More photos

holiday details -- succulents in a pot outside a craft shop, a decent surf on a southcoast beach, reeds in a pond in the Eurobodalla Botanic gardens (south of Bateman's Bay) and a wayside rosebud

Some bird photos

Returned!

All back from holidays, and settling down to laundry, cooking, and the start of a small group at church which I've been asked to lead. That should keep me off the streets!

Random moments from my time away:
*Discovering that black swan cygnets that are almost full grown look like the adults except for mottled grey feathers on their backs instead of all black.

*Seeing white breasted sea eagles swoop down and take a fish from the water

*deciding that early morning light makes landscapes look like watercolours. Strong golden afternoon light gives the intensity of an oil painting

*the tame duck that wanted to get into our picnic stuff; a bit too tame for my liking

* buying myself a beautiful indian shawl in a craft shop, in soft pinks and greys

*eating perfectly cooked kangaroo (it's a very lean meat that can easily dry out) stacked on vanilla mushrooms -- sounds weird, but it's now in my shortlist of best meals I have ever eaten.

that's off the top of my head (a very dangerous place)

My School Hymn

Feeling pretty jaded at the moment, my computer's gone dead on me, the repairman says it's probably the motherboard. I'm waiting for him to give me a call and tell me what's going on. So I'm using my husband's computer, which is frustrating, because I have no access to my normal email, or my bookmarks (poor google is really getting a workout at the moment). But through my head is going my high school school hymn. OK< I finished school in 1972, but that hymn became part of me, and, because it made so much sense to me, parts of it have become woven into the essential fabric of my thinking. This is it(and we 900 girls singing it together in school assembly)

GO FORTH WITH GOD

Go forth with God! The day is now
That thou must meet the test of youth:
Salvation's helm upon thy brow,
Go, girded with the living truth.
In ways thine elder brethren trod
Thy feet are set. Go forth with God!

Think fair of all, and all men love,
And with the builder bear thy part:
Let every day and duty prove
The humble witness of thy heart.
Go forth! Tis God bids thee increase
The bounds of love and joy and peace.

Behold with thine uplifted eyes
Beauty through all that sorrow seems,
And make of earth a paradise,
The substance of thy dearest dreams,
Bring laughter to thy great employ:
Go forth with God and find his joy.

Go forth with God! The world awaits
The coming of the pure and strong;
Strike for the faith and storm the gates
That keep the citadel of wrong.
Glory shall shine about thy road,
Great heart, if thou go forth with God!

Other Authors -- George Herbert

This is another old favourite, would you believe I first met it in a school textbook? Which of us has never asked, "what is God doing?" when we go through seasons of extreme emotions, not just in our lives in general, but particularly in our relationship with Him? Sometimes there is just no discernible human reason why His comforting presence is so close to us some days, and, to our human perception, completely absent on others. Herbert's answer is the only one I have ever found that satisfies my soul on this; his final two verses have for many years been my prayer in the overwhelming moments.

THE TEMPER. (I)


HOW should I praise thee, Lord ! how should my rymes
Gladly engrave thy love in steel,
If what my soul doth feel sometimes,
My soul might ever feel !

Although there were some fourtie heav’ns, or more,
Sometimes I peere above them all ;
Sometimes I hardly reach a score,
Sometimes to hell I fall.

O rack me not to such a vast extent ;
Those distances belong to thee :
The world’s too little for thy tent,
A grave too big for me.

Wilt thou meet arms with man, that thou dost stretch
A crumme of dust from heav’n to hell ?
Will great God measure with a wretch ?
Shall he thy stature spell ?

O let me, when thy roof my soul hath hid,
O let me roost and nestle there :
Then of a sinner thou art rid,
And I of hope and fear.

Yet take thy way ; for sure thy way is best :
Stretch or contract me thy poore debter :
This is but tuning of my breast,
To make the musick better.

Whether I flie with angels, fall with dust,
Thy hands made both, and I am there.
Thy power and love, my love and trust,
Make one place ev’ry where.

Ash Wednesday at Election Time

This is dedicated to my American friends, who are going through a prolonged election campaign right now.. I wrote it years ago, when Ash Wednesday happened to fall in the lead-up to an election -- it seems to me that there are aspects of politics which are very good illustrations of original sin ..

ASH WEDNESDAY AT ELECTION TIME

The politicians drone their platitudes.
The media meander on for miles;
And desolation over all the earth,
As candidates try on their different styles.

There is no bitter like the ashen taste
Of plastic-smiling, cold futility.
If people all deserve their governments,
Then penitence becomes an urgency.

Nightly, the same old stagnant mud gets hurled.
Daily, the same old headlines shriek their way,
Across the barren mindscapes of despair;
And folly and cupidity hold sway.

Yet, there are those who say there is no wrong
In human nature, simple, undefiled.
Romantically, they yearn an innocence
Which is not real in even a small child.

Have they not heard, have they not understood,
Whence wickedness, frustration, every woe
That haunts the heart of man, estranged, confused;
The pain we carry everywhere we go?

Refusing God, they disbelieve their sin,
Yet have not found another name to call
The hunger of the heart unsatisfied,
Which, God denied, has nothing else at all.

Yet, are we guiltless, who have named His name
With lips of honey-sweet hypocrisy;
But have not let our lives be crucified:
Reject the cross, but want cheap ecstasy?

Judgement begins within the house of God.
We are not holy, though self-set-apart.
We dabble in the dirtiness of life,
And, whitewashed, hide our horridness of heart.

So, in the season of stark penitence,
Let it be our own hearts that feel the rod;
With living urgency, put off our sin;
And own our deep and dreadful need of God.

Let us proclaim His word, not smugly, but
As those who have been ransomed at great price;
And, for our nation's sake, learn how to pray,
That this land might be drawn back to Christ.

Another angle

We can't always just walk away from situations or people who cause us pain, sometimes we have no choice (think slavery, for example)sometimes we choose because there is a good reason why we must endure something, or at least a good thing that requires a season of endurance for its fulfilment. That's what this is about ..

It would be much easier
To simply walk away.
To take my living fragments
To the place where stones don’t fly
Farewell the unequal struggle
And the long, despairing tiredness;
Welcome the soft spring morning
In that place where hearts can thaw.

I am no saint Sebastian
And these no holy holes.

Here, as I breathe corruption
I know myself corrupt
Locked in dishonest silence
Wrestling resentment down
Hacking against the hydra
Of my heaving hopelessness:
This is sport for fools.

And yet, to keep the promise
Is somehow to keep the faith.
Although my only flying
Is the reaching and the falling
I must trust in Him who holds me
And will never let me go.