Sonnet

I seem to have been doing quite a few poetic things recently, so today I'm posting two poems. Here is the first of them; someone said to me not long ago, "You can't really call yourself a poet unless you can write a half-decent sonnet." Well, I don't know whether this passes muster poetically, but it's my attempt, and it's from the heart - poetically, in Miltonian style and using a classic Italian rhyme structure, theologically reflecting, as so much I write, the thinking of Mother Julian of Norwich.

When, looking back, I trace the steps I made,

my wilfulness, my sin, my empty pride,

it shames me, Lord: if only I could hide

in some shade place until those memories fade,

or thou forget the false prayers I have prayed,

the dark distortion of the self inside;

my hopeful dreams, long left untended, died,

so cold the stone which on my heart is laid.

And yet I hear my Lord say, “Child, I know

how chill your heart, how far and lost you feel,

how mired you are in guilt and fearfulness;

come close, and see where living waters flow,

come, touch the cross, which is my true love’s seal:

I love you now, and never loved you less.”

Pests

Our garden fruit cage is delivering well, and I brought in a decent bowlful of raspberries last evening. Sadly, though, while we've got a few gooseberries to bring in, the bush itself has been almost completely denuded of leaves. We've been attacked by sawfly larvae, which can pretty well strip a bush in no time, leaving only a few of the outer leaves. I tend to have a quietist approach to garden pests, choosing to share some of what I grow with them, rather than blast them with sprays and stuff, but of course the pests themselves don't necessarily play ball!

Sawflies can have several generations in one year, so it's a problem that doesn't quickly go away if not sorted. They also take redcurrant leaves, but for some reason don't seem to like blackcurrant much, so our blackcurrant bush is still all right. It may be the strong smell of blackcurrants that puts them off.

So, what to do? I'm not inclined to use much in the way of chemicals, so I need to find a natural remedy or else just sit it out and hope for the best. One suggestion I came across involved making an infusion of foxglove leaves and spraying; trouble is, that needed to be done as soon as the caterpillars appeared. Far too late now! Apparently growing garlic nearby can be enough, so there's something to try next year; putting in some wild garlic might be enough, and it could look quite attractive when the flowers are out. Blue and great tits will readily take sawfly larvae, and we've plenty of them - maybe a feeder close to the gooseberries will make sure they're in the right place at the right time. Pyrethrum dust is also effective.

Kite

Our garden birds list gained a new tick today when a red kite came drifting directly over us this morning, dipping down quite low over our front garden. We were able to get some great views - no time to grab my camera though . . . we were just about to set off for the Osprey Project, and everything was packed and inside the car already. Red kites are no longer an unfamiliar sight in the Welshpool area, but I hadn't seen one from our garden before. We get buzzards regularly - always very high up, though - and once spotted a peregrine, again very high overhead.

Red kites were very much part of the urban scene centuries ago. They are predominantly carrion feeders, and towns then were I suppose scruffier places, with plenty of good meals available for kites. In the south-east of England kites are settling well into the suburbs, I understand, as they regularly come to gardens when people offer suitable food. I have no intention to add minced steak to our bird table, though the kite is welcome to come and take the odd pigeon, if he wishes.

Meanwhile, we have very large numbers of goldfinches, alternating between bursts of bubbling song and what sound rather like harsh strings of swear words when they argue, as they do frequently. Many of the goldfinches are juveniles, a fairly plain sandy brown but with the distinctive gold in the wing. The juveniles are often still pestering adults for food, but generally just get a string of goldfinch swear words and an aggressive thrust-forward beak in response.

Our Japanese cherry, which blossomed prolifically this year, is now forming masses of small red fruits, which are popular with blackbirds. Again, there are arguments, and often parents fending off aggressively begging offspring. They have to learn that it doesn't grow on trees - er - well, it does grow on trees, but you still have to get it yourself!

Rubbish - my latest "Nature Notes" article

Yes! This month I’m talking rubbish; and I think I’m fairly well qualified to do this, as I volunteer as a “litter champion” and go out several times each month to pick litter and other rubbish off my local streets and footpaths. Sadly, there’s often an awful lot to collect. The reason for mentioning it here is that rubbish is not only unsightly, it can often cause harm to wildlife (and also to pets, farm stock and unwary people, too). Much of the litter we carelessly discard fails to rot away or biodegrade, and therefore hangs about for a very long time. And it doesn’t just sit there; drinks cans can disappear into long grass, only to be mangled up when the roadside verges are mowed, or when a farmer mows down thistles or nettles in a grazed meadow, leaving sharp shards of metal to cause injury. Broken glass is an even more obvious hazard, and there’s a lot of it about, I find, as I do my litter-picking rounds.

Much of what we discard has held food or drink, and may therefore be tempting to wildlife. Not all the food we like is all that good for us, and it may not be good for wildlife, either. Salty or excessively sweet foodstuffs may be harmful; creatures may also be trapped by sticky residues. And the packaging itself can be dangerous; animals foraging inside can be trapped, and I have known of hedgehogs trapped by their own spines in yoghurt pots and similar packaging, for example. The plastic loops that link drinks cans are particularly nasty, and can trap fish and diving birds if in the water, or ensnare a variety of birds and small mammals on land. Cut or snap the plastic loops before discarding them in bins.

Cigarette smokers, sadly, are in my experience major contributors to urban and rural litter. Cigarette stubs are biodegradable, it’s true, but they still look very ugly. A friend of mine who can’t break the habit always carries a tin to put his stubs into. We know tobacco is a potential health risk, and we use nicotine as a pesticide, so it surely can’t be good to be scattering it about the place!


A number of TV documentaries recently have focused on the growing problem of plastic debris in the oceans; even thousands of miles from inhabited land, plastic bags and bottles sail our seas. They just don’t degrade!  What’s worse is that floating plastic bags, whether in the sea or in a local pond or river, can look enough like appetising food to tempt creatures into swallowing them. Even though they may not cause direct harm, they remain inside and severely limit the ability of the animal to digest enough real food to sustain itself. Discarded fishing-lines, hooks and weights pose a danger to water birds, and can kill. Fly-tipped rubbish, and from time to time run-offs from official landfill sites, can cause pollution of water-courses. Please, wherever you go, take your litter home with you or use a bin (there are plenty about, for example 108 just in Welshpool, I’m told). And in general, the less we dump, even legally, the better: re-use or recycle as much as you can.

Skylarks

I led a service high on the border hills this evening, at the stone circle known as Mitchell's Fold, above the village of Priestweston. The song of skylarks was a constant throughout, and a poignant reminder of a sound absent from much lowland farmland these days, which would have been always present in my childhood days. Skylarks have not coped well with increasingly intensive agriculture; while they are by no means the only bird of agricultural land to have declined markedly, they are among the most missed, for their wonderful song from the ascending wing, hailed in poetry and prose.

Why have they declined? They are ground-nesting birds, and at a guess one problem could be that pairs will be attracted to exactly the sort of level green field that will in fact be disturbed by machinery and cut as a growing crop. So their nesting attempts fail. I did still hear skylarks singing when we lived at Llandrinio, perhaps because there was quite a lot of permanent pasture within the farmland there, but even then rarely more than one singing bird at a time. Up above Priestweston there were at least two birds singing; on a recent walk on the Stiperstones there were more than that. It was almost like being a child again.

One of my favourite flowers was liberally scattered over the site at Mitchell's Fold, and that's the little acid-tolerant potentilla known as tormentil. While it has the typical five-fold (cinquefoil) leaf of many potentillas, it is unusual in that the flowers have not five petals, but four.

More on Sparrowhawks

I was told this morning of a kingfisher kill locally, almost certainly by a sparrowhawk, which is to my mind remarkable and can't happen often, both birds being such able and agile fliers. I've also had a number of conversations with people who are very negative towards sparrowhawks, which I am tempted towards when I think of the kingfisher, but  am not in general.

Are there more sparrowhawks? Yes, they've certainly increased over recent years. Do they kill garden birds? Yes, of course, and feeding stations provide a better opportunity than the hawk will find in most other locations. Birds are gathering there in good numbers and very regularly, and sometimes the placing of feeders allows plenty of cover and opportunity for surprise. We've tried to ensure that's not the case in our garden, but it's quite a small patch. But, third question - is that a problem? No, I feel.

We are maintaining an artificially high population of many garden species due to regular feeding, and therefore we're bound to boost the population of sparrowhawks. However, this is a classic case where predator and prey species are kept pretty much in balance, with the numbers of sparrowhawks fluctuating in a way that matches the charts for prey species, with the curve on the predator graph a little behind that of the prey species. If sparrowhawks kill too many prey species, then prey becomes rarer, and there is a consequent decline in sparrowhawk numbers.

The same principle of balance does not apply, though, to certain other species, with magpies being one I'd particularly note. I like magpies, and they regularly visit our garden without doing too much harm. They do, however, predate on small birds, and in particular they take eggs and nestlings. If the garden population of small birds is artificially high (which it is), many nests may be built in not very suitable locations (that will also be the case if gardens are too tidy and bushes and hedges too well-trimmed). If the gardener can see the nest, so can the magpie, or, for that matter, next door's cat.

I think that a major factor in maintaining a higher-than-it-should-be population of magpies is roadkill. Crows in general cash in on roadkill, but I rarely see a dead creature on the road without magpies around. This must have a seriously beneficial impact on magpie numbers, and means that those numbers are not closely correlated with those of small garden birds in the way that sparrowhawk statistics are.

Sparrowhawk

We had a visit the other day from a sparrowhawk, the first I've seen on our patch since much earlier in the year. Our visitor then was a rather grey male, this was a tawny and much larger female. The first intimation that something was up was a blackbird alarm call, then birds scattered in all directions as the sparrowhawk came through. As the hawk hit the feeders - which didn't seem to be at high speed - there was a great flapping of wings, then she continued through. I presume she did strike, but I can't be sure. I was sitting on our patio only a short distance away, so I'm sorry not to have seen more than I did - blame the "Independent" crossword!

This stock picture gives a good impression of the bird we saw:

We had a siskin at the feeder this morning, the first I've seen in nearly two weeks, so it's good to know they're still around. We have plenty of greenfinches, despite concerns nationally about disease. We share that concern, though, and greenfinch numbers have been severely hit by Trichomonosis, a disease that affects many garden birds but seems to have hit greenfinches in particular since about 2006. "Springwatch" was encouraging better hygiene of garden feeders this spring, and we make sure all ours are cleaned every week. 

This shot of male and female siskins is from our previous garden (same feeder as this morning, though!).

New Start: Humming-Bird Hawk Moth et al

Well, here we are in the second half of the year, so time for a new start, and a fresh attempt to make daily, or near-daily, reports on this blog.  There's no shortage of stuff to write about, after all.  I've wanted to mention what seems to me a distinct shortage of swallows and house martins this summer. To be honest, we never see many here, but we do usually get a few passing over. Not this year, not so far. But yesterday there were plenty of house martins busy where I was in Four Crosses, so perhaps it does just depend where you are; and at the old cemetery chapel in Longden Road, Shrewsbury the swallows were busy at their nests in the cloisters, as always. Even so, numbers of hirundines as of other migrants have been decreasing, there's no doubt about that.

Our bird feeders have been very busy of late, with large numbers of greenfinches, goldfinches and tits, among others. Here, though, is a rare view of one of our feeding stations empty!

We had had them out of use for a day or so while we cleaned everything, and it's taken a little while for the birds to find their way back to us. Not very long, though - last time I looked out of the window, there was plenty going on! We have three feeding stations, one of which is out of use through the summer. We feed fat pieces and sunflower hearts, plus other bits and pieces as needed. I tried niger seed but it just left a mess everywhere, and the goldfinches preferred the sunflowers anyway; and I don't put peanuts out except in small quantities, as they tend to be consumed very slowly and therefore, to my mind, pose more of a disease risk. Scraps, including bits of apple, get put out as and when. We are very conscious of the need to keep everything clean - where birds are coming back again and again to feed in the same place, infections can easily be passed on, and good hygiene is essential.

Speaking of migrants, which I was a bit back, one turned up at a committee meeting I attended last night, which with the weather as it was, took place out of doors, in a garden with some lavender in full bloom. Those sitting near the lavender were startled by what turned out to be a humming-bird hawk moth. There are such wonderful creatures, and it's a couple of years since I had a good sight of one. The meeting paused for several minutes while we observed the moth, which fed on the lavender for a while before eventually leaving us. I didn't have my camera with me, so this is a picture borrowed from elsewhere :-

A strange sound in our garden this morning somewhat startled me. It was quite a loud tapping sound, almost like hammer blows. I could see nothing happening, just the usual birds, so I descended the steps from our patio to see a blackbird fly away leaving a snail on the garden path where it had obviously been trying to break it open. Song thrushes famously smash snails on anvil stones, and I remember a pebble in my childhood garden being used for this purpose, to my delight, but I hadn't previously come across a blackbird trying to smash snail shells. I may have saved a snail, or perhaps the blackbird returned to finish the job. I'll go out and look in a moment!

Bees are very busy in our garden in this good weather. Here are photos of a bumble bee on hypericum, and a mason bee getting stuck in in one of our insect homes :-

No Longer Flying

After so long, it felt like a crash landing;
I came tumbling out of the air,
and seemed destined to sink into solid ground
to be rather quickly lost to view.

But no-one was looking anyway,
they all had other things on the go,
and there was, perhaps, a failure of focus,
an optical error of sorts.

So, this - a summer’s day, and I no longer flying,
but still above ground at least,
with eyes that continue to function
and a memory more or less intact.

I reflect upon the green of a hidden vineyard
on the steep south slope below the castle,
secure behind its walls of stone capped with tiles:
and a day I think I remember well.

A summer afternoon - black nightshade and fumitory
rambled peaceably between the vines,
and a robin sang to us
from atop the ivied gatepost.

I must have been flying that day,
for somehow I still see all of it from high above,
you and me together there, so long ago;
but blink, and this, strangely, is now.

Now I am lost from view behind French windows,
where nobody sees me or cares overmuch;
I dwell on vines and robins and annual weeds,
and on you, only as I remember.

Long ago: I remember too that in those lovely and love-filled days,
when it was all beginning, when hope fuelled our flying,
I could not truly imagine the falling,
the light dying, the soil cast across me.

Now I can, and only too well; but it is not quite dark,
and I am able still to dream of flying at least,
while green, they say, is the last colour one can see
as the daylight fades.

Invasion

A "Nature Notes" article . . .

We have suffered an invasion! We don’t normally get starlings in our garden. They sometimes feature on our record sheet, because they do live not far away, and from time to time we see them from the garden, flying by or perching on nearby roofs or chimney pots. But our garden is - or was - starling free. And then, all of a sudden, the other day, it was full of them: an invasion.

A family of starlings had winged in, father, mother and seven or eight boisterous youngsters, to raid the fat and insect chunks we have in one of our feeders.  I suppose the parents were introducing their young charges to good sources of food. Clearly they like the fat chunks, as they’ve stayed with us ever since - not the whole family, thank goodness, but one or two of the youngsters.

Actually, it was quite entertaining to watch them. The young birds were as big and as strong as the parents. They are a mousy brown in colour, and will gradually develop the spotty black adult winter plumage over coming months. They are acrobatic, noisy and quarrelsome, rowdy yobbos of the bird world. The parents clearly struggle to cope with them. The young birds are perfectly able to feed themselves, but still chase after their parents in the hope that they will feed them. This means the parents we saw were constantly under attack; though they’d clearly decided that by bringing their children to feast at our feeders they’d done their bit, they were repeatedly mobbed, attacked and - let’s be honest - mugged by the young ones.

The parents in summer plumage are very handsome birds, with yellow bills, black plumage that is iridescent, and shot with purple and green, an upright stance and a strutting, swaggering style. They are so rowdy at a feeding station that other birds can be put off, though that didn’t seem to be the case on our invasion day, and the tits and finches just flitted in between quite happily, while our boss robin showed himself easily a match for a young starling.

Starlings are present all the year round in every part of the UK. While their numbers have fallen in recent years, they are by no means rare, and in winter millions of starlings from the Continent flood in to take advantage of our comparatively mild winter weather. As insect eaters they can be very useful, feasting on a number of pest species like wireworms and leatherjackets, probing into soft ground with their long bills. However, they are generalist feeders that will exploit any likely food source, and if present in large numbers they can do serious damage to crops.

Starlings are familiar city birds, congregating on ledges and windowsills; in rural areas they are often hole-nesters. The huge winter gatherings of starlings, called murmurations, generally in marshy areas, are one of our most amazing wildlife sights. The wheeling flight of many thousands of birds is more reminiscent of waders than of other song birds, I always think.

The Carpenter's Song

I shall take my pleasure in the golden shafts of sunlight,

where the shadows of great trees fall dark across the lane;

I shall take my pleasure in the cooling breeze against my face,

and the open road behind, beyond.

I shall take my pleasure in the strength of an arm

and the co-ordinating skill of eye and hand;

in the curl of the shavings where the plane travels,

in the turn and grain of the wood,

the chiselled face and the hammer’s blow.

Others may walk a different road, or chase a different gold -

let them measure their lives and mine as they may choose;

I shall take my pleasure in the things I know

and in the work that I can do,

here in the place where God has set me.

Let that be gold enough, and fame enough,

while I have breath to journey on.

After Rain

This is supposed to be a dry week, but last night a rogue shower saved me the job of watering. And on this sunny morning the ground remains wet, the grass glistens, and steam is gently rising from the wooden railings around our patio. There are family parties of blue and great tits making use of the feeders, the bolder among the young birds squabbling and chasing each other around, and the more timid looking pathetic and waiting to be fed by the long-suffering parents. I was interested to see the male bullfinch land on the patio fence, very close therefore to me as I watched from the kitchen window. He proceeded to prospect along the railings for insects and spiders, it being festooned by webs, very visible after the rain; from time to time he would hover before a web, to pluck away some insect caught there, I presume. I've not seen bullfinches do that before.

Windy!

A really windy day today, and the garden from time to time full of great tits, mostly young, with their greyish plumage. They were raiding the feeders, feeding very messily, much to the delight of the pigeons and blackbirds prospecting below. Quite fun to watch them battling with the strong gusts, and not always ending up where intended!

Blackbirds and Bumble Bees

Churchyards are often wonderful places for wildlife, and the churchyard at Montford in Shropshire, where I spent a couple of hours the other day, is certainly no exception.  I was delighted to be surrounded by nature on a warm and sunny day.  Many birds were singing, but there were two or three male blackbirds really hammering out their songs at each other.  Blackbirds will often select a high perch from which to sing, but I was interested to observe one singing quite coherently with a beak full of insects, and continuing to sing, albeit in a slightly more ragged fashion, as he flew down to a group of shrubs where (I presume) the nest must have been sited.  I'm not sure how such a volume of song can be produced with the beak closed; certainly when watching blackbirds giving their all to song you see the beak open and close as the sound is produced.

The churchyard was fairly full of flowers, and part had been left uncut to allow a good meadow flora to thrive.  Buttercups, vetches and ox-eye daisies predominated, with speedwells very attractive near the church door.  I was delighted also to see a small group of star of Bethlehem (ornithogallus, I think) half hidden in the long grass. I suppose this may have been planted, long ago - good to see it still thriving, though.

I spent some time looking at the south wall, very warm in the afternoon sun. This is a sandstone church, and the stone of the 18th century chancel seemed particularly porous. Mason bees and small wasps were dancing up and down the wall, investigating and occasionally entering holes.  I presume the bees were nesting in some of the holes, but it seemed to me that they could only locate the precise holes they were using by trial and error!  As I watched, a zebra spider made its way up the wall. As its name suggests, this little spider has a black-and-white striped abdomen, and one effect of this is that the jerky movements of this spider are accentuated. It almost seems to disappear from one place and reappear in another a little further on. Eventually, it too disappeared into a hole. I was interested also to see a black millipede making its way up the wall. Millipedes are vegetarian, so I wonder what this one hoped to find on the wall - perhaps algae or lichens. It was certainly there by intention, quite determinedly climbing the wall, investigating each hole or crack it came to.

The shaded north wall of the church was loud with the buzzing of bees. The reason for this was that cotoneasters were growing there, studded with tiny flowers that were obviously irresistible as a source of nectar. Nearly all the bees were bumble bees; with so much concern about possible declines in bee numbers, it was good to see - and hear - so many. I am no expert on bumble bees, much as I love them, but there were at least six or seven different species, by my reckoning, and maybe a hundred individual bees or more there at any one time.

Bees (again)

Bit of a grey old start to the day today, June not exactly flaming - at the outset, anyway!  Once the sun got out yesterday things warmed up a bit in the garden, and I was able to watch the solitary bees that have made use of our insect home. Despite the name, these bees often live close together, seeming to form what can seem to be quite large colonies - but within that community, each bee in fact does live a solitary life, in that they don't help each other or co-ordinate their activities like the workers in a hive. There seemed to be more than one species, as I was watching; without knowing much about them, I'm aware that there are cuckoo bees that parasitise on their hard working neighbours, so perhaps some of the bees I could see were doing that.

Solitary bees are as important as other species as pollinators, so they are definitely to be encouraged. Ann and I had a wander around the gardens at Powis Castle yesterday afternoon, and it was good to see plenty of bees around there. One holly bush, in full flower, seemed to be particularly attractive, and we were able to watch several bumble bee species hard at work.

Later, Helen and I did some driving around - she was looking for good photo opportunities. After trying out a number of viewpoints and scenic spots, eventually we ascended to the Kerry Ridgeway, via the road from Kerry towards Clun, and had a walk along there. That provided the scenery Helen had been looking for, but, boy, was it bleak!  Also, many degrees colder than down below, with stunted trees blasted into submission by the unrelenting westerlies.  No bees up there, that we could see!  I shall walk the length of the Ridgeway this summer, I think - I've been meaning to do it for a while . . . but I'll choose a warmer day, I think!

Siskins, and the (almost) death of a squirrel

Siskins are very messy feeders, so two visiting town pigeons were overjoyed this morning to feast on the abundance of sunflower kernels dislodged and dropped by the single male siskin that had monopolised our feeding station. Siskins nest nearby, so I hope for a repeat before long of last year's delight - a garden filled with playful young siskins. Just the one male at the moment, though, as a regular visitor. Tiring of the sunflower seeds, he flew across to one of the ornamental cherries, where he was swiftly rebuffed and despatched by the argumentative great tits that were engaged on an insect hunt there.

It's been wet overnight, and the spider webs that, despite my best efforts, festoon the posts and railings of our patio, are bright with raindrops this morning. The first bird to catch my eye, even before the siskin, was a song thrush, hopping brazenly up the path toward the patio as though he owned the place. I don't often see song thrushes in our garden, though they're frequently singing not far away.  One of my childhood memories is of the time a song thrush adopting a large seaside pebble I'd brought home and placed in my little bit of our garden, as its regular anvil, on which to smash the shells of snails it had captured.  Every morning there'd be a few more smashed shells scattered there. I wonder whether the decline in the song thrush population is linked to the increased use of slug pellets in our gardens?

One of our local squirrels was very nearly captured yesterday. I don't greatly mind squirrels visiting our feeders, but I do like to make sure they don't feel too comfortable doing so, as while they are there the birds don't get much of a look-in. So I often go out and blast them with a water gun, or chase them off with hand-clapping and mild swearwords (I wonder what the neighbours make of that?). On this occasion, though, the attack came from elsewhere. Having dropped quite a bit of seed when filling the feeders the previous evening, I'd left enough on the ground to attract this particular squirrel into rootling about on our lawn rather than climbing to the feeders as I might have expected. So it was happily making its way across the lawn when there came a sudden pounce and there it was, wrestling with a large black cat, a beast I've had to chase off my land a few times before now. The cat was twice the size of the squirrel, and though squirrels can give a pretty good account of themselves I didn't give much for this one's chances. So I intervened, sending cat off in one direction and squirrel in another. No harm done on this occasion, but no squirrels seen on my premises since then!

Bees

A poem I've been working on . . .

Bees arrive, depart; hoverflies, too. Today

this is such a busy corner of my garden.

I watch them across the tangle of raspberry canes,

hard at work in the dappled sun,

dusting themselves with pollen:

a necessary part of the process

of forming life from life, forming also

fruit for the jar or table.

Spring has made a cold and clammy start this year,

leaving my roses locked in the bud,

while the swallows have missed by a week

their due arrival.

I am yet to hear the cuckoo -

last year he was all around.

Be glad of this day, then,

of its sunshine and unexpected warmth;

they say there’ll be rain yet to come,

spilling from strengthening and chilly north-westerlies.

Be glad too that we still have the bees,

honey, bumble, carpenter, mason.

The steady insect hum as I sit in this easy shade

supplies a chanter-note for the songs of spring, assurance that

the transfer of pollen still continues,

is under way. But remember: like the weather,

all is not as settled and sure as it can seem to be

on a day like this; we need so much that chanter-note,

that soft, assuring drone. Be glad,

but be watchful, take care; we need the bees.

Memories

A poem written a few days ago, for a funeral ceremony :-

Rays of early sunlight filter through
the leafing trees, to light the garden flowers.
In serenity and beauty the new day begins
with birdsong and spider webs, and beads of dew.
And I think I trace you in the shadows of the trees,
rediscover you in the glistening flowers.
The bright green of the new leaves is a sign of hope,
and the freedom of the birds in flight lifts my spirit.
Those we remember with love will never leave us;
we may glimpse them in the beauty of the morning,
and we shall carry them in the deep places of our heart.

Missing

I have heard willow warblers this year, but it's a bird that's missing, so far as I can tell, from the bird population of our garden and the woodland behind. Its song is a sweet falling cadence of notes, and I'm sorry not to have heard it as part of the dawn chorus (or the evening chorus, which is sometimes almost as good) at our garden gate.

Willow warblers and chiffchaffs are very similar birds - to be honest, I can't tell them apart by sight. The habits are a bit different, and the song is very different. Chiffchaffs are among our first summer migrants to arrive, and, indeed, these days a fair few of them never leave, but hang about along the south coast and into the west country. Willow warblers arrive later, and have a long journey to make, as they spend the rest of the year in sub-Saharan Africa. That in itself may be a factor in their decline.

It would seem that the decline is not only locally here but nationwide, with numbers down from some four million to - I don't know, but a lot less - today.  The enthusiastic bird-shooters, legal and otherwise, that target our migrant species in the Mediterranean countries (Malta having been particularly in the spotlight) come in for much criticism, to a degree well-founded. It's also true that things are often pretty stressful for our summer birds in their winter quarters, where changing agricultural practices, loss of habitat and growing human populations are bound to have an impact.

Here there's been quite a lot of attention paid to our own agricultural practices. Many species, residents as well as visitors, that have been agricultural land specialists, have seen substantial population declines in recent years. Conservation organisations have long campaigned for a more wildlife friendly approach to agriculture, and I think the wisdom of this is being more and more accepted by statutory authorities and farming organisations. Things like better hedge maintenance and the development of wildflower-rich headland areas need not be costly to the farmer but can have a rich benefit where wildlife is concerned, not least by linking up what might otherwise be isolated bits of good habitat.

To this mix, however, I'd like to add a thought that occurred to me the other day. Populations of many native birds have been growing - provided they are adept at accessing things like garden feeding stations - and surely that in itself must have an impact on other species. One reason why resident birds are resident is that they are therefore early on the breeding scene each spring, and can - in a good year - raise more broods than the summer visitors can do.  Garden feeders and nest boxes help make more years into "good years". This enables resident species to be more effective in competing with the summer visitors for - often, I should think - the same food resources.  I'm sure that's bound to be a factor in the ways populations develop and decline - gardens and therefore people who feed birds in gardens are a hugely significant part of the so-called "natural environment" these days. The only question, it seems to me, is how much of a factor, set against the others listed above.

Magpie

Up really early this morning to record the dawn chorus at our back garden gate, leading into the woodland behind. Beautiful singing, robin, blackbird, wren, garden warbler among others - but I shan't be able to hear how the recording worked out until later on - it was rather windy and drippy so I hope that won't obscure too much of the singing.

Spent some time then watching one of our local magpies, a regular visitor to our garden. He's lost one leg, but seems otherwise in good enough shape. It occurs to me that magpies, being intelligent and resourceful birds, probably cope better with disability than maybe some other species would. We had thrown out some scraps yesterday, so he had plenty to peck at on the ground, hopping quite well though occasionally having to partly open one wing to restore balance. But on other visits he has flown up to the fatball feeder and is able quite successfully to hang on there long enough to grab a morsel, and generally also to dislodge some other bits, that he can then at from the ground. And at times his mate has helped in this, though he was on his own this morning.

A number of blackbirds have also mastered the art of holding on to the fatball feeder. They can't manage to stay there for long, and there's a lot of wing flapping going on, but they manage to get a feed, again dislodging enough to then feed from the ground. Like the collared doves I mentioned yesterday, this is all learned behaviour: birds adapting to a new environment . . . but of course, it's that ability to adapt that makes these birds successful garden birds to begin with - they need to be to a degree generalists and exploiters. The species most at risk in these changing times are those that occupy a precise ecological niche in which diversification isn't possible. This includes, of course, those that find it necessary to migrate.

Pecking Orders

It's interesting observing the pecking orders in our garden. Whilst bigger birds like magpies, jackdaws, wood pigeons and even blackbirds take precedence, there's also a clear delineation between other species, though things can vary. Blue tits, for example, come close to the bottom of the pile, and really only coal tits give way to them - but the pair nesting in the box not far from the feeding station have developed a feisty willingness top see off more or less any other bird that comes near. Generally, of the small birds, the nuthatch is top of the pile, though last year we had one that was uncharacteristically timid. Usually the nuthatch will only give way to the great spotted woodpecker. Of the finches, greenfinches are the boss birds, extending their necks and batting with their wings to see other birds off. Chaffinches, always looking rather ungainly at the feeders, are a long way down the list, but goldfinches have a high status, and the little siskins will hold their own with the greenfinches. Bullfinches approach cautiously, but once in place give way to no-one. The robin is not very good at using the feeders, but is often quite combative. A lot of its energy is spent though on seeing off other robins, and, for some reason, dunnocks (which, most of the time, just peck around at ground level away from the firing line). Great tits are unsurprisingly first among the tits, and long tailed tits sort of just drift in and out. The blackcap we had through the winter was very quick to defend "his" food supply . . . but, come spring, though still around became much more tolerant. We get collared doves, too - one has realised that by perching in a rather ungainly fashion on the sunflower feeder he can cause quite a spillage of seed, which he and his mate can then exploit at ground level. There's a little mouse appears when that happens, too.

My Nature Notes column for the month ahead . . .

Identifying Garden Birds

As the trees that surround our garden get fully clothed with summer leaves, so many of the birds all but disappear, and I have to rely on songs and calls in order to identify many of them – not a strong point of mine, but I’m learning. The dawn chorus continues through this month, though it’s beginning to tail off as parent birds have so much work to do; it’s a good opportunity to listen to what’s there, and you can look up birds on the RSPB web site and listen in to recordings of their songs and calls.

Many of our commoner birds continue to visit the feeders – blue and great tits, chaffinches and house sparrows, even the great spotted woodpecker. Others are now absent – it’s been ages since I saw a nuthatch, for example – preferring to feed on the insect life that abounds now in the trees. Summer visitors like warblers rarely if ever come to garden feeders, and our blackcap that was so regular through the winter (until quite recently blackcaps were only here in summer) has now abandoned us. I’m not good at distinguishing between the various warblers, blackcaps excepted, and many of them, if glimpsed at all, get noted down as LBJ’s (Little Brown Jobs).

By and large we don’t get any rarities, though a peregrine falcon flew high overhead the other day. Unusual birds generally turn out to be plumage variations in familiar birds – blackbirds that are partly white, for example, or chaffinches with over-large wing bars. Our basic rule if that if we see a really strange bird we can’t identify, it’s a chaffinch, especially if we can only half see it through the leaves. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, when it comes a bit closer and we can get a better look, that’s exactly what it turns out to be. We get bullfinches regularly, very handsome birds, especially the male; we’re also sometimes confused just by seeing a bullfinch from an unusual angle!

Young birds often differ in plumage from the parents, and at this time of the year that can be another source of confusion. Young blue and great tits are much the same as the adults but with a lighter, greyer plumage till their first moult; young blackbirds are brown and spotty, but not to be confused with the much more spotty song thrush.

A word of advice regarding young birds: you can often find very young bundles of feathers hopping about the garden looking quite helpless and vulnerable, and people worry that they might have fallen out of the nest or been abandoned. If they’re fledged, then they’ve left the nest. They may not look as though they can fly, but they can, even if not very well. And the parents may well be out of sight, but they’ll be around. Of course they are vulnerable, and some will be lost to hawks, magpies, squirrels or cats – that’s life and nature, unfortunately. But the parents will do their best to protect them; keep an eye on them by all means, but basically leave them be.

Dawn Chorus

Having a wood just a few yards from our bedroom window is quite handy at this time of the year. If I wake up early, all I have to do is open the window and I can lie peacefully in bed listening to the dawn chorus. And what a chorus it is! I listened the other day from about 4.30 onwards, with the chorus reaching its peak at about 6 am. The robin was the first bird to sing, joined by a blackbird soon afterwards. I also identified song thrush, great tit, blue tit, nuthatch, chaffinch, goldfinch, wren, chiffchaff, garden warbler, blackcap and dunnock. Plus, I think, whitethroat and willow warbler, but I'm not sure. And wood pigeon of course, but you can't shut them up.  And others I couldn't identify, I'm not the greatest on bird song.  I have a little recorder, so at the weekend I'll get up and go out and about with it if the weather is suitable. But for now, I'll stick to lounging in bed and listening in!

Belonging Together

I can't remember whether I've posted this before - if so, it's posted again! I wrote it a while back for a funeral service I was preparing, and I've used it a few times since. It says what I wanted it to say, and I hope provides a message that transcends the boundaries of doctrine, faith and unbelief.  I've tweaked it to use at different stages in the funeral or memorial ceremony, but here is the form in which I've used it as a word of farewell and committal.

What does it mean, to belong together? Simply that, on our own, even the greatest of us is only quite small. We are formed and made to be part of something greater than our mere selves: to give and to receive, to love and to be loved, to be cared for and to care. We are measured not by what we get and gather and own, but by what we give: within our families and with our children, in the nurture and teaching we have offered; among our friends, in our loyalty, and in our sharing of joys and tears; and within the wider world, in service and compassion, in perseverance and honest work. Like leaves on a tree, one day it will be our time to fall, and for some this will be too soon and out of season. Here we say our farewell to [N], and here we commit the body in which we have known [her] to the elements of the earth from which we are formed. May we do so with this thought in mind: that what each of us has given to the greater whole really matters; each life matters, each person matters, and what we have given of ourselves is what will live on.

Bats

Plenty of bats in our garden tonight. They are, I think, pipistrelles, very small, marvellously aerodynamic, fascinating to watch as the light fades, as they hunt along the woodland edge. Plenty for them to catch, I should think.  I used to enjoy listening for the echo-locating squeaks of bats as they flitted backwards and forwards across the quad back in schooldays, used to enjoy the sound of grasshopper warblers in the hedges and thickets along the canal towpath too; those days are long gone, now I have to be content with what I can see!

Sunday Talk

It's been a while since I posted here!  I need to get back into business . . . this is a talk I've given this morning, Rogation Sunday :-

Some churches call today Rogation Sunday. The days leading up to Ascension Day (which is Thursday) are called Rogation Days. They don’t really have a Christian origin, so far as I can make out - it seems the original tradition goes back to pre-Christian times, when crops were ritually blessed in the hope that they would then grow free of disease. Rogation isn't a word we use very much, but it’s to do with prayer. In particular, rogation is asking prayer.

Because the original rogation days were to do with the growing crops, Rogation Sunday these days is often used as an opportunity to reflect on the world around us, its riches, its resources, and on how we use it and value it and conserve its natural beauty and richness. Our responsibility to generations still to come, and our responsibility to God to care for his creation.  “We plough the fields and scatter the good seed on the ground” was originally written, in Germany, as a rogation hymn not a harvest hymn.

I do value the chance to preach now and again on things to do with ecology and conservation, and indeed God’s bounty and the wonder of his creation.  But I’m not going to do that today. Invite me back sometime to preach at harvest. Today I’d like to focus if I may on prayer;  and in particular about what we should be asking of God, and how we might do that.

I might be better listening to a sermon on this subject than trying to preach one. Asking isn’t one of my strong points.  I've always been impressed by colleagues who're good at delegating, bit it’s not something I do all that well.  It's not that I want to do it all myself;  or that I think I can do things better than other folk can (sometimes I can, often I can't).  I think the main reason I don't like to ask is that people might answer 'no' - and I don't like the way that makes me feel when they do.


So I set up stress for myself simply by being afraid to ask.  If that can happen in a single human situation, it also happens in our relationships with God.  It's why prayer becomes humdrum or half-hearted.  It's why we end up not praying at all, or else praying in a way that ceases to include much real asking.  But really, prayer that lacks rogation - asking - is prayer that's incomplete.  It's not all there.  So there’s something worth thinking about on these last few days leading up to Ascension Day.

Prayer - asking prayer - is a vital part of the story of the Ascension, because from Ascension to Pentecost the disciples stayed in Jerusalem, as they’d been told to do, and there - as we’re told - they were constantly praying to God. They were asking God to fulfil his promise to them, and to pour upon them the gift Jesus had told them they must wait to receive.

And I think, reading that, that when we begin thinking about what we might ask of God, before anything else the burden of our prayer should be the same as that of the disciples; we need first to ask God for himself, to ask him to be present with us, and to pour out his Spirit upon us.  But what would that entail?  The other day someone was telling me that he reckons the Holy Spirit is regarded in some circles rather like the chap who doesn't quite fit in with the ethos of the club.  The chap who comes in wearing no tie, or choosing to wear his suit with brown shoes; One of my fellow choristers last night at Theatr Hafren was wearing brown shoes with his dress suit. “No-one’s going to see my feet, I’m on the back row,” he said. “What’s the world coming to?” remarked one of the other basses. “How can anyone sing a concert in brown shoes?”

For those who like their Church to be orderly and domesticated, the Spirit comes as a disruptive and unruly intruder who isn’t always bothered about etiquette or rules. The Anglican communion service includes the words: 'The Lord is here!’ and the response is ‘His Spirit is with us.'  But do we really mean that?

The Spirit is the Spirit of Christ, or so St Paul writes. To ask for the Holy Spirit is to ask that our Lord himself be present with, within and among us as his people; and how else would he be with us, than as an uncontrollable and uncontainable force, encouraging us to action, exposing our shortcomings in faith and service, enabling our fellowship, our understanding, and our prayer; and not necessarily playing to the rules we so often chose to make.  Luke’s account of the first Christian Pentecost uses images of wind and flame, uncontrollable and even terrifying things, to describe what it meant on that day for the Holy Spirit to fall on the disciples. Of course the Spirit is also the Spirit of gentleness and fellowship, and the bringer of joy. But here’s the thing: the Church was born by the gift of the Holy Spirit. So can Church truly be Church, wherever it may be, unless it prays this prayer today, for the gift of God’s Holy Spirit.

The Church is God's possession; it isn’t that God is somehow a possession of the Church.  So if we're asking God for anything, that asking has to begin with our placing ourselves in his hands, and under his power.  Our first request of God should be that he himself will be with us, and that he'll open our eyes and minds and hearts to what else we need of him.  It's then that our asking will be made appropriate and adequate, because then we find that we pray according to his mind.  'Ask anything and I will grant it' Jesus says (as St John records him).  Now there is the most amazing offer!  In fact, what Jesus says is 'Ask anything in my name and I will grant it'.  And to ask in his name is surely also to ask according to his mind.

One problem is that often we don't really ask at all.  Or we don't ask with confidence.  I'm like that as well;  asking people things but including a get-out clause in the question.  Or even worse, asking people for much less than I really require of them, and then either having to ask again, or else feeling frustrated that I haven't really got the things I need.

We should pray with confidence.  Anything, Jesus said.  Nothing is too much for God.  But we should also pray in humility;  a prayer is not a magic spell.  Praying doesn't give us power to change the natural order of things.  That's not to say God might not do that, but our praying has to leave space for his complete freedom of response.  We cannot demand a specific answer of God, any more than a small child can (or should) demand a specific answer of its parent. The child may know what it wants;  the parent should know what it needs.  The two are not the same.

One famous prayer begins with the lines: 'I asked for strength that I might achieve;  I was made weak that I might learn humbly to obey.'  And it ends by saying:  'I got nothing that I asked for,
but everything that I hoped for.'  God knows our needs, and our needs may not be the same as our desires. Good parents often have to say no to their children, and to say “You’re not doing that, you’re doing this; you’re not eating sweets all day and watching DVD’s, you need to eat your cabbage and do your homework.” We shouldn’t be too surprised if our prayers to God are answered in much the same way.

Finally, when we ask things of God in prayer we should be praying that prayer with commitment.  For an asking prayer in effect is inviting God to offer himself in our service (maybe not ours individually and personally, but for the healing and helping of our world).  To pray such a prayer with honesty and integrity must involve our own self-offering.  Another famous, but simple prayer says: 'Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me'.

God does answer human prayer. He does change things that need to be changed - and he uses our self-offering to do it.  It's no real prayer to say, "I haven't the time, energy, interest, money to do anything about this so here, God, you sort it out." 'Show me, Lord, how I can be part of the answer, and not just part of the problem.'

That simple but profound prayer is maybe where I should leave this little talk.  Except to make one more small point.  The disciples were constantly at prayer, we're told.  So should we be.  Make time - make regular time - for prayer (I'm sure you do), so that your relationship of prayer with God is a real one.  Rogation means asking, but not all our prayer is asking prayer;  and our asking of God should always be within the context of a wider and deeper and continuing relationship of trust, friendship and worship.

To quote one last short prayerful word:  'You must seek him in the morning, if you would find him through the day.'  Amen.

Bird Table Update

Interesting to note that the local robin quickly and readily attacks dunnocks when they approach the area under our bird feeders. Robins are combative birds, but he mostly doesn't attack the other birds that come to the feeders, so why the dunnocks? It may be that some of their behaviour is similar enough to that of the robin, especially during the mating season when the pair we have are constantly reacting to each other, to start him off. Then again, perhaps it's just that they are ground feeders prospecting the area under the feeders for spilt seed, and therefore competing a bit too directly with the robin, who also does that. Blackbirds also feed under the feeding station, of course, but they're bigger birds and pretty mean, and our robin is evidently not that daft.  But the robin does use the feeders, often perching right on top to show that he's the boss bird (except when nuthatches turn up) - yet only very rarely chases other, even much smaller, birds away as he does the dunnocks. Not that they seem to mind very much, they fly off, take cover, then just come straight back and take up where they left off.

Sunday Thoughts

A very pleasant man came to my door the other day to tell me all about Mr Glyn Davies’ election campaign. We had a chat about the political realities as the campaign hots up. “Can we rely on your vote for Glyn?” asked my visitor. “No” was my reply; or not yet, anyway - I’m a floating voter, and I’ll continue to float until I get to the polls. “There’s only a couple of weeks,” my visitor reminded me. Well, someone once said - was it perhaps Harold Wilson? - that a week is a long time in politics.  Anything could happen.

Anything could particularly happen in this election. There’s a definite undercurrent this time of a general discontent with politics, or perhaps with political parties, right across the board.  Mr Farage has been quick to exploit this; we’re different, he tells us, we believe the same things as you do, not like the “conventional” parties, so called. Somehow I’m not convinced. But I do think there is a general perception that politicians are just in it for themselves, that no-one really listens to what real people want, and that the whole process is mired in corruption and sleaze. They’re a sinful lot, politicians, said someone to me last week.

In contrast with that perception, I’d have to say that most of the politicians I’ve met, nationally and locally, have seemed to me genuine people who came into politics because they wanted to be of use and service to others. I’ve known a couple who left politics because they decided they’d be able to do more good elsewhere. The problem with any system is that you can end up serving the system itself rather than what the system is supposed to be producing or delivering, and our political system isn’t immune to that. Nor is the church, by the way. For the record, one senior politician I knew quite well and thought well of is now an ex-MP, having been caught out claiming expenses he wasn’t entitled to - so maybe my judgement isn’t exactly foolproof anyway.

We're right, of course, to expect the very highest standards from those in political power. They should be leading the nation not only in terms of the status they have and the fact that they hold the reins of power, but also in their behaviour, and in the example they set. Those who make the law are by no means above the law, and should not only comply with the law but be clearly seen to do so. It’s not surprising then that when they do fall, it’s quite a fall.

Today's news, as they say, is nothing more than the wrapping for tomorrow's chips. When election day comes round, who knows what the number one concerns in voters’ minds may be, or what events, speeches, gaffes or catastrophes might have shaken things up. Who knows what sins may find people out in the next two weeks or so, what incompetences might be exposed, or whether today’s popular politician of the moment might in a week or two’s time have lost their shiny charisma.

Sin, incompetence and unpopularity were all part of the story of the Passion of our Lord. There was an element of political sleaze about it too. This story isn’t about sin on its own; those other two things, incompetence, unpopularity often go hand in hand with sin.  The story of the cross includes the incompetence of the high priests and their allies, who hadn't the vision to see beyond their own little political games, and even then could hardly make their charges stick, or back them with reliable witnesses; and it includes the unpopularity of Pontius Pilate, who didn't dare listen to his own inner conscience, but listened to the mob instead.

In the reading I used this morning from the Acts of the Apostles, we find Peter and John being challenged over their healing of a lame man in the name of Jesus of Nazareth. A hard challenge, but I think Peter was in fact quite generous in his reply to it. He could imply have condemned the Jewish faithful for their part in the murder of the Christ, but he didn’t.  Instead, we find him telling them he knows they acted in ignorance - and though what they did was sinful, the consequences of their actions were a fulfilment of what God had planned and the prophets foretold.  He could have told them they had blood on their hands that nothing could ever wipe away; but instead he says “Repent, turn back to God, and he is ready to wipe away your sins.”

I want to reflect a little on what sin is and what we should be doing about it - starting right here, where we are. Someone I know well has just had their ceiling collapse. A pipe had been quietly leaking for quite some time, it seems, and damp had been building up unnoticed, until all of a sudden, disaster; everything gave way. It’s often true that though things look more or less OK, underneath the surface there’s more to sort out than you might imagine. Having heard his story, I spent a while carefully looking around everything at home, just in case. Mind you, his house is quite an old and historic building, while my place was built only about thirty years ago.

You do need to be vigilant if you're looking after an old building, and I’ve worried over a fair few of them in my time. Only the other Sunday at a chapel I often attend in Coedway I was agonising with the steward over the five year inspection that’s almost due. Do you have those here? All Church of England and Church in Wales churches have to have a quinquennial inspection, leading to an architect’s report. It’s good, it helps the vicar and churchwardens know what's urgent, so priorities can be set for maintenance and repairs. But of course, it all costs. If you miss something though, it can work to bad effect unseen for years, till by the time you realise things are wrong, they're very wrong indeed.

The other day I was looking through a little leaflet I found behind something else on a shelf, entitled “A Guide to Church Mission and Ministry”. I must have been given it at some time in my past ministry; anyway, it was interesting to note that the first chapter wasn't ideas for house to house visiting or setting up a prayer group or how to run your youth club; it was about keeping the church gutters and drains clear.  Why is that mission, I wondered? But then again, why not? Each church and chapel building is itself a proclamation of the Christian faith, and it does that proclaiming job all the better if it’s in good order, and cared for well. Chapter two, by the way, was about how to re-order your church so that it provides the welcome and the resources you need.

But regular maintenance is as vital for church folk as it is for church buildings.  Bad habits or foolish indulgences, left unchecked, can take us over;  and good practices like prayer, Bible study, or churchgoing, or even just checking to see how the neighbours are:  leave them undone and you may well get into the habit of not doing them.  Charity too: for the Christian needs to be more than an occasional off the cuff thing - for us giving, caring and acting need to be a regular and disciplined part of our Christ-centred living.

And sin, to get back to that little word I mentioned earlier - sin is what happens when we’re neglectful. My friend’s house was tidy, nicely decorated and furnished, well-swept; but the ceiling still fell in, because some vital things hadn’t been done. Sin’s a bit like that. Most of us don’t do much that is bad. We’re nice, we’re law-abiding, we’re here on a Sunday morning when we could be washing the car or playing Sunday league football or lying in bed reading the Sunday papers or the latest Danielle Steel. But that actually isn’t quite enough on its own.

The old prayer of confession in the Prayer Book of 1662 includes these words: “We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; and we have done those things which we ought not to have done; and there is no health in us.” I think the prayer gets those the right way round, making “leaving undone the things we ought to have done” first on the list. For most of us, that’s the bigger part of our sin: the chances we let slip, the times when we can’t be bothered, the times when we think it’s someone else’s job.  If we’re not attending properly to this aspect of our lives, then it’s like the damp building up, that’s there and doing damage, even if the ceiling hasn’t yet fallen down.

We have rules to live by, of course. Many of our churches and chapels have the ten commandments inscribed somewhere; in one of my former churches, four one side and six the other, of the holy table. We can tend to think of sin as breaking the rules, therefore; but that’s not exactly it. Jesus wasn’t averse to breaking the rules on occasion, after all. Healing folk on the sabbath, for example. Simplest definition of sin - sin is letting God down. It's not so much that we break the rules as that we break God's trust.

The Greek word 'amartia’ is what we translate into English as 'sin'. ‘Amartia’ has as its origin the idea of falling short, of missing the mark, of not doing right; it means those things more than being about actively doing wrong.  John in his letter says that to sin is to break God's law, and if that's the case we need to consider what that law is at its most basic:  love the Lord your God, and love your neighbour as yourself.  Or as Jesus said to his disciples:  'I give you a new commandment, love one another, as I have loved you.'  Sin happens when we lose touch with the love of our Lord, when we become self-centred and not God-centred.

Politicians get labelled as corrupt and self-serving, even though often that’s more an excuse for people to be idle and apathetic and not bother exercising their democratic right to choose, than a genuine and justifiable analysis. Churches, ministers and church folk can get just as easily labelled, though, and I’ve heard it said: “Self-serving, hypocrites, only care for their own, no better than they ought to be” - I’ve heard it all said and sometimes I’ve had it said to me. Again, it’s more often an excuse than a reasoned argument, said, likely enough, by people who don’t want to do get involved, but feel a bit guilty so need to justify their inaction.

So we need to look after ourselves, our buildings, our institution - to make ourselves and our church as Christ like and as Christ filled, Spirit filled as we can. Paul often says this sort of thing to the churches he founded; people need to look at us from outside and see nothing to offend, nothing that detracts from or runs counter to the message we offer, and the claims we make.

The Easter season, which we’re still in, was for the first disciples a time of re-connecting, of discovering and engaging with their Lord who was the same as he was and yet was not the same, for he has moved on, he is now beyond death and dying - raised, as Paul tells us, as the first fruits, so that all may follow.

'I'm not a ghost,' Jesus assured his disciples, in the Gospel story we heard this morning from St Luke.  'Touch me, and see the wounds;  come, share your food with me, and watch me eat.  Believe.'  Belief in the risen Christ is relationship with a person, not just the adoption of an idea. That’s how it was for them, that’s true for us as well.

For us as for them the message of Easter is that love is the way to live, and the way to life.  That's why people built our churches, and that's why we worship in them on a Sunday (as opposed to any other day).  And while we won't ever quite shake off, in this life, our tendency to sin, incompetence and an over-large concern for our own popularity and standing, we are called again and again by our Lord, and challenged, to be repentant, to accept forgiveness, to be enriched by grace, and so rise above all that, as God gives us strength and vision. For us too, the Easter season is an opportunity to re-connect with Christ, to know his healing and redeeming touch, and to become what we need to be for the sake of the world - not just people who talk about God, but who do God, who are open to his indwelling presence and active in his service: faithful witnesses to the resurrection, and to the power and wonder of that divine love the grave could never hold.

A Poem I'm Working On

Saturday in the Park

On his usual bench, just north of the bandstand,
the man in the old grey coat sits quietly watching
the usual Saturday morning bustle, newspaper on his knees.
Mums with pushchairs and shopping bags hurry by;
a boy on a skateboard flips it up, catches it neatly;
the curate from the parish church, in billowing cassock,
surplice over his arm, glances at his watch without breaking stride,
a little late perhaps for his first wedding of the day.
Mid-April and a bright and sparkling morning, sunshine and smiles,
chiffchaffs belting away in the high poplars along the river path,
tulips and primulas in mixed array in the corporation beds,
and here and there, whisked on the wind,
the echo of children’s voices from the play-park near the old mill.
He’s here every Saturday, unless it really is too cold.
Years ago he would sit here while his Mary did the shopping;
now, ten years on his own, he still comes. But this is the best time,
with the daffodils out and the new green clothing the trees,
with the lawns dotted with daisies and celandines,
with everything just becoming. Spring! In heaven, he fancies,
if there is a heaven, and if heaven is as it should be,
it will be always Spring, forever just becoming,
everything just beginning to happen. He smiles, look at the time,
better go for that bus; he gets up slowly, folds the newspaper
he never really reads till he’s home, looks around once more.
Another Saturday vigil done, another week gone past,
and was that the year’s first swallow skimming by? He can’t be sure.
He was right about that wedding, though -
the old church bells have just begun to ring.

Bee Flies

Flies come in so many shapes and sizes, and some of them are rather lovely. The other day the garden seemed full of these little fellows, which are not uncommon, and I'm sure play a very important role in pollinating at this time of the year. They are like little balls of light brown fuzz, with black and white wings sticking out at right angles, while they are in flight. They can stop in mid air, and have the usual fly magic when flying, turning on a sixpence, etc. They were very busy in the bottom corner of our patch, visiting the many violets in flower there.

Butterflies

We've seen a surprising number of early butterflies - well, perhaps not so surprising, given the lovely weather we've got with us for a few days. Today I was delighted to see a brimstone wafting through the garden and on into the wood. Almost immediately afterwards, our first speckled wood of the year appeared, and patrolled the woodland edge in typical fashion. I noticed two whites today; they over winter as pupae, I think. I've seen small tortoiseshells here and there today, and tonight a peacock spent probably twenty minutes quartering our garden, and basking for a while in sunny spots. We saw our first comma of the year a couple of weeks back, but I haven't seen another yet. Along with the speckled woods, this is usually the butterfly I most expect to see in our garden.

Crossing the Bar

I read Tennyson's poem at a funeral today, and thought I should share it here too, as it's one I love :-

Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness or farewell,
When I embark;

For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crossed the bar.

Tame Creatures . . .

Creatures in our garden seem to be getting quite tame. Today a mouse appeared and wandered up to the bird feeders quite oblivious to the fact that I was standing near. I moved and he or she ran off, only to come straight back despite the fact that I was still there. This happened several times!  The mouse was literally a foot or so away from where I was standing.

Later Ann was sitting out when a sparrow hawk hurtled in and perched in a tree not more than three feet away from her. To be fair, it did fly off fairly promptly when it noticed she was so close, but even so, that's a pretty close encounter for both of them.

Meanwhile, the regulars, chaffinches, goldfinches, siskins especially, seem happy to let me get within a few feet of them as they visit the feeders. And the squirrels . . . well, don't get me started on that one! I can shout and curse and yell and even throw things, and they just sit up and grin at me. Oh well - lovely day today, and I got lots done. The garden is looking quite tidy.

A Sunday Talk for Easter Day

It is Sunday, the first day of the week; early morning, with the new sun sparkling on the white stones of the great temple in Jerusalem, and on the funeral monuments in the Kidron valley below.  The Sabbath, not just any Sabbath, but the Sabbath of the Passover has been observed, and, for all the tension of this season, with the people itching for freedom and longing for a new King David to seize the throne, things have passed off without too much in the way of problems.

It’s good to make an example at such a tense time, it helps to keep the unruly elements in check. Three men were therefore crucified on the Friday of Passover. No-one much will be talking much about that this morning, though; such crucifixions have become something of a routine event under Roman occupation.  It reminds the people who’s in charge, and is a useful show of strength.

Perhaps Pontius Pilate will still have been anxious. This year Passover had looked like being especially tense. If so, he’ll have been pleased at the reports of his officers around the city.  The garrison troops had been carefully active through the festival, and they’d have made sure their strength was noticed.  It had all passed off more peacefully than at one time they might have feared, and before long the pilgrims would be heading home, and this crazy city could return to what passed for normal here. People could breathe easy again.  There hadn’t, after all, been too many hitches.

Gnarled olive trees stand among the spring flowers in a garden outside the city walls.  It’s here that one of the crucified men Jesus has been laid.  One Jesus, a pilgrim from Nazareth, who seems to have claimed the title of King of the Jews. That’s what was inscribed on his cross, anyway.

The body had been wound around in its grave clothes, and then carefully placed in a new tomb cut out of the cliff face. So he lay in a stone coffin in a stone cave, with a great stone rolled into place to close off the entrance.  Probably Pontius Pilate will have known the place, having given the order that the body might be released into the care of Joseph of Arimathea. This Joseph was a member of the Jewish council no less, and this was the tomb he’d provided for his own future burial. Pontius Pilate had thought it prudent to place one or two of his own men on guard, though; there’d been some popular support for this one, and the Jewish leaders had seemed especially concerned.

But on this Sunday morning those who held power in Jerusalem had retained their grasp on that power: the controllers were still in control.  That’s how the world is, nothing ever really changes.  Just a few short days ago, pilgrims coming into town from the North, from Galilee had been shouting ‘Hosanna’ and acclaiming a new king. This sort of thing happened a lot at Passover; it was after all the festival that marked Jewish independence as a people. These Galileans had cut down palm branches, and strewn them on the road - because they’d found someone different, they’d found a teacher whose words so burned like fire in their hearts, that they were sure this was the one God was calling and sending, the one who would restore the kingdom, the one who would change their world. But on this Sunday morning they were packing for home. The world hadn’t changed after all. The system had won again, as the system always does.

It’s misty and mysterious, and the dew is still fresh, as women make their way through the garden.  Gnarled trunks of old olives look strange and unworldly, and the air is sharp and cold.

Mary and the others with her are anxiously wondering how they’re going to get into the tomb to anoint the body, which is what they are there to do.  How can they roll away that huge stone without help?  All of a sudden, they see the tomb through the mist, and it’s not as they expected to see it. The stone has already been rolled away.  They must have been struck with horror to see that. The only thing they could imagine would have been that something awful had happened, desecration, one more awful thing to add to the awfulness of their grief. A final sad ending at the close of what had already become for them a crushingly sad story.

That’s how it was in the early morning. But by day's end these women and other friends of Jesus will be beginning to realise that they stand not at the end of a story but at its beginning. In the early morning, they’ll have been thinking, “This is how it ends.” By day’s end, though, they’ll begin to understand the greatest event in history has happened, and the man whose final breaths they witnessed, and who they knew was dead, is alive.  He has been dead, and now he is alive.  And as their hardly believing minds grasp this, so they now live in a different world.  They now live in the Easter world, the Sunday world.

There’s a Saturday world and there’s a Sunday world.  The women in the garden and those to whom they ran to tell the news are now Sunday people, Easter people, and we are too.  That’s why we choose to meet on the first day of the week. Sunday by Sunday we affirm and celebrate Easter, and that on the first day of the week long ago in Jerusalem, the world changed forever.  We affirm that here and now we are citizens of a new world in which the old system no longer wins, and death itself has died.

But in the calendars and traditions of the Church Easter is not one but forty days; all those days would be needed for this great mystery to be discerned, rejoiced in, lodged in the hearts of the friends of Jesus, as they move on from their initial delight: “our Lord lives!” to understand what that means for themselves, what it will mean for the world. Easter is not the miraculous escape of one man from death.  We don’t meet on a Sunday to celebrate Jesus the escapologist. Nor has  Jesus survived anything, or returned from anywhere.  Jesus did not come back to life on Easter morning, he went forward into life, into a life he calls us to share. This is something new. 

We may be entertained by illusionists and escapologists, and we may marvel at how a magician manages to escape from what looks an impossible situation.  But illusion is what that is. As we go home at the end of the show we’re still in the same old world with the same laws of physics - and politics - in control. Easter is different from that. There is no illusion here;  this is real.

Similarly, we like to hear stories of survival against the odds told by or about explorers, solo yachtsmen, arctic travellers, people lost in the jungle.  If Easter was an escape like that, it would still be a story worth telling - but a story set in the old world, where the system always wins, and death still gets you in the end, however many cat's lives you might use up in the meantime, and however cleverly you may wave the magic wand.

This isn’t that story.  Jesus has not escaped from death, death really happened to him, he died, he was dead.  But then on Easter morning he broke through, changed the rules, and left the Saturday world behind, shaking off the chains of death for himself and for the world. 

In the days before Jesus came to Jerusalem, there was another death, and another raising from the dead, as St John tells the story in his Gospel. Lazarus died, friend of Jesus and brother of Mary and Martha. Jesus arrived on the scene too late to save him, and yet he still does save him. Lazarus emerges from the tomb  and the people are amazed who look on. But when Lazarus is led out of his tomb, he is still dressed in his grave clothes, he saved from one death to one day still die another.  Now, on the first Easter morning, those rules have been changed. The tomb is empty when the disciples arrive, Peter and John, but the grave clothes are left behind, they find them lying in the tomb.  Jesus has no need of them; death has no more power. He calls us to be Sunday people now, to be Sunday people, Easter people, even when the world about us is till a Saturday world, whose people are still in thrall to the old order of sin and death. 

It may look like the system still wins, we watch the news and see the old power games are still up and running. Easter morning found Pontius Pilate a relieved and happy man, glad to be still in charge, happy the Passover was done with, and things had stayed the same as always. Only they hadn’t. Not many people knew yet, but those few people would tell the world. The world has turned upside down, to turn a cross into a royal throne, and to reveal the love the man who died there showed and preached as stronger than death.

Let me close with some famous words from Archbishop Desmond Tutu:  “Good is stronger than evil; love is stronger than hate; light is stronger than darkness; life is stronger than death. Victory is ours, through him who loves us.”  There is the truth of the Sunday world.

Holy Saturday

Another poem from my past writings . . .

A sabbath rest in the garden:
where the birds sing unchecked in ancient olives, where
flowers sparkle with dew, where vines
are bursting bright new leaves from the bud
where they twine and clamber across the stones.

A sabbath rest: and there is the tomb, sealed shut
and guarded well, by armed men for whom
sabbath is a working day like any other;
they lean on their spears tossing pebbles to scare the birds;  they know that
orders are orders, one does as one is commanded.

A sabbath rest - for behind that stone there is no magic:
the man laid deep inside was nothing less than dead, and
the processes of nature will already have begun
in the body's broken places, in his wounded hands and side:
shrouded the corpse and wrapped, though with some need still
for anointing and spices.

A sabbath rest for mourners lost in prayer
and in the sharing of tears, in some secret place not far away -
no-one expecting any hopeful news, and
all finding nothing to encourage, only to make afraid.
It will be necessary to go soon, to prepare
to join the pilgrims heading north,
keeping their heads down, and blending with the crowds;
they will have to go and they must leave him here.

A sabbath rest in the garden
that is the first day of forever:
for some, his Mother, an expected and dreaded forever
of grief and loss.  Yet while they hide in fear,
somewhere in the birdsong and among the climbing vines
a new forever is being made, and indeed
has already been established upon the wooden throne
that yesterday was raised for all to see,
though no-one yet has seen and understood.

A sabbath rest of birdsong and shining flowers;
an ending that is not an ending, but the quiet
preface to glory.

Peter

A poem I wrote some years ago . . .

No, lass, no, I never knew him,
I don't even know his name.
I'm just here to see what happens:
all this crowd of us, the same.

No, you'll not have seen me with him -
I come from a different fold.
Now gie's a sight of that fire, love,
for I'm starved and clemmed wi' cold.

Oh come on, so I speak like him -
and what's that supposed to mean?
Me and half a thousand pilgrims!
By heaven, hell, and all between,

by everything that stands created,
by God himself, I tell no lie:
Look, I never bloody knew him!
Oh!  The paling of the sky -

Let me out!  Just let me through there,
let me breathe the morning air. . . .
Cocks are crowing in the gardens,
and my heart is black despair.