to have their own likes and dislikes (just like us, in other words). Among the most delightful of the visitors to our feeders is a pair of bullfinches; the male is by some distance the most showy of our regular visitors, with his bold black cap and deep rose breast, but the female is also attractive, with her more restrained breast plumage of salmon-grey. They almost always appear together, and the male often stands guard until the somewhat shyer female has taken her place at the feeders. Their taste in food is quite different. The male is generally at the sunflower seed feeder, with occasional forays to the nyger seed; the female, on the other hand, always goes to the fat-ball feeder (almost the only finch of any species to do this), where we have small fat pieces with seeds and insect parts added to the mix.

I wonder a little at the comparatively unusual food preference of the female. It may be that she is gaining particular nutrition from this food that will improve her breeding ability, or of course it may be that, as a rather shy bird (unlike the male, who can be something of a bully-boy), she prefers to keep away from the squabbles that are constantly breaking out at the seed feeders. Or of course, it may simply be that she just likes the fat balls more!

Man versus Squirrel (5)

It is proving immensely satisfying to shoot our local squirrels with the toy water gun we acquired last summer for the purpose. It's brightly coloured (and a sticker promises 'super power'), and the squirrels have only to see it in my hand now and they flee . . . while, on the whole, the local birds seem pretty unconcerned.

However, it has to be said that it doesn't put them off for long. They bound into the nearby tall trees, wait for me to go safely back indoors, then sneak straight back down again. They know very well, it would seem, that I can't stand guard for ever. Nor do I wish to, I have to say; I haven't really got anything against the squirrels - though I know they can be a pest, and that they will in season take eggs and chicks from nests. I don't mind that I'm feeding them as well as the birds, but it's a matter of balance, and I'm unhappy that a squirrel at the feeding station keeps the birds away. Anyway, I have now hung a feeder specially for the squirrels, and we'll see what that does.

There is also now a genuinely squirrel-proof feeder hanging away from the main feeding station, and it took no time at all for it to become the feeder of choice for many of our visiting birds. If the squirrel tries to get to the seeds, a cover slides shut over the feeder, so the squirrel has to give up and go away. Hooray! Except that a slight design hitch means that the metal sheath tends to stay down over the feeder, until moved back up by me, so the feeder becomes bird-proof as well!

The next tool in my armoury may well be a capsicum spray - not liked by squirrels, but not bothersome to birds, so I'm told. You can buy this, but perhaps I'll try making some. On a happy note, we've had a couple of visits from the woodpecker, the first time we've seen it for several weeks.

Local Press

I really enjoy reading local papers, and it's sad to think that, free sheets apart, the circulation of local weeklies is generally on the wane. It's rare to open the local weekly paper without seeing someone I know named, and quite probably photographed too, and that's certainly part of the attraction. But I'll happily read local rags when away from home too, even though I don't recognise anyone (or, for the most part, anything) within them. I think the main attraction is a sort of re-settling of the balance - between good news and bad, between big news and little, between big politics and little . . . I find myself somehow brought closer to the times of long ago, when very little that happened beyond the bounds of one's own town or village was really of any importance or note.

Of course, our little community here is as capable of producing bad news stories as any other, but in the local rag the children winning prizes for poetry or song at a local eisteddfod are just as important and newsy as the men up in court after a drunken brawl on a Friday night. Photographs of the car stolen then crashed by joy riders may feature on the front page, but the balance is redressed inside with pictures of the first, second and third prize winning carrots at a local show. As many of the stories warm the heart as chill the marrow - in fact, rather more of them warm the heart. And for the most part, the celebrity culture that uses up so much national newsprint (even in the quality papers, so called) is absent, unless you happen to have a star from Corrie or Emmerdale opening a local fete. The fact is that really, anyone can become a celebrity in the local rag . . . it's even been me, once in a while!

Even the letters page can be fun, despite those correspondents who persist in writing sloganising letters on national politics. There's always someone sending in an old photograph from schooldays or of some long ago civic event or summer pageant, asking for faces to be identified. Even though I don't still live in the community in which I was brought up, I still enjoy seeing those. Long live the local weekly, I say. Our local paper, not always renowned for its accuracy, is nonetheless loved by many - even for its mistakes. For most of us, most of the time, it's a feelgood experience, which I certainly look forward to, week by week.

Melting in the Dark

Last week, having elected to play 'cake-related' songs during his drivetime show, Simon Mayo played the Donna Summer version of 'McArthur Park'.  If ever there was a clear case of criminal damage done to a work of art, that is it, in my view - almost on a par with taking a scalpel to the Mona Lisa.  All respect to Ms Summer as a disco diva, but she was entirely the wrong person to sing that song, and comprehensively ruins it - though I suppose the arranger and producer must take some of the credit also. She sings without the slightest sense that she has any understanding of what the lyrics mean, and her shout at the beginning of each instrumental interlude robs the song of any remaining traces of the wistfulness that is its real theme.

Why Mr Mayo chose to play that version rather than the wonderful Richard Harris "original", I don't know. I suppose hers was the bigger hit, having made no.1 in the Billboard chart in 1978 - and again in the dance chart as recently as last year, I understand. I suppose it does work as a piece of dance music, but the Richard Harris version works as a song. I love a story song, and so have always been a major fan of the writing of Jimmy Webb, most of whose songs seem to combine a strong thread of narrative with a wistful pull at the heartstrings.  I wish I could write like that - perhaps at my very best I do at least make an attempt in that direction, but my very best doesn't come round all that often.

I place McArthur Park somewhere near Lou Reed's 'Perfect Day' in my library of songs . . . both look back at moments, shared times, you desperately want to last for ever, but of course they don't and can't, and nor can they ever be re-created. Life is a series of bereavements, and there is a sense of that in both of those songs. Jimmy Webb uses the way in which the colours melt into each other and fade as the daylight goes as a theme, linking it to the image that has been ridiculed by generations of DJ's but has always worked for me - an iced cake left in the rain to melt and spoil. Something wonderful worked just that once, and will never happen again, can't ever be made like it was that day.

The depressive mentality takes the reality of bereavement, of losing what was wonderful and can't be repeated, and dwells on it to the extent of refusing to believe that anything as good or beautiful can happen again. The truth is that, even as we say goodbye to past experiences of beauty and ecstasy and love, so the future remains replete with possibility and promise (at any rate, for most of us, most of the time). Faith encourages me to understand life in terms of direction and flow, and purpose, rather than merely as a series of random events - in which case, not only am I bound to look forward in hope and expectation, but also to believe that there is always something to take with me from within those lost days of wonder or joy. Nonetheless, the wistful notes of songs like 'McArthur Park' and 'Wichita Lineman' will continue to engage with a tender spot in my soul . . .

Redpoll

Lesser Redpolls are seen more frequently than they used to be, and are found as breeding residents over much of the UK, and as winter visitors more widely still.  They are beginning to be seen fairly regularly at bird feeding stations, including those in large and wooded gardens.  We have had them at our feeders just a few times this winter, and today one has been present from early morning. Although it seems to be able to fly quite well, it looks as though it may have been injured at some point, and some of the feathers in its right wing are not very tidy. This may be why it seems fairly tame, staying at the feeders when other birds are absent. It is feeding well, though. I wonder how long it will stay? Like the siskins which are still present in some abundance, redpolls won't be staying in our suburban gardens through the summer, though we won't have to travel too far to see them.

Birdsong

My monthly 'Nature Notes' column . . .

You’ve only to step outside our backdoor at the moment to be assailed by birdsong - though perhaps that’s the wrong word, as of course it’s a lovely sound. Bird vocalisation is a vast scientific subject, with lots of research going on as to how bird songs and calls develop, how they are used, and so forth. Almost all species of birds produce some sort of vocal sound, but it is the Passeriformes (the perching birds) that are particularly noted for their singing ability - birdsong being, I suppose, those bird calls that are tuneful to our ears.

In fact, bird songs can be quite complex;  by definition ‘song’ is more than a mere cheep or squawk, something relatively long and often melodious, and usually though not always associated with some aspect of courtship. Exceptions to this, such as the winter song of the robin, are linked to the need to establish and defend a territory. Interestingly, birdsong outside of the tropics is mostly delivered by the male, while many tropical species have song delivery shared equally by both sexes.  The vocal organ of birds is the syrinx, and songbirds have a number of muscles controlling this area of membranes over which air is passed, allowing a wide range of different notes and sounds to be produced, often at quite high volumes.

Why do birds sing?  As already stated, bird song is mostly related to reproductive activity. Songs are sung to attract a mate, and to establish and maintain a breeding territory. Often the male will establish a breeding territory and then seek to attract a mate to it, and the males of some migratory species will arrive before the females.

Song helps to stimulate and synchronize courtship, and indicates a readiness to breed.  This may be why both sexes sing in many tropical species, where breeding can happen at any time of the year and is dependant on food supply rather than season. The song can help to maintain the pair bond, and often fairly plainly plumaged birds, where male and female are not very distinct from each other, can have quite complex songs - with regional variations and ‘accents’.

There is certainly a competitive element to birdsong, especially where the more complex songs are involved. Males signal their effectiveness as mates by singing long and complex songs, to which they may well add new elements, perhaps copied from other sounds round about.  At this time of the year, many birds will sing from prominent positions - this is especially true of blackbirds, thrushes and robins; their songs may be used to intimidate opponents as well as to attract a mate.

Not all birds can easily be seen as they sing, however, so it’s good that songs are distinct - the RSPB and other organisations produce DVD’s of birds with the song for each species, a good way of learning to tell one from another. Anyway, there are some beautiful sounds to be heard at this time of the year - make the most of them!

Long-Tailed Tits

As I mentioned in my post last Thursday, LTT's now visit very regularly - in fact they appear several times each day, starting quite early in the morning, and almost always exclusively using our feeder for "fat balls" rather than the seed or nut feeders.  During the winter they visit mob-handed;  the previous year's brood often stay with the parents through the winter.  To see - as on one occasion not long ago - twelve or so of these remarkably agile little birds flitting about together is a real delight.

Now, however, our visitors are a pair, arriving together and very much operating as a couple. Along with our pair of robins, a real sign of spring. Not that today is all that spring-like, with high winds and cloudy skies - but, thankfully, so far not the flood of rain the weatherman was predicting a day or two back. We could certainly do with the comparatively dry spell continuing for a while longer, though I doubt it'll happen.

I hope the daily presence of LTT's is a sign that they'll be nesting somewhere close by. It would be really nice to have their company through the spring and summer. The nest is one of the most finely fashioned of our bird's nests, and they will raise a family of between eight and twelve.

Bramblings

Today has been an amazingly busy day at our garden bird feeders, perhaps because the birds knew the garden would be a no-go area once our grandchildren had arrived!  Long-tailed tits are daily visitors now, preferring to feed on the fat balls, and there are large numbers of chaffinches, siskins and goldfinches. One or two greenfinches turn up, and the bullfinch is generally around as well. But today we have had a few bramblings again, and for the first time one has visited our front garden feeders, allowing a better chance for photography.

O.K., so . . .

. . . this remembering to post something every day so that this turns into a proper blog isn't really happening. I'll go on trying, though.  Mum's big 90th birthday bash was last weekend, so that took lots of time and drained lots of energy - sort of (we're a big family so it's not as if there was really all that much for me to do!).  Here are a couple or three pictures, anyway.

Siskin

Our garden has been full of siskins, goldfinches and long-tailed tits (again) today. The siskins are my favourite: I love their aerobatic and acrobatic skills.

Old Photographs

Well, the wet and windy weather continues, though it seems we may get a bit of a breathing-space from tomorrow.  To be honest, Welshpool has not come through too badly, compared to many other places in the country. We've had our share of flooding, which is only to be expected, lying as we do firmly in the valley of the Severn, but it certainly could have been worse, and has been in other years. Quite a few trees have come down, though - out and about yesterday and today there are many gaps in the hedgerows and along the skylines.

I've spent quite a lot of time today sorting through old photographs, and putting a bit of a collection together for Mum's special birthday party tomorrow. Memories come flooding back! Sometimes there is a very vivid recollection not just of the place but of the exact moment when I see my seven or eight year old self in grainy black and white. Not that that is always the case; some of the photographs stir very little in the way of memories. Mostly these are more recent photographs than the childhood holiday snaps. Sometimes what Ann recalls is very different from my memories (shades of Maurice Chevalier!). Sometimes neither of us can remember very much. One picture shows all my brothers, my sister, our wives and partners, and Mum; it's taken after dark in the garden of a fairly modern house. Whose, I don't know; what the occasion was, I don't know. I must have been there, but no memory at all is stirred, and Ann was quite surprised to find herself in the picture, too.

It is apparently not true that our brains work less well as we get older (apart, of course, from specific health problems that may occur). It's just that they contain so much information, so many pieces of memory, items of learning, that everything takes longer to process. This, I am informed, is a matter of scientific fact; it has been tested. All I can say is that so far, my own tests seem to suggest otherwise. Unless, of course, my mind has behaved like the digital computer on which I am writing this, and deleted data in order to speed up the essential processes and calculations. Anyway, someone else will no doubt remember what it was we were doing twenty or so years ago, when we meet up tomorrow. And as (I think) Albert Einstein said, the important thing is not that you should know a lot of things, but that you should know where you can look them up.

The Calm after the Storm

Since the idea of a blog is that it should be a sort of diary, I think I should make something of a commitment to post a bit more regularly than I have been doing!  So here goes.  Yesterday was a 'calm after the storm' sort of a day - blue sky and sunshine after the strong wind and heavy rain of the day before . . . though I still did get rained on while out and about, and there is snow on the hills. More bad weather to come, they promise, so the calm before the storm as well. What a wet winter it has been! How long will it be before the farmers can do anything at all in most of the sodden fields around us?

The newspaper Ann brought home majored, like all our news bulletins just now, on the weather and its impact on our lives, with the flooding in the Thames Valley (home, I imagine, to many a senior journalist) very much at the centre of things. It also had on its front page, however, a school photo of the woman recently convicted of three murders and two attempted murders, compared to the adult photo of her brandishing a knife, which half the world has now seen. The trial of the men who assisted her in her crimes has come to its conclusion. The contrast between the innocent face and quiet smile of the girl in the school photo and the reality of the events recounted in court couldn't be greater, but what actually leads a person to become what she became is hard to assess - what combination of nature and nurture, the genes we inherit and what the world does to us. Why is it that the same sort of  experience hardens one person, and breaks another, brings one person to faith and drains the faith away from another? What in particular breaks the restraining code of morality that for most of us, religious or not, governs our behaviour and guides the decisions we make?

I found an old school photograph of my class, on which I look quite angelic. I was surprised not to be able to put names to most of the other children. I remember many of the names, of course, but matching them to the faces is beyond me. As far as I know, none of them has become an axe-murderer, though I'm pretty sure at least one has spent time inside, at Her Majesty's pleasure, as they say. I certainly couldn't tell which by looking at the picture, though!

An axe murderer features in the Van Veeteren story (crime novels by Hakan Nesser) that I've just started. A quote from the first few pages of that book, which I thought worthy of reflection: ". . . did there come a point, (Van Veeteren) had started to wonder, beyond which we no longer look forward to something coming, but only to getting away from what has passed?" Discuss, as they say. I suppose I do hope that by the end of my life I may feel I am ready to leave it - but I do also hope that until that time I shall continue to look forward in hope and expectation. I may also look back, and at times that will be with regret, but I should not ever wish that to be the dominant theme of my existence. Or at least, not until the last possible moment.

Man versus Squirrel (4)

Snowy this morning, and a squirrel has for the first time sampled our front garden bird feeders.  The pole on which they hang is decidedly rickety, and I was half afraid the weight of a squirrel would bring it down.  It didn't, but the squirrel was a bit disconcerted by the amount of sway, and decided to descend to ground level!

In the back garden, my new squirrel-proof bird feeders have failed at the first hurdle.  Most birds seem quite put off by the mesh around the feeder, for a start.  Even the siskins won't go through, though the doughty little coal tits do.  Meanwhile, the squirrels have quickly perfected the art of just taking the lid off the top of the tube, and stretching down to eat what's inside.  Just to make sure we can't put the lid back, they've bitten through the catch, too.  Game, set and match to Sciurus carolinensis, I should say.

(Supposedly squirrel-proof bird feeder)

Candlemas

It's been a while since my last post - I've been busy elsewhere - and I should have posted up this Sunday talk, given a week ago on 2nd February:

Around the time of the millennium, Christian leaders gathered in Rome at the invitation of Pope John Paul II to remember the martyrs of the Church worldwide, of the twentieth century.  There had been an awful lot of them.  Those who gathered in Rome heard the stories of women and men of many different cultures and nationalities who had refused to deny their faith, and whose blood called out from Auschwitz and from the gulags of the Soviet Union, from Burundi and from Uganda, from Central America and from China.  The commemoration took place close to the Colosseum where in the first years of the Church Christians had faced the lions, to be reminded that still today church leaders and church members still find themselves faced with the horrors of the cross and the reality of sacrifice.  To name a few: Janani Luwum, Oscar Romero, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Maria Skobtsova, Maximilian Kolbe:  there are many more.

I wanted to began what I say today by mentioning these martyrs of modern times because today is the day, forty days after Christmas, when traditionally Christians have recalled the story told by Luke in the reading I used a moment ago.  Jesus was brought to the temple by his parents, to do for him what any good set of parents would wish to do for their first-born son - to present him. Today is the day popularly known as Candlemas, but better titled the Presentation of Christ in the Temple;  and today has sacrifice as its central theme.  

When a firstborn child was presented in the temple he was offered to God as God's own possession.  At the same time a ritual sacrifice was also offered - for fairly poor folk like Mary and Joseph this would have been a pair of doves – and that sacrifice was to buy back the child to remain part of his own family. What lies behind this ceremony is an awareness of the way in which we all belong to God, something Mary and Joseph affirmed when they did for their firstborn son what the Law of the Lord required.

I recall visiting a Greek Orthodox monk some years ago, just at this time of the year - he was a painter of icons who was doing a bit of art restoration work for the church I was ministering in back then.  We found ourselves talking about the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, and he told me that the great teachers of the Orthodox Church understood the story of the presentation of Christ to be an icon of the Holy Trinity. What do you mean, I asked - surely an icon is a painting?  Yes, it is, he replied, but it’s more than just that; the icon is how we in the Orthodox Church use and interpret everything in scripture and tradition and Christian experience. 

It’s about finding pictures and stories of sacred and holy things, he said.  In the story of the Presentation, firstly, when the Son is brought into the Temple and offered as a sacrifice there is an icon of the cross, which is the work of Jesus our Saviour. Secondly, the doves offered as a sacrifice become an icon of the baptism that begins and enables ministry, and that is the work of the Holy Spirit. Thirdly, old Simeon speaks to Mary and Joseph words God has inspired him within him, and in doing that becomes an icon of the Father.  That’s not the way I’d used scripture up till then, but I could see there was something in the way it takes a familiar story and looks at it in a new way, that maybe says something important about the way in which Father, Son and Holy Spirit belong together.

Actually, to think of God as trinity is itself an image of sacrifice. As we try to express something of the mystery of God, one way of putting the trinity onto paper is to draw a triangle. Each point of the triangle, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is completely God, and yet each is not the other.  This is a relational way of understanding how Father, Son and Holy Spirit belong together.  But on its own it’s not enough, it’s too static - so we might go on to represent the Trinity by drawing a circle.  

A circle makes for a much more dynamic way of expressing the idea of the trinity, because it has no fixed points at which Father, Son and Holy Spirit are located. Each person of the trinity could be at any point on the circle, and you could add arrows to your drawing to suggest the constant movement that is interplay between the persons of the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  This gives us a participative image of God as Trinity. Again, not enough on its own, so the triangle and the circle are often drawn together, as a triangle with a circle linking round through its sides, and this has become one of the classic symbols of the Trinity that you will sometimes see in churches and cathedrals and in Christian art.

And this presents us with a fundamentally sacrificial image of what it means to say that God is trinity, for what the circle and triangle linked together try to express in picture form is the self-giving love that is the very heart of God, in which Father, Son and Holy Spirit hold themselves together in mutual service.  Again, Orthodox Christians see the blood of the martyrs as an icon of the sacrificial nature of God.  Those who have given their lives for his life, their love for the divine love promised by the Father, revealed in the Son, and brought to life within us in the Holy Spirit have revealed something of the wonder of God who as Father and Son and Holy Spirit exists in mutual service, each member of the Trinity serving the others, for that is the nature of love, and God is love.

And we in our turn are challenged to reveal in our own lives the self giving love of God.  That is or should be the theme of our worship Sunday by Sunday and our prayer day by day;  we offer ourselves to serve and to love, and to give what we can. Most of us may never be faced with the stark choice of martyrdom;  but we’re all called every day to dare to offer our selves to God, and, as St Paul puts it, to present our selves, our souls and our bodies to be a living sacrifice.  It’s not easy, though.  I wonder how well we ever manage it - living our lives in a genuinely sacrificial way, setting aside our own concerns and priorities and pride and status in order to love the Lord our God and therefore also to love our neighbour as ourselves.  

The story of the presentation of Christ in the Temple presents the new covenant God makes with us within the circumstances of the old covenant of the temple worship and sacrifice.  The people of Israel belonged to God, but they were alienated from him by their sin, and that sin needed to be sorted out. The sacrifices offered in the temple were made to redress the balance, and to placate God’s anger and restore his favour toward his people. So the ritual sacrifice Mary and Joseph offer in the temple that day is just part of an ongoing continuing round of sacrifice which is never sufficient, never worthy, by which a people set apart from God by their own sin seek to make things all right again and restore his favour.  But within this old covenant Simeon sees in this child the beginning of something new, something for which he has waited so long, and something that will bring to an end the old round of temple sacrifice.  The old ritual is rendered obsolete by the new light who will be a light to all nations and the glory of his people Israel.

Until this time sacrifice was offered to placate God’s anger, offered in fear and trembling;  but now, in the light of Christ we no longer need to live in fear.  We can offer a sacrifice of ourselves as a thank-you rather than as a penance - and the reason we can do this is that the one true perfect and sufficient sacrifice has been offered; the sacrifice that restores us once and for all to the status of sons and daughters of the living God.  Through the child offered that day in the temple, all the little sacrifices of our own lives are offered an eternal worth and value.

Tertullian, one of the fathers of the early Church, writing at a time of great persecution and affliction, said that 'the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church'.  This is true now as it was then in a very literal way: the Church has often been at its strongest when it has been most severely attacked.  The brave sacrifices of those we honour as martyrs have inspired others and have drawn them to know and to follow Jesus, for by them men and women of faith have declared in a way no-one could deny that their faith in the Lord, their love for the Lord, the love they have found in the Lord, is for them a truth above all truth, and a life beyond all life.  So we should certainly thank God that when darkness and desperation have surrounded the Church there’ve always been men and women who did not stand down or run away or betray their faith but stood firm to the end.  And we should thank God that still today he is giving strength and light and courage and perseverance to his people who face persecution.

But the Church needs always to have a spirit of sacrifice, if it’s truly to be the Church of Jesus. The Book of Common Prayer includes these words: ‘Here we offer and present unto thee, ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a holy and lively sacrifice’, and they seem to me to encapsulate what it means to be the Body of Christ in the world:  they are words not just to say, but to live.  The apostle Paul writes to the Colossian church that ‘he is helping to complete, in his own poor flesh, the full tale of Christ’s afflictions’.  But he’s doing this as a thank-offering to the God in whom he already has liberation and the promise of life.  

Because of the offering Jesus makes of himself, each small sacrifice we make, each little presentation of my self to God, can grows to be something better and stronger than our own efforts could ever make it.  However small the sacrifice, if it’s given wholeheartedly and lovingly, if it truly is presented to God, then God promises to make what we give into an icon of his glory.

Historically the Presentation of Christ in the Temple was within the Church an ending of the Christmas season and a time to start looking forward to Easter.  Traditionally called Candlemas, it became an opportunity for new commitment, for a new offering of ourselves. Old carols that used to be sung today tell of taking out the old Christmas greenery, holly and ivy and stuff, that would have decked our halls, to bring in new branches of rosemary and bay that look forward to the coming spring.  And the people would gather by the font in church to recall their baptism promises and to recommit themselves to live faithfully and courageously.  So may we just use this moment today to offer ourselves once again to our Lord who has offered so much to us, and whose Son was in the Temple acclaimed as a light for all the world;  a light for you and me, this tiny child who is the wonder of God himself held in the arms of old Simeon who had waited so long. And let us pray again that his light may shine in our lives, and that his glory may indeed be seen and known in all the world.

Man versus Squirrel (3)

Amusing today to watch a squirrel that is clearly not as agile as some, scrambling about on our feeders and looking most uncomfortable.  Mind you, they're nothing if not persistent, these squirrels: uncomfortable he may have been, and on one occasion he slipped off altogether quite spectacularly, but in the end he got his breakfast, and I hadn't the heart to rush out there shouting and throwing sticks.

For a while this morning the squirrel baffle actually did what it was supposed to.  Yesterday I moved a planter that the squirrels had used as a launch pad for their leaps onto the feeding station.  So this morning the squirrel made several attempts to climb the pole from the bottom, each time stymied by the baffle and having to return to ground level.  He then climbed a nearby bush, and tried to get to the end of an overhanging branch that pointed out in the general direction of the feeders.  Squirrels are quite light, and this one was smaller than some, but even so the branch was never going to be strong enough!

So the squirrel then tried a flying leap up from the lawn.  He cleared the baffle, grabbed the pole, couldn't keep his grip, and we were treated to the sight of the spectacular fall mentioned above.  He just tried again, and this time managed (just) to hold on.  He climbed to the top of the feeding pole, balanced there looking a bit vulnerable as it swayed in the wind, then out of the feeders hanging there selected the only one with a squirrel-proof guard around it.  He scrambled down that, and hung on to the base, allowing a few seeds to trickle out, which he was able to consume.  Then he fell off again.

Undaunted, back up he went, and this time selected the other feeders.  This was highly entertaining viewing, but - as mentioned before - the presence of a squirrel on the feeding station keeps the birds away, for the most part, and so I continue to feel I ought to discourage them.

Waste

Lights drift upon the black water,
as, viscous as oil, the stream flows;
passing silently under the bridges,
soft and secret and splashless it goes.
A man walks the cobbled embankment
passing under occasional lamps,
the shadows rise up to walk with him,
brought to life in the chills and the damps.
But don’t ask him what he remembers,
don’t ask him where he is bound;
it’s all water flowed under the bridges,
with no story, no crying, no sound.

Then the stillness is suddenly fractured,
wings are whipping and whirling, gulls cry:
with a thump and a rumble of diesel,
yellow hazards against the night sky,
men are busily clearing the rubbish,
briskly emptying barrows and bins -
silver packaging sparkles, glows briefly,
must be gone as the new day begins.
So metal jaws seize it and swallow,
sad remains of a time that is gone;
the man stops and he watches a moment,
then he turns up his collar, walks on.

We dance a short while and we sparkle,
and it seems our lives matter and glow,
but watch the lights fade in the water,
see them drift down and die in its flow.
So I’ll walk on, duck under the arches,
pretty soon I’ll be lost from your view;
leaving something perhaps of an echo
of the man whom you thought that you knew.
A new day is dawning without me,
where faith fights new battles with doubt,
where water flows smooth in the sunlight,
with the lights on the cobbles switched out.

Man versus Squirrel (2)

The neighbours probably think I'm mad, and will start to look away nervously, I fancy, when they meet me in the street.  Clapping hands and throwing sticks seem no longer to have any impact on our squirrels, so I have taken to creeping up on them (I can usually make it to within about two or three feet), and then shouting or growling very loudly.  It certainly alarms them and they beat a hasty retreat, but I expect it's alarming my neighbours too.

The squirrels have decided to broaden their diet.  They were happily eating sunflower seeds and leaving the other things I put out, but since I moved the nyger seed to hang from a post by the back hedge - a safer and easier spot for the squirrels - at least one squirrel has happily switched to that.  I only hung it there because this was the one feeder the squirrels always ignored!

I have moved all my feeders round, and it's been interesting to see the impact of this.  The nut feeder is now on the side of the feeding station closest to the house, rather than the side closest to the wood.  So far as I'm aware, the great spotted woodpecker has not visited since I moved it . . . I wonder whether it will start back once it's used to the changed positions?  We had enormous numbers of finches today, with the great oak to the back of next door full of them, all very noisy.  They are mostly chaffinches and goldfinches, plus a few siskins and the odd greenfinch.  We get bullfinches, too, but they go their own way and don't flock with the others.  Twice recently we've been blessed with redpolls, but only Ann has seen them, they're never there when I'm looking out!

Back to the squirrels.  Tomorrow I'll buy a squirrel feeder, and stock it with maize, and see how they go for that.  I'm not unhappy about feeding them, it's just that the birds keep away when the squirrels are about. Mind you, the other day a blue tit flew rapidly across to the feeding station, having - I think - completely failed to notice the squirrel that was hanging there grabbing the sunflower seed, and the squirrel was sufficiently surprised by this direct approach to make a dash for the trees.  So direct action by the birds could probably see the squirrels off, but the thought of that raises disturbing images worthy of Hitchcock.

Man versus Squirrel

I really don't mind feeding the local squirrels as well as the birds that visit our garden, but I do resent it when they monopolise the feeding station, as the presence of even one squirrel on the feeders will prevent any birds from visiting (though squirrels feeding on the bits dropped underneath the feeders do not deter the birds at all).  So I have put in a number of the supposedly squirrel-proof solutions to the problem.  The sight yesterday of a squirrel standing on the squirrel baffle (which supposedly prevents the animal from climbing up the pole from which the feeders hang) in order to reach inside the squirrel-proof cage around the feeder, made me a bit cross.  I chucked a piece of kindling wood at said squirrel, as there was a pile of it by our back door. To my surprise, it hit him, though not hard, as it was some distance away. He looked round at me, seemed to shrug his shoulders in a disdainful fashion, and carried on eating. Defeat duly admitted by disconsolate human.

Mind you, things are hotting up in the squirrel world just now, prompted no doubt by the comparatively mild winter we've had so far. Later in the day any number of squirrels - well, seven or eight, anyway - seemed to be engaged in something of a running battle through the treetops behind our house. Much shouting and screaming, and amazing agility as the creatures hurtled through the trees. It's my own fault, I suppose - they are now so well fed, and they have so much energy to work off. Certainly, it was amazing to watch them!

In fact, feats of agility of this sort are a feature of the mating season, which for grey squirrels is now in full swing. Squirrels produce two broods in a year, and the first of these is in the early spring, so mating - and no doubt fighting over possible mates - happens right now, whenever the weather is mild enough to encourage it. It's been mild nearly all winter so far, though the storms and rain over recent weeks won't have encouraged the squirrels. This week, though, things are much calmer meteorologically, and therefore, it would seem, considerably less calm in the treetops!

Advent Confession

Verses recently written, but in my thoughts set some twenty years ago, and (of course) at the beginning of Advent.

I have always wanted it all to be true,

and have always been afraid it might not be.

So here I am, on the last Saturday in November,

standing under a sad sky, halfway down the field,

looking up at the half tumbled dry stone wall,

the mess of posts and fence wire,

the busy lane and then the church beyond,

darkly brooding as ever, atop its little hill.

I am on my way home from a good brisk walk with the dog,

but now I shall have to get on with things.

Too far to see, but the church notice board bears my name,

and perhaps I ought to feel a little more sure 

about what it is I am selling.

Anyway, here I stand, quite newly arrived here,

and with the new liturgical year about to begin,

the Advent candle ring dressed and in place,

the altar and pulpit draped with purple cloth.

It has been a long journey to get to this place,

a long time spent wrestling with fears and uncertainties.

I seem to have so many questions that lack an easy answer,

that keep me awake on nights, interrupt my prayerful thoughts -

and yet I find also there is always the sense of God,

not present exactly, not in clear focus,

I cannot claim any blinding light or sounding voice, descending dove . . .

just the sense, and it is still there today -

of someone who does not let go of me, who is constantly catching my sleeve,

who despite it all goes on tugging me into saying yes.

January

Driving home, hard day, horizon ahead smudged and tearful,
all light and life leached out of it,
everywhere so dreary and it’s hardly four o’clock;
yet somewhere within the jumble in my head
a moment from a magical past drifts into focus,
a bright and shining star, that once I watched in wonder,
the kind my childhood self imagined
kings bearing gifts might follow.
And I can’t help but scan tonight’s grey and liquid sky
just in case I might glimpse it again.
For maybe then I’d find
those old stories I heard are true after all,
and know, even on a dismal night like this
that I really am heading for home.

Some words at the Epiphany

. . . prepared for a service I shall attend tomorrow:

Epiphany is a word that means discovery, revelation, the penny dropping, the eureka moment:  to have an epiphany is to realise the truth of something in a way you haven't before, to discover something new about yourself or about the world.  Today, January 6th, the Feast of the Epiphany, celebrates Jesus shown to the world, as he is shown to the wise men from the east who came looking for him;  and the Epiphany season that begins today goes on to tell of many more revealing moments - at his baptism, his first miracle, and more besides.

The man Jesus was born a Jew, and raised in the Jewish faith.  He called fellow Jews to be his disciples, and he taught in Jewish synagogues and the Jewish temple.  He had some critical words for some of his fellow Jews, like the Pharisees, but he was never critical of the Jewish faith itself.  The prophecy which suggested that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem told of the man God would send to 'rule over my people Israel'.  And the wise men from the east, with their star charts and their observations of the night sky had come to find the one born to be King of the Jews.

So that is where Jesus belongs, culturally, historically, geographically, linguistically.  In Palestine, and in the Jewish nation, and in the Jewish faith. So we might ask - how come he didn't stay there?  As we begin to consider that question, one fact to note from the outset is that these men from the east weren't Jews but Gentiles;  and the story of their visit is told to symbolise this vital piece of good news: that here in Bethlehem God has done something new to change the destiny not just of the Jewish nation but of the world.  And the gifts offered by the travellers are symbols of this new act of God:  gold, frankincense and myrrh.

Sacred gifts of mystic meaning, as one Epiphany hymn puts it. Gold is obvious enough - the child is a king, and gold is a king's coinage.  The child the wise men came to see will take authority and exercise power; he will rule over his people - though his route to kingship and the throne he claims are very different from the story of King Herod. But still, Herod would have seen the point of gold, and frankincense too he’d have understood, for there's always something priestly about becoming a king. Monarchs are anointed as they are crowned, as a sign their kingship is held in sacred trust from God.  The role of a priest is to stand between the people and God, God and the people, and one word that describes this is pontifex, meaning bridge builder.  Jesus is pontifex maximus, our great high priest, and he will rebuild the bridge we've broken.

But for me a chill falls across the proceedings when the third gift of myrrh is offered. Myrrh makes for a costly and special gift, but there’s no escaping the fact that it's also the stuff of death. For me the words quoted by Paul in Philippians chapter 2 stand at the heart of my understanding of discipleship and service: 'He emptied himself, taking the form of a servant.' This was what it would mean for Jesus to be king and priest: not the acquisition of status and power, but the letting go of these things. In the Letter to the Hebrews we read that Jesus is both the perfect priest, and also the perfect sacrifice. He offers himself for the sins of the people, to die so that they - that we - might live.

So gold, frankincense and myrrh are gifts with power and symbolic resonance, but it's the myrrh that most deeply expresses the crossing of human boundaries and the breaking of human barriers. For myrrh stands for the self-giving love that can break into our hearts, and for the God who in his gift to us places no limits on his love, loving as a Father loves even the most wayward of his children.  The wise men bow before God’s only Son, who will reveal himself as the living expression of that boundless love.

So how come he didn't stay in his Jewish setting?  However precious the birth we've just celebrated, it was his death that led those who saw him and heard him and followed him, and were changed by him, to conclude that what this man had done was for the whole world, and to acclaim him the King of Love, whose kingdom has no human boundaries. The Church founded in his name has the holy task of enabling that love to take root and grow and flower in all cultures and climes.  This child the wise men hailed with gold, frankincense and myrrh can never be the a possession of any one race or culture.  He's a Jew but he's not contained within what is Jewish;  he sometimes feels very western and European, but he's not ours either to keep for ourselves. When the Gospel is made an instrument of imperialism or colonialism that gospel has lost its truth. Jesus is ours as a gift, and his Gospel must shared as a gift, humbly and lovingly - a gift to set all people free.

And wherever the Church may be, it should always bear the symbols of gold, frankincense and myrrh.  Gold because we too are kings - Jesus shares with us his royal state and authority, and the secret of his throne, when he tells us: 'Let the one who would be greatest among you become the servant of all.' And wherever the Church is a servant Church it claims its share in the kingship of Christ.

Frankincense because we're all priests:  for all who serve and follow Christ share a holy call to speak of God to the world, and to speak for the world to God.  We are to pray without ceasing, and to witness with constant zeal.  To listen to God, and pass on what we hear;  to listen to the world, and to make our neighbour's need our constant prayer.  And wherever the Church is doing this, in any language or culture, it's sharing and communicating the priesthood of Christ.

But myrrh too must be our sign, for we're called to die daily to sin, and to take up our cross as we follow our Lord.  Our baptism joins us to the death of Christ and joins us also to his risen life and to the new wine of his Holy Spirit.  Discipleship requires of us a dying, a laying down of the old things, so there can then be the rebirth that is Christ alive within us, as we promise and pray 'Lord, you only will I serve;  you are Lord of all my life.'  We may never manage to achieve what we intend or resolve, but we must always aim to offer all we can.  As Christina Rossetti wrote, 'What I can I give him - give my heart'.  Wherever the Church is really striving to be Christ-filled and Christ-centred, setting aside any desire for worldly status or security, then the death of Christ is being proclaimed, until he comes again.

And sisters and brothers, the amazing and wonderful thing is that our Church that is so often so broken, so unsatisfactory and even so sinful nonetheless is doing all these things in so many places: African places and Asian places and South American places, and even European places too.  The wise men were right - the birth of this child was something very special, that could not go unmarked;  they trekked across the desert to lay their royal gifts before the one whose love can transform every human heart, for in Bethlehem they found God's free and loving gift to the world he can never cease to love. May your heart and mine receive that love tonight, and may our lives proclaim it in the world.

Unhappy Bird

We have had more birds than ever on our feeders today, with blue, great, coal and long-tailed tits, great spotted woodpecker, chaffinch, siskin, greenfinch, bullfinch and goldfinch, nuthatch, wood pigeon, robin, dunnock, blackbird, house sparrow all visiting.  The activity around the feeding station was most entertaining, but bringing so many birds together at one place can present its own problems, one of which (as I've mentioned before) is the ease with which disease and parasites can be passed on.  It's important that we do our best to keep the feeding station reasonably clean and healthy.

One female chaffinch in particular has been rather unhappy.  Its feet are very deformed, and its ability to perch must be greatly diminished.  It seems to be able to hop around all right, but its deformity must make it more vulnerable to predation, I should think. It seems likely that this particular chaffinch is suffering from chaffinch viral papilloma, which is not uncommon, sadly. While it is not in itself life threatening, anything that encumbers a bird's ability to move about the place, and of course to perch somewhere hidden and out of reach, has got to put it at risk.

This disease is specific to chaffinches (and bramblings, I believe), so the other birds that visit our feeders are not at risk of contracting it. However, the existence of a very visible disease of this sort only points up the probability that other diseased birds without such obvious symptoms may be visiting feeders.

Siskin

After the mystery of the female siskin found dead outside our back door a week or two back, today for the first time a siskin was seen visiting our feeding station (along with about twenty goldfinches). This was a male, with the black crown to his head delightfully prominent.  He was part of a real flurry of busy birds, with, besides the goldfinches, well into double figures of both chaffinches and blue tits, plus great, coal and long-tailed tits. Today has been a moderately calm interlude between stormy bursts of weather, and I wonder how aware the birds are of this, and their need to grab what they can while the weather holds!