The week in the kitchen has passed, with much kindness and appreciation shown by our Oblate Group for the time spent with us. They particularly enjoy the shared gift of smiling friendliness.

As assistant sacristan to an excellent supply sacristan, I am learning the basics of sacristy washing and ironing, as well as the trimming of candles and wicks, and preparing the altar. The last wash was quite large, with an altar cloth needing attention. Somehow or other a small part of a burning wick had fallen on the cloth some time ago, making a black hole. Sister M. repaired it not with a darn but with exquisite embroidery on both the sides where the candles stand.

Friday 3rd June

The cool grass was covered with dew this early morning. Among the grass small toadstools are growing, small as the former half-pennies of pre-decimal time, and the same copper colour.

On Tuesday of this week we all filled our forms for the CRB - Criminal Records Bureau - as required by Civil Law. Obedience to the law of the State was endorsed by Christ when he said, looking at the Roman coin used as official tender, "Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s".

Most of us seem to be feeling rather weary. We have had an exceptionally busy time during the last year, with four nuns undergoing surgery on feet or knees. All are progressing well. Then there are friends and family members who need special support through both word and prayer, and this - while a pleasure - is also a responsibilty. Sometimes spiritual and mental burdens are much more tiring than physical work.

8th June: from a letter

Our brief conversation this morning reminded me of a poem we studied for A Level English Literature in the sixth form: The Abt Vogler by Robert Browning. I expect you know it?

The organist is playing ‘extempore’ and imagines the musical notes as the material for the building of a magnificent temple of sound - more beautiful even than Solomon’s temple. It is so beautiful that he suddenly realises that the finger of God is making this wonderful music, not he himself .

"But here is the finger of God, a flash of the will that can,

Existent behind all laws, that made them, and, lo, they are!

And I know not if, save in this, such a gift be allowed to man,

That out of the three sounds he frame, not a fourth sound, but a star.

Consider it well: each tone of our scale in itself is naught;

It is everywhere in the world -- loud, soft, and all is said:

Give it to me to use! I mix it with two in my thought,

And, there! Ye have heard and seen ...

Well, it is gone at last, the palace of music I reared .....

Never to be again ....

Therefore to whom turn I but Thee, the ineffable Name....

On the earth the broken arc; in the heaven, a perfect round.

All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall exist:

Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power

Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives the melodist,

When eternity affirms the conception of an hour......"

12th June

This week has passed so quickly that I cannot really remember anything. I always need time to reflect, and if I don’t have the time to do so, it is as though the slate has been washed clean. (Do you remember using slates, chalk and sponges at school? We did in Germany after the War 1940-1945 as paper was so very scarce.)

A sister came for a short holiday, after the death of her mother. She enjoys solitude, walking around Chester alone and looking at the shops in the morning. In the afternoon we took longer walks in the open environs just outside the walls. It was lovely to see more of the countryside immediately round Chester, and to walk by the River Dee. On her last day in Chester - Friday - we walked all round the walls. It was more than two miles but not at all tiring. By the famous Victorian Clock over the Eastgate Bridge we paused to look at some duplicated paintings by a very talented artist. He left his chair and book and spoke to us, and in the end I bought a picture at a third of its given price. I have promised to pray for him.

We have received many gifts of food recently: sufficient fresh strawberries and cream for two desserts. Clotted cream arrived from Devon for a birthday, to go with scones and strawberry jam. (Our own strawberries are ripening at different rates but there were enough to pick for all of us during the month.) More cakes were given for Pentecost, including cheese-cakes from Marks and Spencers.

God's Grandeur

...nature is never spent;

There lives the dearest freshness

deep down things;

and though the last lights  off the West went

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward springs-

Because the Holy Ghost over bent

World broods with warm breast

and ah! bright wings.

G.M Hopkins

Pentecost Sunday: 12th June

In the early morning, after the Sabbath, I did not go to the tomb but into the garden of unfolding wonder! The sun was shining, Goldie (a cat) accompanied me, and the newness of perception was pure gift.

Do you know how ladybird-eggs change into beautiful beetles? I did not notice them emerging from the eggs, or the much feeding which precedes the time in the ‘tomb’, when all the cells are dissolved and reformed - much as butterflies undergoing metamorphosis - but we did see the pupae. They are firmly attached to the top of a leaf close to the plant covered with greenfly. Only the fronts of the wrinkled pupae are firmly attached to the top of a leaf - each one on a separate leaf - and the only movement visible is the raising of the abdomen on a warm day. The colours are similar to harlequin ladybirds but the shells are wrinkled ridges. By this morning one of the ladybirds had emerged, leaving a black shroud on the leaf, while she went under the leaf for protection.

On another morning I saw a frog in the area where I feed the birds. It kept completely still as the birds descended, so I was able to carry it to the safety of a flower-bed.

17th June

The days pass amid rain and sunshine, buds and falling petals, broken branches falling to the ground after stormy weather, ripening strawberries, and the sorting of the archives for the last twenty years! The archives are a veritable harvest of letters from so many sources and from people from many backgrounds - some of whom one can find on the web pages while others are the hidden gems known to God alone.

I have kept these letters not only because many refer to matters spiritual but also because a few from friends give such vivid descriptions of the life in English cities or countryside, with daily happenings, and the seemingly unimportant events which form part of social history.

Then there are the letters received which refer to ecumenical encounters in the parlour, with people whose names I cannot remember and faces I cannot recall, and yet they all matter. Some amazing letters refer to the effect my writing on some people, even to the point of helping a married couple to draw closer to each other. Letters there are from friends who are now with God in another realm, from friends in the monastic life, both here and abroad. So many remain faithful correspondents, although we have met only once. But other relationships fall away like leaves from the trees in autumn, remaining a lovely memory before returning to the earth out of which they sprang.

In the last few weeks I have read a wonderful book about the seven years a young Englishman spent in Khiva, a walled oasis city in Uzbekistan, on a mission from UNESCO, learning both to design carpets and employing local weavers to make them. It is called "A Carpet Ride to Khiva" by Christopher Aslan Alexander. Then I read a book written by Jeff Pearce: "A Pocket Full of Holes and Dreams", which is also quite amazing, especially as he is/was dyslexic, unable to read or write. He was born in Liverpool in 1953, and his account of his life and work - and human relationships - is deeply moving. His mother Elsie was a remarkable woman, too.

The conference I gave to the community on Wednesday was:

CHAOS AND PEACE - A Biblical Perspective

(Based on the summary of a talk given by Rev Dr Anthony Harvey in 2003 to UMS)

‘Then war broke out in heaven’ Rev 12:7

This is not what we would expect to happen in heaven, especially as we pray daily that ‘Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven’, thinking of heaven as an ideal state of peace and harmony. That there should be ‘war’ there is at first unimaginable.

However, in antiquity, there was great interest in ASTROLOGY, with a profound belief that life on earth was greatly influenced by ‘heavenly bodies’. The basic agricultural year followed a calendar related to the zodiac, and remained that way for many centuries. Certain signs of the zodiac, on their rising in the sky, indicated the season for sowing and planting. An eclipse of the sun was believed to herald an important event. When a Greek philosopher - Poseidonius - observed the effect of the moon on the ocean at the Pillars of Hercules (Straits of Gibraltar) he wondered how lesser heavenly bodies might affect individual human destinies. He postulated that the very regularity of the stars governed the conditions under which we live.

The CONVERSE was considered equally important. If something significant happens on earth, it follows that there must be something significant happening in the heavens.... Any epoch-making event must be accompanied by a sign. We have the locking-in of events in Revelation 12 - events on earth and signs in heaven. A woman clothed in the sun, standing on the moon - The Virgo of the Zodiac - represents the Daughter of Jerusalem. Because there is to be a final contest between good and evil on earth - Satan against the righteous - there must be a corresponding ‘war in heaven’.

NB The official theology, the Priestly theology written during / after the Exile in Babylon, excluded this. The Priestly creation account stresses that God created ORDER out of chaos ... there was to be order and regularity on the earth, and no belief in Babylonian astrology!

However, many of the Psalms and other Hebrew Scriptures show a contrasting picture of creation - with God struggling against the chaotic forces of Nature:

Psalm 73:12-16

Yet God is king from time past,

the giver of help through all the land.

It was you who divided the sea by your might,

who shattered the heads of the monsters in the sea.

It was you who crushed Leviathan’s heads

and gave him as food to the untamed beasts.

It was you who opened springs and torrents;

it was you who dried up ever-flowing rivers.

Yours is the day and yours is the night.

It was you who appointed the light and the sun:

it was you who fixed the bounds of the earth:

you who made both summer and winter.

In the Book of Job it is the Lord who asked him about creation from 38: 4 onwards, describing both the agony and ecstasy in creation as a whole, and His dealing with it. Job is challenged by these words:

"Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundations?

Tell me, if you know and understand

Who fixed its dimensions? Surely you know!....

On what do its supporting pillars rest?

Who set its corner-stone in place,

while the morning stars sang in chorus

and the sons of God all shouted for joy?"

Creation in these accounts was not a serene imposition of order but a struggle with the forces of chaos. God set boundaries, pushing back evil powers, chaining and restraining, and this myth lived on into the Book of Revelation, in which the devil is imprisoned under the earth...

Having recorded the talk thus far, I decided to do some research on ‘The Bible and Astrology’. Among the references I found was one to Beth Alpha, at the base of Mount Gilboa in the Valley of Jezreel. In 1928 some Israeli farmers were digging an irrigation ditch when they unearthed a brightly coloured mosaic chip, which carried an Hebrew inscription. Professor Eliezer Sukenik of the Hebrew University ordered an archaeological dig. This led to the discovery of the remains of a fifth century synagogue’s pillars and walls. The greatest surprise came when they unearthed an almost completely intact zodiac mosaic floor.....

The four women at the corners represent the four seasons. In the centre is a charioteer with four horses. The twelve segments hold the twelve signs of the zodiac, including Hebrew inscriptions.