It seems hardly possible that a sixth of the year has already passed. How fleeting life is as one gets older. Do you think that is to make us stop and think about what really matters? In the end, it can only be the love we have shared with all the living creatures around us ... the love which has made us more truly ourselves and allowed others to be themselves.

In community conferences we came to the topic of religious consecration, and how it is not a sacrament but a confirmation and dedication to God which is rooted in baptism. But if we were baptised as babies, what do we really know? We are assured that we underwent a form of death and resurrection but it seems to me that this has to happen constantly throughout our lives - the descent into inner chaos, with its sense of loss and fear, and then some wonderful moment when we feel we can go on in hope....whether back into earthly life or through the doorway of death into another form of existence. I trust it will be so. It is now evening - dark and cold. Snow fell for a while, and one of the cats insisted on going out into the cold darkness, while the other lazed on her warm bed. I like going out into the darkness - as long as there is some light somewhere.

Visitors from Australia came last week. We had some interesting conversations - one of which was how to make contact with people who are pagans. I suggested that one simply lived among them, worked alongside them... If questions were asked, one answered them. However, I firmly believe that our humanity and concern matter far more than overt ‘preaching’. Most people are puzzled and perplexed, and we all have to live with ‘not-knowing’ but believing that life matters, and that creation matters. As someone said to me, after a discussion about caring for the environment: "I think we were created to look after the world". In various pagan religions it is thought that human beings are the servants of the gods, while Genesis reveals that the first man was given the task to care for the ‘garden’ and then till the soil ... We are interdependent but have failed to recognise this. It may be too late for our planet even now. There is so little ‘wilderness’ left - and even animals can only be ‘saved’ in safari parks, which limits their freedom. We seem to have lost the balance through human greed and lack of understanding. Perhaps we are fortunate to have been born more than sixty years ago. Please God, this recession will help us to understand what we have done wrong, and amend our ways for the future.

8th February

It was wonderful to go out into the garden in the early morning and feel the fine snow falling. Everything looked clean and new. Snowdrops sheltered under trees and bushes. They have a wonderful scent indoors: white bells with a green hemmed skirt. As I walked around our enclosed garden I became aware of those members of our community who had lived and died here: eight of us so far during the last twenty years. I also remembered my mother, whose ashes are here, and others free in their elemental being. It has become a sacred place - a place of encounter, and most definitely a place of prayer.

The worst fires in Australia in living memory have caused death and destruction and here we have received blizzard warnings. The birds and wild beasts who visit our garden will need all the food we can provide for them.

15th February

Yesterday was a day of sunshine, with a touch of Spring in the air. The birds were singing sweetly and more tiny flowers appeared on branches full of buds. We still have not seen the fig tree blossom. The gardeners came on Friday after two weeks off due to the snow and frost. They worked all day on the ‘laburnum walk’. Now the poles have their pointed arches. In the early morning darkness these receding arches make a lovely pattern in perspective - from either end. Snowdrops are flowering in clumps, and primulas attempt a display of colour after having been burnt by ice for several weeks.

Our Oblate Group came for the day on Monday 16th February. We spoke about the social conditions at the time of Saint Benedict, and its effects upon the monastic life and property. We live in a similar age of chaos and uncertainty and need to see it as a potential ‘seed bed’ rather than as a trash heap!

21st February

The new archway for the laburnum walk is causing much admiration but also some consternation. The perspective is so very good, with the experience of apparently walking into a smaller area - which doesn’t get smaller - then turning round and seeing ‘the smaller area’ behind one! The arches are parallel all the way long but our visual perception needs the lines of perspective leading from here to there: fascinating. Perspective is false, giving the impression of truth, while parallel lines look primitive. We are dealing with visual alchemy!

The milder days have worked miracles with the flowers in our garden. Violets are appearing, daffodils swell in the bud, the first flowers are opening on the laurel bushes, and periwinkles continue to flower here and there. Daisies are out, and tight clusters of blue, purple and pink flowers of lungwort are opening their trumpets. Hazel catkins are swinging on the bough, while the seeds of the ash hang limply on the parent tree. (I know, lists like this are tedious to read, but the reality is wonderful!)

We are now turning our minds to Lent, with Ash Wednesday on 25th February, and I noted a good verse in Psalm 103, addressing the Lord:

"You take back your spirit, they die,

returning from the dust from which they came.

You send forth your spirit, they are created;

and you renew the face of the earth."

Absolutely perfect for this time of year in England., when the countryside and our gardens are being renewed. I looked at my reflections for last year, when Lent came earlier and the winter was not so severe. On 16th February 2008 I wrote:

"This has been a very long month, although only sixteen days have passed since its beginning. The events are at the small end of the telescope, far away, and the present is blurred. The moon has waned and waxed again, frost and stars have shone, birds have sung while small water bowls froze solid. The daffodils stopped reaching for the sky and turned their heads to scan the horizon before regarding the earth in which they were planted. Is that what we do? On Ash Wednesday we were urged to ‘Repent and believe the Gospel’ and now ten days have passed........"

At present we are trying to understand the words from the Lord’s Prayer: "And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil." We know that God tests us but is the word ‘temptation’ the correct translation from the Greek? The Hebrew Scriptures do emphasis God as Judge as well as Law-Giver, and ‘final judgment’ is part of the Christian tradition, too. Could it be "Don’t test us beyond our strength, and don’t let us fall away from you into evil situations"?

In the best Benedictine tradition let us "look forward with the joy of spiritual longing to the holy feast of Easter" as we ponder our Lent books and entrust ourselves anew into the compassionate hands of God.