“The beauty that brings us to peace and whispers that there’s something more – And every square inch claimed by God”
Joy Davidman, 1952

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Despite the seemingly endless time of pandemic and its profound consequences I am beginning to notice signs of Spring and of life’s renewal.

In my part of the world we have had bitterly cold weather with stark barren trees and coarse wintry grass amidst patches of unyielding bare ground. Yet, here and there, little green shoots are bravely piercing that ground with the promise of growth to come.

My sister in Kent, England, tells of unusually heavy snow, while my friends in Scotland are in the grip of Arctic weather which they describe as ‘the beast from the east.’ Someone posted a picture of a milk-bottle whose frozen contents had burst through the cap.

It has been a hard winter for all of us in so many ways. The weather has merely provided a literal context for it

I think there is a connection between what we can experience in our deepest inner selves and the wider expanse of the natural, created, the world in which we live and the universe beyond. It is a connection which transcends the more liminal aspects of our thinking and perceiving and of the immediate appearance (usually man-made) of our surroundings. It is that amazing capacity we have to ‘see beyond’ – to reach from our secret interior for those ‘intimations of immortality’ which Wordsworth described:

‘Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: the Soul that rises with us,our life’s Star hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God who is our home: Heaven lies about us in our infancy.’

Might I suggest some further contemplation of this transcendent experience into which the ‘whispers that there’s something more’ invites us?

And this in the midst of what continues to be a ‘hard winter,’ but in which there are signs of renewed life and perhaps an inward deeper stirring.

Blessings and my continuing prayers for all of us,
JOHN