Sunset on Warley Woods
SILHOUETTE
Sunset on Warley Woods
39th Day of Lent
8th April 2017
Now the day is over,
Night is drawing nigh,
Shadows of the evening
Steal across the sky.
Now the darkness gathers,
Stars begin to peep,
Birds and beasts and
flowers,
Soon will be asleep.
Jesus, give the weary
Calm and sweet repose;
With Thy tenderest
blessing
May mine eyelids close.
Grant to little children
Visions bright of Thee;
Guard the sailors tossing
On the deep, blue sea.
Comfort those who suffer,
Watching late in pain;
Those who plan some evil
From their sin restrain.
Through the long night
watches
May Thine angels spread
Their white wings above me,
Watching round my bed.
When the morning wakens,
Then may I arise
Pure, and fresh, and sinless
In Thy holy eyes.
Glory to the Father,
Glory to the Son,
And to Thee, blest Spirit,
While all ages run.
(Poem by Sabine Baring-Gould 1834-1924)
And now the day begins...
ReplyDelete"I awake this morning
in the presence of the holy angels of God.
May heaven open wide before me
that I may see
the Christ of my love
and his sunlit company
in all the things of earth this day."
(J. Philip Newell)
This afternoon I walked round the woods. I'd forgotten there were so many cherry trees and they are in bloom. I was born during cherry picking and when my father collected my mother and me from hospital he took us round to the orchards to show me to the cherry pickers before his parents, much to my grandmother's disgust!
ReplyDeleteAll the time we were at that farm I loved cherry blossom time. To look across at the orchards from the hill at the back of our house at the froth and clouds of blossom was achingly beautiful, but the to stare in wonder at an individual tree was no less glorious and then to look at the flowers close up and see their delicacy and the markings and subtle colour changes and fragility was just as wonderful.
Today I thought of A. E. Houseman's poem
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.
Now of my three score years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.
And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherries hung with snow.
My grandfather planted the orchards and we grew over forty varieties of cherries. Now I can only remember Early Rivers and Morello. It was fascinating watching the cherries developing, first so small as hardly to be seen, but gradually getting bigger, and then beginning to colour and finally the day when Dad came home after walking through the orchards with a football rattle scaring the birds, with just enough of the very first ripe cherries for breakfast.
When we moved to a larger farm with no orchards it was a wrench, but we were still in a cherry growing area. It was still possible to enjoy that beauty. When we moved into a town nowhere near any cherry orchards it was almost beyond bearing. And it wasn't just the loss of the cherries it was the woods, the meadows, the corn fields, the wild flowers, the openness, the spaciousness the freedom.
Walking past the cherries today I felt a deep thankfulness first that I had those years of enjoying and being marked by such beauty and of seeing God's beauty and imagination in the natural world around me and that I have such clear memories. Second that I have known God's guidance leading me into a good place. It doesn't have the aching beauty of my childhood but it does have richness of community, friends, worship, peace and joy.