“Sister Moon … clear and precious and beautiful”
from ‘Canticle of the Sun’, St. Francis of Assis
In the original Italian the full verse is this:
“Laudato si, mi Signore, per sora Luna e le stelle:
in celu l’ài formate clarite et pretiose et belle.“
Turning and twisting
They slice through the sky
Flocking in fields
Perching on rooftops
Yet rarely I stop
To notice their beauty
Common, unique
Distinctive each one
Like us ablaze with the glory
Of the life-giving sun.
~
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.
~
If you are determined, you can find unusual perspectives on what has become familiar territory.
A bird might be lurking, camouflaged in the undergrowth, detectable only by a slight movement or sound as it hops along…
Or a butterfly may be balancing on a single blade of grass…
Even something as ordinary as a thistle can appear quite majestic if it has the tenacity to stand up tall in a wilderness of grasses…
…and looking closer, what’s happening on the plant itself?
I was struck by the contrast of trees living, and dead, co-existing peacefully…
…and with bark that contains eyes – or are they mouths – or faces?
Even the turbulence of water can produce fascinating shapes…
Otherwise conspicuous creatures disappear amongst the long grass…
…whilst between the treetops a hilltop soars…
…and a few cows watch you curiously as you return to where you started.
Where was I? It was Attingham Park, a National Trust property in the West Midlands, just outside of Shrewsbury, UK.
Maybe you can try a change of perspective the next time you visit a familiar place, to keep life good?
It’s easy to miss the everyday wonders.
Small brown birds are so common in the UK (and perhaps beyond!) that many birdwatchers call them “LBJs” (“little brown jobs”!), but on a recent early walk around the Rea Brook in Shrewsbury, the sweetness of this drab dunnock caught my attention, and he was so busy singing he let me capture his plain beauty:
Everyone knows a blackbird, but their song can be so magical in the dawn stillness, empty of all human noise. This one was really pouring out his heart!
And finally, the humble woodpigeon. They look chubby, comical, and are easily dismissed as common-all-garden – and yet the rays of the sun highlighted the iridiscence on this bird’s neck as it sat beautifully framed in spring blossom:
What are your local beauties?
Or do you need to go looking and listening with fresh eyes and ears?
David Steindl-Rast is not a well-known writer in the UK but his book Gratefulness is the best I’ve read on this topic. He shares a childhood experience, surviving bombing raids in Nazi-occupied Austria:
“…Unable to find an air-raid shelter quickly, I rushed into a church only a few steps away. To shield myself from shattered glass and falling debris, I crawled under a pew … I felt sure that the vaulted ceiling would cave in any moment and bury me alive…A steady tone of the siren announced the danger was over … And there I was, stepping out into a glorious May morning … My eyes fell on a few square feet of lawn in the midst of all this destruction. It was as if a friend had offered me an emerald in the hollow of his hand. Never before or after have I seen grass so surprisingly green.”
p.10
Recently I was commuting to work on a quiet spring morning, and I passed the most extraordinary scene shown in the photograph. You do not always need a near-death experience to feel gratitude! But how many people drove out of Shrewsbury that morning and did not stop to gaze in awe at the sunrise?
Mist was rolling mysteriously down the river. The trees were silhouetted. And a bright March sun illuminated the whole scene, rising over The Wrekin.
Brother David Stendl-Rast helped to set up a beautiful website devoted to gratefulness, and you can visit it here.
And look out for those surprising moments that fill our hearts with gratitude!
Snowdrops are appearing in Shropshire!
Today I walked around Cound, a beautiful local valley, famous for its snowdrops in February and bluebells in April – and tried to capture the beauty of the “February Fairmaids” (see photograph below).
The poem below was written in February 2021, when the town of Shrewsbury was struggling with flooding, as well as the worldwide pandemic, and the snowdrops brought with them a message of resilience…
~
The snowdrops
Appear
~
As if to remind
Us
~
Of resilience
Each new year.
Open your eyes
To the light
~
And your ears
To the beauties of heaven
~
Open your mind
To what is good in life
~
And your heart
To all you’ve been given.
~
Gerard Manley Hopkins describes a kestrel (also known as a “windhover”) so well…
“…in his riding
from ‘The Windhover’
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!”
This kestrel was hunting around the quarry in Bayston Hill, just outside Shrewsbury in Shropshire, UK, living its own life of wildness and survival.
My feet were firmly fixed to the earth; the kestrel was “striding high” in the air. And my “heart in hiding” also “stirred for a bird”.
You can read the full, amazing poem here.
~
“Nothing is so beautiful as spring”
from ‘Spring’ by Gerard Manley Hopkins
~
In Shropshire it is a beautiful spring, beautiful in colours, in the morning…
…and in the evening…
Life is for good, and it is good to celebrate the beauty we see around us in the colours of dawn, day and evening.
You can read Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem about spring here.
What are you grateful for today?
Lif4Gd 