The garden looks bleak despite the flowering clumps of snowdrops and a few buds of "winter roses" forming above the brown leaves under the trees. That is the sort of resilient purpose that we all need: to be and to become that for which we were made, even if we haven’t the foggiest idea what that is! I am so grateful for the monastic life and its periods of prayer and quietness, the work we share, and the mutual support we give each other amid the days of billowing wind and rain .... which echo the turmoil in our world. May the peace of the Lord enfold us as we try to work with Him to heal the wounds of the world.

Weekly Notes

The house plants which Sister M. tends so lovingly and well required re-potting. She was the surgeon, while I was the theatre nurse re-filling buckets with compost from the greenhouses, gathering gravel etc. after I had been shown what to do. There was the washing of pots, finding bases and generally helping to clean up by putting old compost on flower beds, pouring the dark water away, placing the plants in their recovery area. Three mornings were spent helping a most efficient and caring plant surgeon.

The brass knobs and hinges for the Hall doors then required attention. They had been soaked in vinegar for a week or so, with every door having separate containers for the requisite metal as there are the inevitable variations due to wear and tear. Both now wearing rubber gloves, I was once again instructed in the fine art of scraping off softened old paint and gunge from the metal, rubbing it with wire wool, using a finer tool to get into small ornamental designs, before plunging each piece individually into warm soapy water and drying it. The subsequently horribly smelly water was then emptied into an open drain close to the laundry door. That was our work on Wednesday and Thursday morning - and not our only work.

The days were punctuated by minor crises, telephone calls and forgetfulness. Now that the doors are back on in the reception area, I have been fully booked as ‘listener’ on four days next week. I had previously to turn down people as the reception area and Hall were in a complete state of confusion.

Spring is certainly now showing signs in bud and flower. As well as the snowdrops and winter jasmine, the strong spears of green daffodils, the heart-shaped leaves of violets, a little head of lungwort flowers is in bloom. The garden birds are singing throughout the day, and the seagulls are less in evidence. Even the sun shines from time to time.

18th February

Two industrious and delightful decorators remain hard at work. One was working just inside the main door when the plaster crumbled during the preparatory work. (This has been happening by most doors and windows, so was not unexpected.) The plasterer returned. Charlie is scraping away at the wooden balustrade of the main staircase at a great pace, and to good effect. Dust settles gently everywhere.

On Wednesday we had a conference on The Porter of the Monastery, alias the doorkeeper, which also had references to monastic enclosure. This led to a discussion about the kind of enclosure we now keep. I have, since then, re-written it for the Oblate Meeting. It now has a more spiritual bias and is relevant to all of us - doorkeepers or not! I am resisting the temptation to quote from it!

On Thursday two friends came from Perth, Australia, on their two yearly visit and sight-seeing tour in different parts of Europe, accompanied by Dorothy and Stan, Tracy’s aunt and uncle. They are pleasant company. Just before she left, Tracy told me that the booklet Aspects of Love, which I had given her two years ago about the work of MWB and her husband in Nigeria, had done the rounds of Perth. She and her friends were most impressed and moved by the life of faith and absolute trust in Divine Providence which the couple had shown. She asked for some more copies - I gave her six, one to replace her now very tatty copy. Nothing could have pleased me more than that. We ate the contents of our first box of macadamia nuts they had brought us at supper.

My latest mandala is a disaster - too ambitious a rendering of scales, leaves and feathers.

23rd February

The days have been dull and overcast but the first miniature daffodils are no longer spears but trumpets. A few crocuses are out, and the golden forsythia bushes are full of swelling golden buds. Tiny birds flit in hedges and trees, chirping, while the distant Welsh hills look deep purple, almost black, against the sky-line.

Our wonderful decorators work with energy and enthusiasm, and I asked Sister C. to take some photographs. Photogenic Mark smiles broadly from a tripod ladder, while shy Charlie stoops over the balustrade he is scraping, a tattoo visible on his right arm. Both men are ambidextrous, which helps them considerably.

Wednesday is our cleaning day. The person in charge asked to speak to me, and began the conversation by telling me that she had been educated in a Mission School. Her father was Chinese and her mother Malaysian. She came to England to continue her studies, Business Studies, and met her husband in London. They spent some eight years working in Qatar. M. was teaching there but found the life totally unreal, so despite their good salaries, she and her husband returned to England. They have two daughters, now of University age. After the recession some sixteen years ago they decided to begin their own busines. We were among the first customers.

Anyway, the real purpose of the conversation was to do with faith and the feeling that it can ‘slip away’ amid all the business of life. She wanted to come here today, knowing that the environment would help her. She wanted to tell me that, and tacitly asked for spiritual support. It was a mutual blessing.

Before that, the Oblate Meeting on Monday was a very happy occasion. One member wrote a delightful ‘Thank You’ note to us all "So much to thank you for - the warm welcome from you and everyone, the beautiful Mass, prayers with the Community, our discussions, the conference with its profound thoughts and lively questions ..." They are a gracious group and we are happy to have them as part of our spiritual family. (Others mentioned the lovely meal as well....! )

Saturday 26th February

Thursday was the day on which our venerable front door was lifted from its hinges and taken away for a deep and long bath to remove more than a hundred years of varnish and paint. It returned before Vespers, cleansed and wet but nonetheless re-instated immediately. Now come the drying-out days, with the oak wood already revealing the beauty so long concealed.

On Friday afternoon a friend and I walked in the garden, looking at primroses and primulas, lungwort and forsythia amid the ever present signs of a hard winter. When we came in, we looked at a computer slide-show of the Hubble Station and various galaxies and nebula, some of which strongly reminded me of cut stones in colour and shape. I shall try and scan one later, as long as it retains the transparent quality. The written text accompanying these photographic probes was not very good, completely missing the point by comparing our minuscule size with the vastness of space and galaxies that we can only see as they were a million and more light years ago. We are not planets and galaxies and nebulae but sentient beings, spiritual beings, with the capacity to think and reason, to love and to fall prostrate in awe before the unfolding beauty seen in our own soil ....for which we are responsible. We live in the ‘here and now’, and how we live affects both other beings and our inherited environment. God can be found in a stone, and in the bark of a tree...