'Push to Heaven'

Tuesday 28th July, 2020

Yesterday's drizzle has gone but it was substantial as the wheel barrow is half full of water and the water butt has overflowed. The wind is strong and the cloud cover heavy although one can tell that the sun is trying to break through in certain places. I pottered the garden and picked four courgettes but two were beginning to rot. Immediately I wanted to know why. We humans are ever wanting to know answers and reasons and to make things in our image and under our control.

I have confronted in a minor way my black dog of the other evening. I realised that if one wants to be in control, to have some semblance of command one needs to seek answers in oneself. As all the Mystics say ' know thyself'. Also 'unto thyself be true'. One cannot be true to self if ignorant. Of course the answers are not automatic. To delve in to the subconscious needs the experts in the spiritual and psychological. It is a Pandora's box and often hides what needs to be hidden. Yet I quietened myself, relaxed myself physically and let a stream of thoughts and memories and pictures flow through.

I contacted two local friends. They are trustworthy, they keep confidences and they are interested and ever wishing to help and support. Knowing they care is a tonic in itself and knowing they can listen and not judge is essential.

I have been lucky also for I received two letters from close friends. The first was from a cranky, eccentric friend who writes of her family, their visits, their antics and the bizarre ways they have and live. She is perceptive and a born raconteur. I laughed and enjoyed the unfolding 'Coronation Street' of a letter. One of the daughters whom I have know for years had visited. She has two children growing in to terrible teenagers with peculiar tastes and imaginative creative happenings.

The other letter was from a man who writes and loves poetry. He works hard in a hospital but when not at work he studies and rejoices in Nature. He wrote of a walk he had taken in a Nature Park. He described what he had seen, the animals, the habitats, the sounds and smells. Then he commented on the people. One couple were both on their mobile phones saying loudly that there was nothing alive or moving or even living in the Reserve. Yet he told me they were near a rare blues silk butterfly, beside a rotting tree filled with an ants' nest and other bugs, also near a pile of logs on which a viper was sunning and in which a hedgehog could be heard snuffling. He could hear and see at least a dozen birds including a yellow hammer. Butterflies were filling the woods.

I am fortunate to have faith. I was fortunate to have the Spiritual Letters of Abbot Chapman next to me as I read these letters and pondered my moods. In a letter of his I read: " as a fact we are always in touch with God; everything that happens is His arrangement, His Providence...a push to Heaven; only most people try to go their own way....He is working outside you by circumstances and inside you by your thoughts and distractions, unless you resist. It is very dark  and painful on the surface..." So my black dog is to me part of this 'push to heaven'. I also love it when Abbot Chapman tells his correspondent " only those are not the right words- there are no words- when you think of it there is nothing at all! But don't think- and it carries you on."