Words and Thoughts, for Life
Out walking around Dudmaston in Shropshire I met this beautiful group of geese. It’s not such an unusual sight around the River Severn, but the way they were framed by the colours of autumn made more beautiful by the warm afternoon sun made it a lovely moment.
There’s a lot to be said for just being and enjoying the beauty of autumn when we have the opportunity!
And there is no need to add any more words!
Here In the sunlight
On Stiperstones
There is a goldenness
Suffusing all things
As if this were
The first day of creation
And everything in nature
Sings.
~
“The swan uplifts his chest, and backward flings
from Wordsworth, ‘An Evening Walk’
His neck, a varying arch, between his towering wings…
While tender cares and mild domestic loves
With furtive watch pursue her as she moves,
The female with a meeker charm succeeds,
And her brown little-ones around her leads”
Not much can be added to Wordsworth’s beautiful lines about swans, except for this photograph of a beautiful swan family, matching much of Wordsworth’s description, recently seen at Atcham.
My friend, the heron,
Does not like to be photographed.
He sees me pause
Camera raised
Chuckles to himself
And flies off in jubilation
As if his nature
Was just too sacred
For any kind
Of visual revelation.
~
“Love every leaf,
and every ray of light.
Love the plants.
Love the animals.
Love everything …
love the whole world
with an all embracing love.”
from Dostoyevsky, ‘Brothers Karamazov’
It was the first time in my life that I had knowingly seen the small copper butterfly – on a recent visit to The Hollies, a nature reserve in Shropshire, just up from Snailbeach lead mines near The Stiperstones.
With a wingspan of a just a few centimetres, it would be very easy to overlook this little beauty, but its bright coppery colours contrasted strikingly with the green grasses and wild plants all around that it was impossible to miss.
You get the most fantastic views of other Shropshire hills at The Hollies – Pontesford Hill and Earl’s Hill…
And of course The Wrekin…
This photograph of the Wrekin shows holly trees to the left (some of the oldest holly trees in England grow in this spot – 400 years old!) and also one of the many beautiful rowan trees that grow there.
On the walk back to Snailbeach, of course there were views of sheep – this is Shropshire after all…
And some beautiful “tree writing”, as gnarled, twisting branches seemed to want to say something to me in arborial hieroglyphs!
But really it was the day of the small copper.
How could you not love it?!
“Even the predictable turns into surprise the moment we stop taking it for granted”
David Steindl-Rast
So a local walk that has been made many times and is completely predictable … isn’t, when you are consciously being alert and mindful and grateful for what is around you.
David Steindl-Rast’s saying is so true!
Glancing at the local, familiar landscape, The Wrekin seemed lit up by the golden views of harvesting…
And just looking up at the sky reminded me to wonder…
And then on the path in front of me was a beautiful common darter…
It was a case of the surprising predictable that wasn’t predictable at all!
David Steindl-Rast, in his book Gratefulness, goes on to say that in the surprising there is also the element of the gratuitous. Humans didn’t make this beautiful earth, or the clouds.
So the least we can do is wonder at, and appreciate, its surprising predictableness!
Suddenly a buzzard soaring
Above the street
Warmed my heart with wonder
That the creations I meet
In nature are from another
Yet so similar place
And move our lives by beauty
To a deeper space of grace.
~
Photographing this swan was a real blessing, and I then read a beautiful poem by Mary Oliver about another of these majestic creatures:
“Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air, an armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as is leaned into the bondage of its wings: a snowbank, a bank of lilies…
A white cross streaming across the sky, its feet like black leaves, its wings like the stretching light of the river?
And did you feel it in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figures out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?”
from ‘Swan’ by Mary Oliver
Being surrounded by the green of countryside does something good to us. I grew up in south London, where the predominant colour was grey! But green is the colour of Shropshire, especially now in midsummer.
When we are young we have to learn to consent to the goodness of life, and the greenness that surrounds me now represents that – goodness – and life for good, as I called this blog when I first created it a few years ago.
Consent to it all
To all its greenness
Life, nature, God –
So shall you grow and green
Your soul.
Lif4Gd 