We are in the vineyard

Sunday 4th October, 2020

Woke to a damp morning. A little drizzle. Streamed a service from Ontario in Canada. The sermon was about the vineyard and those who hired it. They attacked and maimed the men sent to collect the rent. The Owner sent his only son claiming they would respect him. They killed him hoping to inherit the vineyard. 

After breakfast I decided to finish my letter to my poetry loving friend. I read some of the journals and letters of Manley Hopkins. I came away divining that he was troubled like many of us but that his aim was to praise God in all things, thus his poems.

Early afternoon produced some sunshine. I grabbed the opportunity. I have felt lethargic of late and my walking was slow. I passed a lot of fallen apples on the road so stuffed my pockets with them. Then on to the lakes in the local private park. The swans were there but now only two cygnets. There had been six. Then on to the lower lakes and I spotted three herons in the trees. The lakes were brimming and the streams running fast. On getting home I noticed the wheel barrow was full of water to a depth of six inches. A bucket was even deeper in its fullness. Later my allotment working friend sent me photographs of a flooded allotment. The rain had been heavy.

As I returned home so my foot crunched something on the road. I looked down and spotted a walnut. Then I looked about and saw many fallen walnuts. I picked up a bag of them, about fifty. I shall hand them as a present to my allotment lady as a thanks for getting my television to work. 

Back home I peeled the apples and stewed them. I had two cups of tea. I noted the sun was being invaded by heavy tall black and deep grey clouds. More rain is on the way. To counteract my feeling of dampened enthusiasm I had taken to my bed. There on I considered the case of the Loop Head peninsula in Ireland. It is one of the most beautiful places I have been. The coastline is glorious, the Ocean a delight, the land brimming with beauties and the people kindly and welcoming. It seems, however, that it is de populating. A group of locals have gotten together to see if they can stem that tide. How to retain the young, how to attract businesses without losing the idyllic awesome countryside. Let me try my own words to describe my recalls of Loop Head:

" Caught, blinded, dazzled and conscious of banality, deadening descriptions, I stared stunned, shocked, suspicious and scintillatingly alive. Uttering the unutterable, fronted by fortunes flowering gift, gloating gorging grace filling godlike awe I smelt the divine and marvelled".

We are in the vineyard and we pollute it.