Gifts and Traditions - An Offline Recycled Greenpatch

OK, let's get the "Bah - humbugging" over before Advent begins shall we?  I've updated Offline Greenpatches with a piece I wrote shortly after we moved back to the UK, Gifts and Traditions. Do please bear in mind that a) I was probably still suffering a touch of  reverse culture-shock at the time and b) This was written 14 years ago. I hope I've loosened up a bit since then. Though not quite in the way that Mr GP seems to be implying; gleefully drawing my attention to an item on R5 Live re the Patron Saint  of the High Street's latest addition to their 'Secret Support' undies range. No, dearest, I do not have "Bingo Wings" thank you very much!

The central  principle still  applies, nonetheless. (The Almighty's, not St Michael's, in case you were wondering...)

Where is Henry West?

Horrors! Albeit I've spent  half my life this month on the train, I've only just noticed that the memorial plaque to poor Henry West, has become  a casualty of the Reading Station redevelopment project. It's vanished from its usual place on Platform Seven. I checked behind the trolley park, even wondered if he might be hiding behind two newly installed vending machines, but, sadly, the nail holes in the wall beside them gave the game away. Young Henry, him of the fulsome and flowery epitaph, has vanished as completely as the 1840 whirlwind which claimed his life. Funnily enough I'd been reading about the building of the first rail stations earlier in the day at an exhibition in Woking, another town that came about directly as a result of the setting up of the new rail network and which provided one of the early routes into London.  Ah well, there's always his memorial at St Lawrence's Church, but I do hope they replace the notice somewhere on the station once the work is completed. It seems fitting, somehow, that as our transport services move further into the 21st century, we should still remember those who helped set them up in the very beginning.

Blue skies at Beunos, Bruges, Beguinages, Benedictines, Bikes and Beer

Just a few glimpses from my wanderings over the last couple of weeks.  Normal service to be resumed as soon as I've come back down to earth.

Back on Dry Land

In other words - every man for himself

On topic sermon

 A couple of pictures from GP daughter, now safely  back on UK soil after her watery adventure.

God's Work of Art

Statue - May 2009

We are God's work of art, created in Christ Jesus for the good works which God has already designated to make up our way of life.

(Ephesians 2:10 New Jerusalem Bible)

God’s work of art.
That’s me?
Then beauty must lie
In the eye of the
Beholder.

I feel more like
One of those statues
Michelangelo left
Half emerging
From the marble block;
Full of potential,
On the verge of life,
But prisoned still
By circumstance and
Fear.

Yet part of me is free -
And you are still creating,
Bringing to life
The promise that is there….

            - From Revelation by Ann Lewin 

Prompted by Antonia's comment on Going Round in Circles 2.

Going Round in Circles 2

'Godseed,' from M Silf's Landmarks - An Ignatian Journey (DLT, 1998)

"Life isn't about finding yourself, it's about creating yourself."


Shades of my earlier musings on Going Round in Circles. I've been pondering these  words  above for the last couple of days, ever since I spotted them  outside our local Wellbeing Centre.  Surely what I'm about as I journey through life is to uncover the true self that is already and has always been there. And is that not "finding myself?

And the end of all our exploring 
Will be to arrive where we started 
And know the place for the first time. 
     T.S. Eliot -- "Little Gidding" ( Four Quartets)

What think you, fellow  bloggers?

For All the Saints

Sung here by the choir of King's College, Cambridge.