2nd July:  

While we were sitting in the cool garden yesterday, by the lavender patch, we noticed a most unusual moth. Its wings were moving as fast as those of hummingbirds, and its rounded abdomen looked feathered. The very long proboscis was taking nectar from the lavender flowers. It looked just like a moth pretending to be a bird. When I looked it up in Wikipedia I saw that it also had an eye pattern on both sides of its head. In the English vernacular it is called "a hummingbird hawk-moth". It is a migrant, and cannot over-winter in Northern Europe. The wonders around us are beyond telling. Why should a moth disguise itself as a bird?

Sunday 3rd July

The garden is wet with dew, and the bumblebees are at work among the flowering bushes. Cool sunshine glistens everywhere and I have been thinking of Teilhard de Chardin again:

"Over there, on the horizon, the sun has just touched with light the outermost fringe of the eastern sky. Once again, beneath this moving sheet of fire, the living surface of the earth wakes and trembles ..... I will place in my paten, O God, the harvest won by the renewal of labour (this day). Into my chalice I shall pour the sap which is to be pressed out this day from the earth’s fruits."

I was wondering how on earth one could form an image of this but gave up. Some things remain intangible and all the more profound for that. Even to try could be a form of desecration.

6th July

It rained sometime during the night. I later awoke to the screeching of gulls. The humidity level is very high. As I sit at the computer my clothes cling to me while Goldie is curled-up on my bed, happy in her beautiful fur coat. On the fig-tree two figs have now gone soggy on the bough but they are not ripe. The seasons are out of kilter, and so is mankind.

It was an interesting experience going to the Accident and Emergency Clinic on Sunday morning accompanied by Sister Clare. There were quite a few people there, including mothers with babies. Then there were gentle old couples, middle-aged people, and a rather noisy pair cracking jokes while a young woman awaited attention, sitting in a wheel-chair. A younger man hopped towards the consulting room when called, and a young woman left the waiting room with a grim face after seeing one of the nurses. The flat television blared on the wall behind us.

My turn came eventually. The nurse was very good, examined the wound, and explained that the worst bite of all was from human teeth. Fortunately I had only been bitten by a frightened cat!

Some time around four o’clock on Tuesday a young member of the Council Planning Team came to take photographs of the site for the solar panels. The plan of the buildings was still labelled ‘Ursuline Convent’ and was superficially fine BUT the roof of the Annexe, which was demolished after the Wing was built c. 2005, was the diagrammatic-edifice to which the solar panels were shown affixed! However, we were able to explain the situation to the young and competent young woman, who said that it should not delay the granting of the Planning Application...... A formal notice is now affixed to the wall by the main gate.

8th July

Sudden minutes of torrential rain are interspersed with humid sunshine. The cats come in with their upper layer of fur wet, which seems to act as a raincoats.

I heard an owl calling during the night, and the woodpecker has been seen again.

Why on earth do I think this will interest you at all? Not a single thought is peering in through the window, the muse is asleep on the bed, while the herring-gulls laugh as they fly overhead!

Saturday 9th July

Yesterday evening I learned that a dear friend of mine had been diagnosed with bowel cancer.

I have also started reading "Three Minutes of Hope" by Hugo Gryn, edited by his daughter Naomi. He and his mother survived the maleficent ordeal of various concentration camps during the second World War in Germany. His wonderful father, Geza died from malnutrition and typhoid some days after Liberation. What is so moving is Hugo Gryn’s compassion, and his deep desire that there should be reconciliation. among all people and all faiths. He worked for this all his life. Yet there are still people denying the Holocaust, as there are people trying to deny the reality of climate change....

12th July

Two of us have been busy printing our calendars for 2012. The theme is: WALKING OUTSIDE THE WALLS

"As a Community of Benedictine nuns we live inside an enclosure. This enclosure, basically a square of fences, shrubs and trees, surrounds us with natural beauty. It has a symbolic gate onto the road but is accessible to any wild-life which chooses to enter it by its own appropriate means.

The City of Chester has its symbolic walls and gates, which are perhaps wider now than when Chester was a fortified Roman camp, with a Port on the River Dee. Our permitted walking area, some twenty years ago, took us outside these two types of enclosure: a suburban garden and a once fortified city. In some way, we walked on the margins, on the edge, and found it exhilarating.

We walked mainly by the river, seeing both its ebb and flow, the wild life, and the fishermen on the banks of The Meadows. We walked along muddy footpaths and saw a house with a double meaning called ‘Nowhere’. We where both ‘NOW HERE’ and ‘NO WHERE."

The photographs for this were taken some twenty years ago, with a Canon camera which was second-hand but perfect. Inside the enclosure the emphasis was upon close-up of flowers. On the walks, it was scenic views, especially close to the River Dee. The calendar alternates between the two styles.

Once again the events of the last days have entered my area of forgetfulness. There have been many e-mails which required careful reading but succinct replies. Sometimes we seem to wear a mantle of sorrow, which the grace of God may well turn into a coat of blessings for others. I do pray this is so.

We have had many welcome visitors this month, chiefly family members or old friends. They are kind in their generosity and buy us special ‘treats’. At times this seems dreadful when there are so many people in the world who are dying of drought and starvation.....

The Wednesday conference was on "Chaos and Peace", based on the second part of Sister Aquinata Boeckmann’s talk in 2003. It stressed the various forms of chaos inside us, and gave some graphic descriptions from the Rule of Saint Benedict of the consequences of our chaos when it is projected outwards. It is all quite horribly true.

A section from the Book of Jonah about his feelings when he was in the belly of the fish then made me want to paint, but I have now turned to another subject - still related to chaos. The quotation comes from Jonah chapter 2:2-7. I love the description of the ‘ roots of the mountains’. In geological terms this seems to apply more to volcanoes, and they are only on the crust of the earth.

Having done a little research, I have discovered that the centre of the earth is not liquid magma but a solid core of iron and nickel which cannot turn liquid because of the pressure on it. Someone described the structure of the earth as resembling a hard-boiled egg coated with sausage meat and crumbs! The crumb area, on which we live, is the most shallow, so my ‘design’ had to be scrapped. Now I have another idea, based on volcanoes, but not including the whole earth....However, even volcanoes seem to have some roots and branches in the vents.

c.25th July

We have had much heavy rain during the last few days and our garden looks magnificent. The purple plums have been harvested - all sixteen of them - and we were able to share them in refectory. The strawberries are coming to an end while our small apple and pear trees are laden with green fruit. The first blackberries are ripening and bees continue to browse among the lavender. A dragonfly flew by me at shoulder-height one afternoon: I could only just glimpse the shimmering blues and greens of its body.

The conference on Wednesday was about the changes in the way Mass is to be celebrated, beginning this Advent This connected well with the previous theme of Chaos and Peace as change affects people differently. Some like it, others resent it, and then give their reasons for maintaining the status quo... Changes in liturgical matters invariably causes some emotional fur to fly. Anyway, the music for the normal singing parts of the Mass, taken from the Monastic Musicians’ Newsletter, is called the Belmont Mass and is very pleasant to listen to and should be within our scope.

For most of the week there has been a notice up in the cloister: Good Homes Sought for Plants FREE OFFER. These were the streptocarpus plants which Sister M. had grown from leaves, and they had increased and multiplied to such an extent that there was no room for them in the cloister. The blue ones were very popular, and all had gone by Thursday.

Other than that, I have found consolation looking at the patterns in the wood of the Chapel floor close to my feet. On some days a smiling dolphin, an eighteenth century woman with her hair piled-up like a beehive, and a figure dancing by the altar are visible! The light and shade in the chalice, and the reflections on the embossed golden-coloured metal are also wonderful. They seem to capture the wholesome living air around us.

Later. I was stung by a wasp I was trying to rescue. It stung me through a cloth on the tip of my right ring-finger. The wasp was returned to the garden the second time round. I used the vinegar cure.

26th July

I was most interested to hear on Radio 4 that some English apples are being harvested already - two months earlier than in other years. Ours are swelling on the bough, and some have already fallen. Our brown figs are ripening well, and we shared some in refectory recently.

May this sharing in our life be a blessing to you.