The infinite variety of creation

Photo: Butterfly Conservation

Last weekend we had the fun of having our grandchildren and their parents to stay. When one’s surrounded by news of bereavement and illness it’s easy to be overwhelmed by sadness – and to forget that there’s much to enjoy. For example, just this minute a yellow brimstone butterfly has settled on the mini cauldron of deep mauve violas which have been flowering non-stop since some good friends gave them to Jane last autumn. Now it has bounced away over the garden in the spring sunshine, while a wren sings with its surprising piercing trill on our fence. I wonder whether this year it will complete its nest in the eaves of our neighbour’s garage. I think the males build a number of nests – and last year this one wasn’t used.  

Observer's Book of Birds

And yesterday evening we were at my favourite coffee shop, Cornerstone in Grove, with some good friends. We watched a three-minute video clip, which Tim described as the macro and the micro. It’s called Cosmic Eye. It starts with a girl, Louise, lying on a lawn in Google headquarters in California, and pans out fast through the universe and beyond to the limits of our knowledge and then reverses the process into her eye until it reaches the opposite limits of our knowledge to quarks and beyond, before bringing us back to the human being lying on the grass. Some of us understood it better than others. The big unanswered question, according to Tim, is what’s the unifying theory bringing the cosmic and the quantum together. Being a simple non-scientist, I was left with a sense of awe at the extraordinary diversity of existence.

I’m reminded of the most memorable lectures I went to in Cambridge, which were given by Professor Donald MacKinnon, not about my subject, English, but about philosophy. Besides his eccentricity and the gripping intensity of his engagement with the topic, I particularly remember one phrase of his, “the infinite variety of creation” or maybe “of nature”. I remember I thought at the time, “Yes, that’s the excitement of being alive.”

Ashburnham

As I announced on Facebook we've just spent a couple of nights at Ashburnham Place, near the site of the Battle of Hastings - well, the nearest town is Battle in East Sussex. Neither of us has been there before, so we didn't know what to expect, though we had seen the brief comments on its website:

"For nearly eight hundred years Ashburnham Place was the home of the Ashburnham family. In 1953 the last member of this family, Lady Catherine, died and the inheritance passed to a young clergyman, John Bickersteth. Seven years later he gave the house and the surrounding parkland to the Ashburnham Christian Trust. The purpose of the new Trust was to promote the study of the Bible and the training of people in the principles of the Christian faith. Much of the original house had to be pulled down and new facilities have been added. The Trust continues, under new leadership, to work towards the same goal - encouraging people to come to a personal faith in Jesus Christ and to live their lives in the service of God....

Turner's sketch from the Tate Collection

"The centre is located in 220 acres of beautiful grounds landscaped by 'Capability' Brown, with three large lakes and much interesting wildlife; the area has been designated a site of special scientific interest (SSSI) by the Nature Conservancy Council. Four campsites are used in the summer months by church, family and youth groups. The grounds are not open to the public,  but we do consider requests for visits from local interest groups. Visitors are always welcome to the Ashburnham Parish Church, which is located in the grounds."

The artist, J M W Turner, sketched and then painted a watercolour of the Vale of Ashburnham in 1816, where you can see the three-storey Italianate stuccoed mansion in the centre distance. Later it was clad with fashionable brickwork. Sadly during it was damaged following a crash of a fully laden bomber nearby which to the start of dry rot, and the eventual removal of floors. 

Turner's watercolour from the British Museum

Well, Gill said she was looking forward to my reflections - so here goes. The first thing to admit is that we were not staying in the big house, but in Carpenter's Lodge where our son and his family have just settled. He's just started as one of two new directors there. 

We travelled down on Sunday afternoon and arrived in the sun. As you turn in at the imposing gates, you drive through old deciduous woods, past a lodge and then you round a corner and catch a view of the house across the lakes, which no doubt was the first vista Capability Brown wanted to greet you. The trees have now encroached on the panorama, which is a shame, though perhaps in these motorised times we might not linger to admire the view as we should.

That evening we joined the community for their Sunday evening celebration. There is something uplifting about joining an international group united in worshipping a God whom they clearly love. The community is international because it includes a good number of young volunteers from all round the world who come to improve their English and to serve God, which they do primarily in looking after the needs of the guests who come on retreat, for conferences or simply for rest and refreshment. From my point of view the worship led by four of the volunteers was refreshing and personal including as it did one of my favourite modern worship songs, "This is my prayer in the desert". 

On Monday I was loaned the house's mobility scooter (rather nice all-singing vehicle) and we toured the house and grounds. I must say it's all remarkably wheelchair friendly. The grounds and house are more accessible than any National Trust property I've visited - which is nice since the gardens and grounds are good places to find tranquillity as well as creation's beauty, both God- and man-made. I'm told that there are disabled-friendly rooms with wet-rooms to stay in, which is unusual. I'm hoping to find out more about these facilities since it seems to me that really disabled-friendly places to stay are few and far between. 

Andy and Paul, new directors,
with the old church behind

It is a remarkable estate, quite near the coast, with 200 acres of parkland and woodland, but it's more than that. I suspect it's one of those "thin" places, sites where the division between heaven and earth seems thinner than normal. Whether that's because of the house's recent history as a praying community, or because of a tradition of faith in the Ashburnham family, or whether because in the centre of the estate, cheek by jowl with house, stands the ancient village church, I don't know. My guess would be it was the last that broke the barrier - rather as T S Eliot describes Little Gidding in The Four Quartets: the "place where prayer has been valid", "the intersection of the timeless moment". I'm not much of a one for "sensing atmosphere". But Ashburnham was for me one place where hope seemed close and the spiritual seemed to matter -

"You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid."

I was sorry to have to leave.

(PS I apologise for the photos. I'd left the camera on the wrong setting. So my pictures were overexposed and don't give a true indication of the rich colours.)

All creatures great and small

I apologise if I upset you by saying one can have too much of a good thing. I have to confess to having had a surfeit of Mrs Alexander's hymn, "All things bright and beautiful". The trouble is it pops up so often as the people's choice for weddings, baptisms and even funerals. You'd have thought the days when it was staple diet of school assemblies were long gone - but of course the significant factor is that Grandma and Auntie Flo like it. ("Morning has broken" and "Lord of the Dance" took over as assembly fodder and often appear as choices, but increasingly I found couples asking for my suggestions - dangerous!)

Anyway, although I'm surfeited with the hymn, I agree with the sentiment that nature is the gift of God. Talking of creatures bright, beautiful and small we've been enjoying the company of our grandchildren for the bank holiday weekend. A highlight of their time here was visiting their aunt's horse, Dave. He is large. So grooming him was an interesting exercise!


He's a gentle giant, and so two of the girls rode him in the exercise yard. I'm amazed at the understanding that Rachel has with Big Dave. I suppose it's what all good riders have. There was an item on Countryfile on Sunday of "horse whispering" an Exmoor pony colt - very gentle and patient - and impressive. It looked a bit more like what I think our relationship with animals should be than the rather brutal behaviour often portrayed on screen. Hopefully it's a thing of the past. It's not what "dominion... over all the earth" means, though that's sadly how it was misused in the past.

On Sunday morning after church we visited the local rec - what a good facility such things are! Every local authority should have some. The girls had a whale of a time.

If this photo had a sound track, it would be full of screams about going too fast and falling off - not from Dad (well, not much)! I enjoy having family here.

It also does me good to spend time with friends. On Wednesday we had lunch on the roof of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, or rather in the dining room of the terrace there. It was beautifully sunny and warm. We were there with our good friend Elizabeth and her son Dominic. The menu was in keeping with the main exhibition about ancient Greece, excellent Greek cuisine, including Jane's and my first taste of squid.

Then we came to the desserts.... Melopita: honey cake and fresh figs. Very nice it looked too! But then came the wasps. Not just a couple, but Sennacherib's hordes. Amazing how quickly news had got round the wasp community in central Oxford! Our waitress was equally swift, and decisive. "You're going inside," she said, removing our plates. And so we followed her with the glasses and napkins. Miraculously, the wasps chose not to follow us.

The great thing about these particular friends is that they understand our situation perfectly, as Elizabeth's husband, Tim, who died in 2007, also had PLS (the slow sort of MND). For example, Dominic was very aware of my practical difficulties, and unembarrassed by them. We share a Christian faith, but more than that just get on very well personally. It was just one of those special times, which make you aware of how much love and care - and laughter - there is in our troubled world.

I think my life's not bad!

There are certainly frustrations in my life - such as the failure of the repairers to return my injured laptop for some days - but heigh! I could borrow Jane's, couldn't I? Lesley, my physio sans pareil, came for my four-monthly check-up on Monday. She's fabulous. She gave a very positive verdict on the state of my MND - which is basically really stable. Most MND patients have an M25 (or do I mean Porlock Hill?) experience, with on average 17 months between diagnosis and dying. I seem to have been sent on the scenic route. I'd be churlish not to appreciate it. 
It does make me think that in fact everyone should live in an "attitude of gratitude", as someone once said. A friend of mine, Claire, recently put on her Facebook status: "Loves the beautiful autumnal colours :-D  My Dad made each of those beautiful views you see around you right now." (NB Dad has a capital D.) I hope to be out at the weekend to admire those views. Even the last two leaves hanging on our cherry tree have their defiant frail beauty.


Meanwhile my second cousin sent me two attachments of which I already have one but the other is a fascinating one of when Kilbowie, Alfred Ebenezer's final pile, went on the market. It's the cover of the estate agent's blurb. Without all the modern excrescences, it is really impressive, it seems to me - but I wouldn't have wanted to live there. Give me my urban mod cons any time!
"Ours is a nice house ours is;
It has no rats nor no mouses." - as my dad used to quote!