Letting Go

Today my daughter is in Los Angeles. My eldest son is in India. My youngest son is en route to Australia. My middle son is whizzing around the Central Belt of Scotland. 

The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it. I am grateful that God has blessed our children with vision, with courage, and with creativity. I am grateful that no matter how far they go, they never go away from his loving presence. I am grateful that love has no geographical limits but can span the globe. 

Psalm 16 says that the boundaries have fallen for me in pleasant places, and I am grateful that even on this most dreich of mornings, with the leaden skies weeping copious tears over a sodden landscape, I can still rejoice that the boundaries for me have fallen in pleasant places.

My family is scattered today, but wherever they are, each is seeking to be in the centre of God’s will. And that centre is where the boundaries are always pleasant. 

Safe travels everyone and as Spike always said, happy landings. You can never go further than my love and prayers.

Dusk

Gloaming, twilight, whatever you call it there is something special about the time when day gives way to night.

Calm and warm tonight so I headed round the old familiar trail. Powering along, thinking only of the big piece of delicious carrot cake I ate at Liz’s today followed by a sliver of date cake made by Joey for my birthday, I was anxious to walk off all those excess calories. I did pause to admire the pocket of primroses nestled in the scrub, then carried on up the incline. 

Something made me pause. The wind tickled the tree tops of the forest of Endor across the marsh. And rising from the darkening woods was a ‘dusk chorus’. I’m not a bird watcher and struggle to identify calls but I’m sure there were at least 8. I can definitely say there were pigeons cooing behind me, and a harmony of intermittent tunes reached my ears. A woodpecker kept an erratic beat going. A startled pheasant called and cried out as it flew low, skimming the gorse and broom. No cuckoo yet. I love it when the cuckoo comes. 

The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it. And what a wonderful earth he has given us to enjoy! 

I carried on, round the corner where bouquets of golden daffodils danced in the breeze. A duck rose from the duck pond. And then back onto the road and headed home but what was that in front? 

A calf. A calf somehow got out of the field and stood nose to nose with other cows, on opposite sides of a gate. He shifted nervously as I cautiously approached. Another walker and his dog came from the other side, trapping the calf in a pincer movement. We both hesitated, shifting carefully forward. I thought I might try to open the gate for him but then he sidled past me and headed down the road. We watched as he re-entered the field further down. 

Chat to the neighbour. Lovely welcome from his wet chocolate lab. Oh, how I miss Dusty ...

The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it. Everything.

What a joy to be alive! What a privilege to live in the country. Thank you, Lord.

Red Squirrel Alert

Hanging out the washing, I was startled by a light thump and rustle in the autumn leaves behind me and turned. There, just a metre away from me, a red squirrel paused briefly and then leapt away round the house and into the vegetable garden.

What a gift, to see this increasingly rare rodent right there in our garden. We knew they lived in the woods nearby, but have never seen any in our garden. Certainly not so close.

Nature has a way of surprising us with sudden flashes of beauty, and this was one such unexpected gift. My prayer now is that the cats don’t find this little gift as it goes about getting ready for the winter to come.

The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it. May we take better care of it than we are doing right now.

Bellows

This is the time of year when the cows seem to like to bellow. I don’t know why, (does anyone?), but this time of year is so distinctive with its changing leaves, days which are growing shorter, temperatures dropping and those cows just bellowing out.

The field surrounding us is full of mothers and babies at the moment. At one point this morning, as if on cue, some of the big mamas started heading for the corner of the field, though there was no sign of a farmer with hay. Once one or two started in that direction, the rest joined them. 

Some of the calves were just too full of joy to walk. They raced each other and one even kicked up his back heels in exuberance. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that after two days of torrential rain, the sun was out.

I did think that if I watch these cows much more, I may become a vegetarian. It saddens me to think of the fate that awaits these wee calves.

Some things just tug at your heart strings and make you want to change your habits. 

I wish we could all respond to the environmental challenges we have created by reducing our individual impact. I know I could do more. Recycling, turning off lights and putting on an extra sweater aren’t going to save the planet, though if we all did it ...

The earth is the Lord’s and everything that is in it. We have been given the responsibility to care for this beautiful planet. Last night Prof Brian Cox hosted a programme on the miracle of humans, though he had no plausible answer to why the human brain suddenly grew to its present size, enabling us to be creative, empathetic, and so on. 

We know though. It was God, making us in his image. If only we could remember that, and not degenerate into a lesser state.

Maybe that’s why the cows bellow.

Like a Goliath on the Horizon

I always enjoy the birdsong and the peaceful tranquillity round the wooded walk where Dusty and I daily perambulate. Apart from the infrequent buzz of a helicopter overhead or a jet headed to or from London, and the muted waterfall of commuter traffic on the road a mile or so away, no other human-generated noises intrude.

But yesterday a spectral Goliath rose up in a nearby field. Someone has applied for permission to erect a 100M wind turbine in a productive farm field, within 500M of homes and farms. Now I’m all for renewables, and I’m aware of the NIMBY syndrome and don’t really want to embrace that, but this is shocking.

This is an area used by recreational cyclists, horse riders, dog walkers, and farmers. At a time when world food stocks are in decline it seems madness to stick the footprint of a huge turbine on productive farming land. 

It’s also home to Red Kites and a myriad of other birds and animals.

The one who wants to build the turbine does not live in this area. He just wants to make money.

I wasn’t expecting to have a few hours of yesterday hijacked by the necessity of reading up on the proposal and lodging my objection.   This is the day that the Lord has made. I have my plans, but equally want to be flexible today, holding them loosely in case another giant looms up on the horizon.

We want to be good stewards of the amazing earth the Lord has provided. Sometimes the way to do that isn’t so straightforward.