After a concentrated time in the heart of a rather wet London (albeit in front of the television screen!) it’s good to move away on the day after King Charles & Queen Camilla’s Coronation into the more tranquil climes of English woodland awakening fresh in the Maytime light.

So when my friend Gill Henwood sent me some more photographs of nature filling all around with beauty and expectation, I exchanged the joyful emotions of pageant and symbol and human pledging of life to a new degree of service, for something rather different.

In the woodlands and countryside of the Northern hills of the Lake District a busy beauty is going on as plants, new-born lambs and birds and creeping things and teeming fish playing joyfully, splashing through waterfalls. We are well into the wonders of new-birth as Eastertide unfolds and spirit-filled life offers a new joy.

So, Gill speaks of the emergence of the Lousewort and other signs of new growth:

“Tiny pink heath plant just in flower for the coronation weekend. 5mm across, a sign of the heaths and high meadows coming into growth. No sign yet of the hundreds of orchids that flowered in this field in 2020, during lockdown when no cattle were grazing the field. 

A new spring and a new royal era – eastertide hope of renewal after loss and bereavement.

“And the songbirds are singing their choral anthem all around, with a cuckoo punctuation.
Now the nuthatch is sounding its single-note call,
it’s time to stroll through the newly furnished delicate dewy leaves of the beeches…“

This is also the ancient time of Beltane, of May and summer’s beginning.

“– the dainty woodland floor and hedgerow flowers are all compact and individually almost missed. Primroses, violets, greater stitchwort and even native drooping headed bluebells make their impact growing together. A patterned tapestry on a bank and an unfurling mosaic on a heath or in the woods. Responding to long days of light and the increasing warmth of the sun towards the June solstice.

A parable in nature of Gods love given in and through all creation – if only we stop and notice the myriad glimpses all around us….“

Take a breather.

Breathe,
be filled with amazement,
purposefulness,

wonder,
awesomeness,
love,

ah! God

[Mr G]
7th May 2023

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