Things
I shall miss:
·
All the green
(running through Audley End yesterday, looking over the hills, the path almost
growing over at the top, as the grass bends over, after a day of rain.)
·
Bustling market
days, cries of vendors.
·
Birds noisily
engaged, the swifts in summer, frolicking in the air, reminding me of moths
circling, perhaps flies. I do not think
I will miss the insects: the feeling yesterday, running, of being covered in my
hair with small flying bugs. We both
notice now how we don't seem to mind the dirty, insect splashed windscreen.
·
The handsome wood
pigeons and the pretty speckle breasted -- is it a thrush?
Charity
of the imagination little becomes me,
I
think, face to face with my limitationsI have no time to rehabilitate a lifelong
image of myself as a rich breeder of worries.
From
Friday at St. John's Smith Square: It
starts innocently enough. (At the stroke of seven, Big Ben, 10 July).
Crossing
Frontiers.
Idea
that dead people were real but does that make people I know (living) any more
real? How much can anyone know my
internal life?
The
countryside: in the Southwest, I was reminded of the Cotswolds, rolling hills,
with hedges, but the hills seem more open and there are no stone walls.
Driving
through Surrey from Bournemouth I was surprised at the dense trees, many seemed
to be evergreen. Bournemouth itself had
many evergreens, you could almost feel a Mediterranean flavor.
Each
time I drive around Cambridge, I am reminded of what a great place it is to run
or ride a bike. So flat!
Drove
out to Haverhill on Sunday. Pretty
hillside/hills, good views. I have
finally figured out that the place where the American flag flies between Little
Walden and Linton zoo area, on the top of the hill, is probably the old Little
Walden airfield. (This is the 50th
anniversary of the "Friendly Invasion" of 1942, when the American
airmen came over and operated out of the airfields in East Anglia. Dad said he didn't come over until 1943.)
Thinking
yesterday as I spotted a huge cloud to the west at midday, what if that were
God? My thought was, I wouldn't be
afraid, he'd be too big to know me, know what it's like to be me, then the
beauty of the plan that Jesus become a man, to know what it's like to be me. The thought of the Incarnation is absolutely
staggering! Then shortly afterwards, my
mind running through my money worries. I
listened to a woman who worked on a sex line.
She was in her 50's, then would describe herself in fantasy underwear,
etc, to male caller. (She was reporter
for the Mirror who obtained the job for a story.) She said the fantasy was OK, it was when the
man started groaning at the other end, often dropping the phone, she said she
became physically ill.
I
was almost sickened myself, thinking of such promise we have and how low we can
sink! I have sympathy for both the women
and the callers. One needs money, the
other needs help (be it lonely, etc.).
It is a form of therapy. The real
culprit is the investor, the company that sets up something like this, the
regulators that turn a blind eye.
Liberalism is a heavy burden: you want to support freedom, encourage it,
yet this is what becomes of it! The
change, however, must be from within.
I
prayed a lot this year for my future, not knowing exactly what sort of future
to pray for, I prayed for help, guidance, wanting to make my own way as a
writer, yet not wishing to tie my future up in a predictable way. I'm not sure if I have any answers.
Noon. Still cloudy.
I
began this year, I remember, wondering how I might come to know God. I thought often, how can I love someone I do
not know?
The
steady refrain which has come back to me this year is that God is all around
me, visible through his creation. And I
have wondered at the beauty of God, coming around to the idea that perhaps
heaven, eternity, is not such a bad place.
Perhaps I would not be bored if it were beautiful, if I think of heaven
like a garden. I often wonder about
myself, how sometimes I see, hear, smell things so beautiful I wish my life
could be spent contemplating those things, and nothing else, just appreciating
natural beauty.
(Robin
on the clothes line. They are much
smaller, half the size of ours, tall, spindly legs, like toothpicks.)
God's
beauty is all around. Yet Jesus says (I
have been thinking of this lately), "My kingdom is not of this
world." Some say the kingdom is
here and now. Perhaps if I think of
heaven as love of family? Family always
has been the most important thing to me, though I have not always realized that
(perhaps, however, I sensed it). A
family in perfect harmony, father, sons, grandfather, grandchildren--if they
had nothing to keep them apart! Though
perhaps I am sentimentalizing.
Recently,
as I spoke with Mara or one of the older boys, I realized that there was not
much I remembered about friends in England.
How good a friend was Michael W.?
Did he ever spend the night? Were
we just nearby neighbors? Were there any
other boys I was friendly with? (Were
there very many boys in the school?)
Recalling 1958-59: I do not remember ever really missing Peter, except
perhaps at the beginning. Was that
because I was distracted by so many new things, because I was surrounded by so
many brothers and sisters, or because I was at last happy to be on my own? I seem to remember that I developed a
fondness for solitude in the Palisades, sort of in response to being away from
Peter and the group in Malibu, at a new school, a bit shy. Lately, I have wondered, perhaps I was always
the solitary type and either too entertained by Peter, too weak to resist his
demands or simply unable to say no to someone in need. (I have the same feeling nowadays when I
receive a renewal request from a magazine!).
(The
robin is back for ten seconds, then gone, after a glance at me, or perhaps, as
it looks, begins to look, like rain, it has things to do, eat perhaps, before
it gets wet. I notice the birds are now
very quiet.)
I'm
not sure of the meaning of my new interpretation. It does seem to offer a more unifying theme
to my life, and specifies Peter as the change, rather than the change coming
after Peter.
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