We have had early mornings of frog-spawn and frost, with clumps of miniature daffodils blazing like the summer sun at noon. Our twisted and unhappy red blossom tree was felled by our gardeners. Colin, setting-up home, asked to have the logs for next winter. The tree flowered each year, emerging from drear winter into blossom shining in the sunshine, and then bearing dull leaves. This autumn we saw goldcrests feeding on the insects under the bark. Sic transit gloria mundi.

14th March

It seemed that the very darkness was singing this morning, while a distant passing train rolled through the night. The diminishing moon looked wan behind the clouds, while daffodils shone their pale light from the earth. It was lovely out in the garden, and I quietly sang the verse we sing at our solemn profession - arms outstretched: "Take me, Lord, to be your own according to your word and I shall live. Let not my hope in you be disappointed". At present so much seems to be crumbling around us, including our relationships as friends reach the shore of the sea of mystery.

We have just received a copy of "30 Days" in the Church and in the World for December 2008. The cover shows Reinhold Niebuhr giving a lecture to a group of students. He published "Moral man and immoral society" in 1932. An inset of the cover page shows "President-elect Barack Obama" and his family. In an interview Obama said that he owed Niebuhr the irrefutable idea that "there’s serious evil in the world, and hardship and pain. And we should be humble and modest in our belief that we can eliminate those things. But we shouldn’t use that as an excuse for cynicism and inaction".

For Saint Augustine "the source of evil is self-love, rather than some residual natural impulse that reason has not yet mastered". Saint Augustine was a realist, and a theological realism permits the belief that " realism is able to avoid indifference, cynicism and the unconditional acceptance of any form of power, as well as sentimentality, idealism and illusions in regard to politics and human existence". It sounds good but what does it mean? Our human behaviour has been corrupted through our selfishness and our ‘corrupt’ freedom, but it does not have to be used as a model for behaviour on which to build society. Is it saying that society can be better than our individual human selfishness, and thus realism is not pessimistic? I think society is - in essence - better than our individual selfishness but it can be so easily corrupted.

The warmer weather means that our garden is changing every hour as buds open and more frogs spawn. Birds are building their nests, and close to Roodee - on Nuns Road, where the medieval monastery of Benedictine nuns was sited - a small rookery has been built. Small birds are using some of the nine nest boxes provided in our garden, and the miracle of life renews itself.

18th March

The journey to Welshpool, passing through the borders of Shropshire, went well. The Welsh hills looked dark and sombre but many village road verges were bright with daffodils. There were fields of sheep and lambs, with the occasional black lamb, and black-faced twins resting together while the mother ewes daintily cropped the grass.

Welshpool seemed to be the usual sort of small border town, with a winding main road, and a small hinterland of residences. We failed to see the sign to the hospital, where Margaret was dying, and arrived later than planned.

Margaret died peacefully on St Patrick’s day, at about 18.45 (6.45 for us). The nurses were coming from her room when Mary arrived. Margaret had expressed the wish to have a service in the little Church next to her house, where her cats had played among the graves, and Mary is arranging this. After that the body will be taken to the crematorium. The ashes will, in due course, come here.

So this is both an end and a beginning, with her ‘dust’ touched by a radiant dew as the sun rises.

29th March

The first day of summer dawned bright, the lawn covered in frost and the shallow surfaces of the water bowls skimmed with ice. The Magnolia tree lost all its flowers last year due to frost: will any bloom this year? I have not been able to write this week. Partly because of events and extreme tiredness, and partly because my being feels numb and unresponsive. I have been trying to write something for the website on a scriptural theme, and all I can think about is the warmth and patience of brooding birds.... which I have tried to connect with outspread arms.

The image of over-shadowing wings has been with me for many years. Some contemplative writers have seen our world as an egg over which the Holy Spirit broods. (Hildegard of Bingen and G.M.Hopkins.) I used to imagine the creation of the world, brought forth out of darkness and chaos, in a similar way until more modern translators insisted that the ‘divine spirit’ mentioned in Genesis is not the creative power. It is the Word of God which is creative:

"In the beginning God created heaven and earth. Now the earth was a formless void, there was darkness over the deep, with a divine wind sweeping over the waters.

God said, ‘Let there be light ..."

Well, a rushing, sweeping wind is not at all a brooding bird:

"I come in the little things,

Saith the Lord:

Not borne on the morning wings

Of majesty ....

I come in the little things,

Saith the Lord:

Yea! on the glancing wings

of eager birds ..... In brown bright eyes

...... I stand confest.

On every nest

Where feathery Patience is content to brood...

There doth My Godhead rest." Evelyn Underhill

Of course, that appeals to me far more, especially in this season as birds build their wondrous nests and brood in the half darkness of a hedge or leafy tree. That, to me, is the darkness of creative contemplation.

The idea I have been anxious to develop is the image of over-shadowing in the life of Christ.

The usual portrayal of Mary at the time the Angel visited her is of a devout young woman calmly reading and pondering the Word of God. This is not what Saint Luke records:

"(The angel Gabriel) went in and said to her, ‘Rejoice, you who enjoy God’s favour! The Lord is with you.’

Please note, this was the normal form of angelic salutation when an angel was sent to some unsuspecting person in times of old.

‘She was deeply disturbed by these words and asked herself what this greeting could mean...’ When a person is deeply disturbed, a form of chaos takes over. It is then that the gentle heat of engendering warmth - of love - can calm us into acceptance. But that was only the beginning. Not only was Mary to bear an apparently fatherless child but this was to come about through the Holy Spirit coming upon her and the power of the Most High covering her with its shadow. Luke 1:26-36.

Again, it is the shadow of God which engenders life. This is how nature works: the seed needs to be planted in the soil, kept warm and moist, attracted towards the light. In a fertilised egg the warmth of the brooding mother - or another source of warmth - is essential for incubation. The liquid and food is already there until the chick pierces the shell which would be its tomb if it did not struggle to find more space, light and air. No wonder a newly hatched chick is exhausted, limp and apparently lifeless until its mother warms it under her wings. It is a miracle when a scrawny, ugly creature emerges from under its mother’s feathers as a fluffy chick, questing for food and water.

Well, that is the beginning.

When Jesus began His public ministry, according to Saint Luke, this is what took place:

"Now it happened that when all the people (who had flocked to John the Baptist) had been baptised and while Jesus after his own baptism was at prayer, heaven opened and the Holy Spirit descended on him in a physical form, like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son; today have I fathered you." Luke3:21-22

So the image of spirit and bird come together once again. People who are conscious of their dreams know that all is well when they dream of healthy and happy birds, and that something is wrong when the birds are bedraggled and listless. A medieval manuscript portrayed a mythical bird drawing out the vapours of illness in a man, becoming listless and sick itself, with only the rays of the healing sun restoring it to health. Some people who pray seem to share in this redemptive mystery, often not knowing where the spiritual darkness has come from.

Another form of wings can be seen in the Cross, with Christ ( perhaps unconsciously a symbol of the reckless son Icarus of Greek legend) not crashing into the sea and drowning but rising up ‘with healing in his rays’ streaming from Him. The crucifixion by Salvador Dali has Christ ‘brooding’ over the Sea of Galilee - representing the whole of creation - and offering us all the gift of true life.

So, you see, I cannot get away from the imagery of mythical, but truly spiritual, birds as the generative power in life. At the time of the ascension Our Lord raised His arms in blessing. "Now as he blessed them, he withdrew from them and was carried up to heaven.." Could he have been borne on eagle’s wings, a sort of mythical Bird which had swept over the waters of chaos, and still broods over us?

You may have noticed that I have not mentioned the tomb - that space hollowed out in rock - the shell which enclosed the dead Body during the time of its transformation into the Risen and glorified Lord. It is this sort of thing which non- Christians find hard to accept, but can it not be seen as a deep psychological truth, whatever we believe? The seed’s awakening is a miracle in itself.