When the bees came to live with us in our defunct chimney we felt a little bit worried as it wasn't planned. Hebe was especially worried as the chimney opening comes down into her bedroom. So when she went to bed that night she stood quietly in her room and asked them to send her a sign that it would be okay; and during the night she dreamt that she was standing in the garden under the arch with the roses, with bees swarming on her, and it was happy and she felt fine about it.
So, phew! She also did some reading about bees, and this is what she found out. It is an honour if bees come to live with you, because they choose carefully and after much research. They send out scout bees to scope the area and find a suitable new home, where they carefully consider the exits and entrances as well as the space itself. The scout bees will be the lone bees that Hebe inexplicably kept seeing in her room in the days before they came. When it's time for the bees to relocate, they all move together, and so they did — the swarm arrived and landed on the chimney pot then gradually moved inside (and it was our chimney, not our neighbour's, even though the houses are built against one another). Of course, some forager bees may have been accidentally left behind, so guide bees go back to their old home to find and bring along anyone who came back from shopping with bagfuls of pollen only to find everyone had moved on. For a long time now we have wanted bees. We've talked about it often, looking at our garden to try and locate a good place for a hive. We think we have found one but aren't yet entirely sure. But some years ago we made the decision to ensure our garden was pollinator-friendly, and we stopped using any poisons (apart from I put bird-friendly slug-killer around the baby veggie plants. I think I won't have to do that next year though, because we have badgers and toads as well as seagulls and foxes, so the slug population gets culled! We do spray the pole beans against black fly, but we use garlic for that. Veg plot with baby courgettes etc surrounded by stones to protect against the fox and cats and badger and any other diggers:
So our astral minds have been sending out a calling for bees but our everyday minds couldn't see how to fit them in. We planted trees, and they are now growing well. Look —
— and we have planted wild flowers that are allowed to grow —
— and lots of herbs, and other flowers.
We have a lot of lavender. We like it specially. Bees like it too:
So our garden is bee perfect. But still we were sad that though bees came, and masses of birds, we didn't have as many bees as we'd hoped. Ha! They're here now, all right! They all came out this morning and we thought they were getting ready to fly on — maybe just using our chimney as a resting place.
Then they all went back inside it again. Bees are very wise and knowing, and can find your aura. It is possible to communicate with them as readily as with the other creatures who come to the garden (which we do) and with the cats and the trees. This is not fanciful or one-way, you can converse with them. Only this morning I ran down to the garden to intervene because Miguel our black cat was all too obviously playing with some small animal in the grass. He was pleased to see me and happy to let me pick him up, which allowed the little red-brown mouse he'd had the time it needed to make a discreet exit into one of the stands of meadow flowers we leave to grow round the foot of each tree. And as that mouse slipped away, it brushed the whole length of its body along the whole side of my foot in the grass. It didn't have to. It chose to. And animals don't do that kind of thing by accident. I hope it stays safe — and alive! So in the end we feel, at the deepest level, content and proud that the bees have come to stay in our chimney. Hebe is almost a bee herself, she has an affinity with nonhuman being — the cats, the trees, even the herring gulls; they rightly trust her. So I think the bees will settle into a harmonic resonance with her being — beeing. In her cupboard at the foot of the chimney she kept her Hopi candles and her nightlights, all of which are beeswax and very fragrant, so the bees will feel at home right away — though she moved those items out of the cupboard because bees do come looking for them and she'd really rather they confine themselves to their chimbley for the most part. Also we put all the gadgetry for our solar array that heats the water and provides our electricity up into the attic, and when we have to switch on the water heater in the winter, it makes a deep bass hum like a hornet. I think the bees will find it comforting. And I think when Hebe plays her Rav drum (there's one here if you aren't familiar with them) and her violin and guitar, and when she sings, they will like that too. It took ages to build and grow a life, and when it was all blown apart and shattered twenty years ago, it felt heartbreaking, as if it could never be healed. But now, in this house, we have been growing the new, and it has got to the stage like the mycelium in the forest floor of related and integrated trees, where we are at peace together and the house and garden are becoming one thing and the animals and birds trust us, and now the bees have given us their seal of approval. We do indeed feel deeply honoured, and glad that they have come. Can you see them dancing round the chimney?
Well, it might not be morning where you are at the moment, but it is right here right now. It's post bath and ante breakfast time. And here I am because I was thinking in the bath. Most of the thoughts have annoyingly eluded me because I didn't look at them hard and nail them down. Oh — I was thinking about — no . . . never mind. One thing that began in my head (but wait — is my mind in my head? Maybe it is somewhere else) last night, is the odd effect of mental conflation. Let me explain what I mean. In the morning yesterday I was the designated preacher for our little chapel at Pett. The last time was only a couple of weeks ago (so both occasions within Eastertide) when we thought about the concept of holding space, and how Jesus held space for Peter in that lakeside encounter at the end of John's gospel, to help him restore himself to goodness and friendship and being Peter (as opposed to Simon) and standing in faith. All of that. Then this week, moving on from thinking about holding space for one another, we thought about showing up (for one another), and the difference we make when we show up, or equally when we don't — when we fail to. My input yesterday morning included some details from my personal life, particularly some occasions when people (knowingly or not) failed to show up for me, and the difference that made and the struggle it imposed. And we thought about ways of showing up for each other and people who have done this. The foundation stone of our thoughts was this quotation from Stephen Gaskin:
And we thought about how his faithfulness in showing up as a teacher inspired his wife Ina May Gaskin to create and shape her Spiritual Midwifery initiative, which was transformative for women giving birth around the world — not only in America, back then in the 1970s it reached and profoundly influenced me (and many others) here in England too. All this she did from a bus in the US. Who'd have thought it? She was one of this season's people all right, and was enabled to be so by her husband. So that was yesterday morning. Came home from chapel, had lunch, and then in the afternoon went on a girly outing with my daughters to see The Hustle, which I found good, but not amazing. Amusing, absorbing, and I like Rebel Wilson a lot. We had a nice time. Stories engage my imagination which is my creative wellspring that determines how I see the world — as yours is. So I came away from the cinema with my imaginative field flooded with the input of the movie story. The conflation began here. Preaching places a strong demand on energy. If I had one of those smart meters installed in my interior being, it would be well up into the red when I preach. I'm tired afterwards. So I went to the cinema tired, which always allows more pervasive ingress of the story into my imaginative field. This meant that somehow my output in the morning, which had not yet properly shut down (I'd need to go to sleep for that) merged with the new input from the movie, and I became convinced that I had been attempting to con the congregation with false information and done something morally wrong at a profound level — misled them, duped them — and ceased to be a good person. Especially because one of the con-women in the movies (Rebel Wilson's character) is called Penny, which is what a lot of people call me. I hate it, but they do. So anyway, we got home, to be greeted by our Tony in a rather excitable manner with the news that we had a swarm of bees on our chimney. We have two chimney stacks to our house. One is in constant use for the wood stove and (in the adjacent room) open fire. The other used to be for the kitchen fireplace and (sadly) had the lower portion of the stack removed entirely by former occupants of the house. So the chimney pots are capped, and the stack is closed, ending in the room where our Hebe lives, in a cupboard where a fireplace used to be, wherein a board with air holes (well big enough for a bee to crawl through) sits beneath the aperture into the defunct chimney. The bees had swarmed on the closed chimney that stops at the bottom end in Hebe's room. So our Alice and Hebe went out into the garden and looked thoughtfully at the chimney stack while Tony carried on painting the sitting room walls (he's been doing this all week — it's a huge room and a lighter colour had to cover darker), then they went up into the attic to look at the chimney stack from that angle. No swarm. But yes, there was an unusually large number of bees floating in and out of the air spaces at the top of the capped chimney, which will make — as I'm sure you'll agree — an absolutely perfect hive. Uh-oh. So I googled about bees in chimneys, and apparently they live there for years without causing structural damage, and the only alternative is to get a chimney sweep to go up to the top of the stack, uncap it, and either suck them out (by a machine into a bag, I mean, not with his massive mouth) or kill them all. We are not into killing bees, and by the unfortunate influence of the personal preferences of some of our household (not mine, as you'll rightly guess) we live in a very tall Victorian house and would have to pay several hundred pounds to erect a scaffold if we wanted a sweep to go up there and get those bees out. We don't have several hundred pounds, our money is allocated to the very bottom of our rather shallow pockets, thank you. So . . . that means the bees get to stay there, I guess. For as long as they want. And when they eventually go, in years to come, should we ever wish to rebuild the bottom of the stack and use that chimney again (we had planned to at some point), we shall have an almighty bung of very sticky wax and propolis and ancient honey to deal with. Oy vey. Hebe got a piece of fine fabric that will allow passage of air but not bees, and stuck it down firmly over the board inside the top of her cupboard at the foot of the chimbley. This mini drama got into my headspace and merged in my still not shut down imaginative field with con artists and preaching and convinced me that not only was I a predatory and deceiving preacher and a wicked woman but furthermore disaster was about to befall me, my house would collapse and my family be stung to death. I did the only sensible thing. I closed my curtain, went to bed, watched a short calming feature about a dear little tiny house (the one Mairin linked us to), and went to sleep for a very long time. The world looks less threatening this morning.
So I was thinking — about getting ready. Pretty much anything you are getting ready for — painting a room, having a party, going out for the evening, planting a garden, cooking supper — has a preliminary stage that involves less not more. If you're painting a room, you clear out all the bits and pieces and wipe down the walls. If you're going out for the evening you take off your clothes and have a bath or shower. If you're planting a garden you clear a space and remove the weeds. If you're cooking supper, you clear the table-top, if you're having a party you take out the dead flowers and sweep the room and clean out all the ashes from the fireplace where you've been burning packaging for the last month, and set everything straight. The next stage involves accumulation — paint and ladders and cloths and brushes, fresh flowers and snacks and candles, make-up and tights and perfume and a pretty dress, seeds and plug plants and supports and slug killer and a fork and trowel, food and pans and seasoning and whatnot. It's like a tsunami, there's that moment when the ocean draws back — and then it comes thundering in and covers the whole land. And there are plenty of stories of wild animals heading inland as fast as they can in the moment when the sea draws back; because they know, and they get out of the way as quick as they can. And it occurred to me that the art of simplicity has to do with seizing the moment; a chance of intervention. Weed it, wipe it down, brush out the ashes, throw out the dead flowers, take off your clothes, shower and go — like an elephant running for the hills. The secret of minimalism is stopping after stage one of getting ready, freeze your life at the moment of intense quiet as the sea draws back, and let the tsunami of everyday living arrest like one of these sneezes that never comes out. Well . . . that's what I thought, anyway.
I love it. And for those among you who do not speak French, what she's saying is: "No, nothing at all, No, I regret nothing; Neither the good done to me, Nor the bad — it's all the same to me. No, nothing at all, No, I regret nothing; It's paid for, swept away, forgotten, I don't care about the past. I've made a bonfire of my memories, My sorrows, my pleasures, I have no more need of them. Swept away, the love affairs with all their excess of trembling, Swept away for ever, I'm going back to ground zero. No, nothing at all, No, I regret nothing; Neither the good done to me, Nor the bad — it's all the same to me. No, nothing at all, No, I regret nothing; Because my life, because my joys — Today — begin with you." Yay! Go Edith! Good plan, I say. And now that's set me off thinking about Dame Edna saying "Moi, je ne regret reen!" (I'm reproducing this phonetically you understand). So I searched the internet for a video with her saying it and couldn't find one. You'll just have to be content with this or this or this, or listen to this. I do know the quotation for which I was searching does not feature in any of these appearances, because I listened to them all through carefully to check: which shows how deeply I care about you and how seriously I take my research. Have a nice day.
She was a shining light, a courageous warrior for truth, and one of Christ's faithful soldiers and servants on this earth. We hold into the light of God's love and mercy her family coming to terms with this sudden loss. None of us can ever know how many days of life will be ours, but if we manage to make even a fraction of the difference her life and contribution made, our time here will have been worthwhile. May she rest in peace and rise in glory.
At the end of April I wrote in this post about how helpful the phraseology of other faith paths than our own can be. In that case the word was "karma", which comes from Hinduism and Indian Buddhism. Not so much from India, but from later developments of Buddhism comes the illuminating and helpful phrase "taking refuge", which touches upon one of the skills of nourishing and nurturing spiritual development. In Buddhism, the commitment is to "taking refuge in the buddha, the dharma and the sangha". The Buddha is the state of enlightenment — the aware, present and awakened self. It should not be mistaken for an external being; it's not quite the same as if a Christian spoke of taking refuge in Jesus, there isn't the same level of otherness implied. Taking refuge in the buddha is fundamentally to do with living from your true self, from your innate wisdom and connection to the spiritual root — in Christian terminology it's like the Holy Spirit that wells up within you as a fountain of living water. That's the place of refuge implied in taking refuge in the buddha. The Dharma is the wisdom body of writing and practice — the tradition, both in what you learn and what you do. What you might describe as "the way" trodden by the feet of the wise, faithful, kind and good, and left for you in the legacy of their writing and teaching. That too is a place of refuge. The Sangha is the faith community, the spiritual kindred, the people travelling with you. They encourage you by their words and deeds for sure, but also there is an effulgence of being, an aura, something like a fragrance that emanates from the being of your sangha members, in which you can take refuge and find rest, be comforted and restored. Of course the faith community can also be intensely irritating and challenge you deeply by their habits and personality and temperament, but that also strengthens your practice as you learn to synthesise who you are with who they are and so shape the living temple from the unwieldy building blocks to hand. The series of nine books I wrote that comes under the general heading of "The Hawk & the Dove" is the unfolding story of the men living in a fictional fourteenth century monastery. These novels explore the practise of goodness and kindness, and explore faith development and practice. They are about the Christian version of the buddha, the dharma and the sangha in which we may take refuge to be supported and grow strong. The purpose of the series is to nurture the reader's aspiration to choose gentleness and humility, and foster peace. Each of the books in the series feels down into a different aspect of the way of love, but the fourth book (The Hardest Thing To Do) and the ninth book (A Day And A Life) can be used as a form of retreat. The links I've given you are to UK Amazon, but you can also find them on US Amazon or in many online Christian bookshops (like Eden). I feel sure there must be many people who (like me) would dearly love to make a residential retreat at somewhere like St Beuno's, but do not have sufficient means to realistically prioritise this over the commitments of day to day life. How, then, to benefit from the retreat experience of going down deep to be refreshed and restored, if you can't afford to go and stay in a retreat house? St Alcuin's monastery in my fictional series is designed to create a place of spiritual refuge, because it is what takes place in our imagination that sustains and heals us, even more than what belongs to our physical surroundings and circumstances. The stories create a virtual sangha, which can come to life in our imagination and offer friendly companionship for our journey. They explore the dharma of the Gospel — the concepts as they are outlived of the way of Jesus. They support the finding of the buddha, both the interior well of life and the experience of touching the risen Jesus. There are lots of ways we can discover into taking refuge, to rest and strength our inner self, but the power of story has been from time immemorial a really good one.
Do you know John Henry Newman's hymn, "Lead Kindly Light"? My grandfathers were both musicians. My father's father (Frank) was a church organist, at St Martins-on-the-Hill church in Scarborough, with its Willis organ and beautiful Burne-Jones panels. My mother's father (Charles) played the violin. Frank was a greengrocer through the week and was at church every Sunday playing the organ. But he was neither a happy man nor a believer, and during the sermon he made a point of going outside to smoke his pipe. What he really enjoyed was playing big, dramatic pieces like Bach's toccata and fugue in D minor, and being the rehearsal pianist for minor celebrities coming to sing at the theatre down by the sea at Scarborough where they lived. Charles was a farmer, a somewhat stern and driven individual, with a deep personal faith. Every night he used to kneel down to say his prayers at his bedside before he got into bed, and he had a framed saying up on the wall, "Help thou thy brother's boat across — and lo! — thine own has touched the shore." He liked playing hymns on his violin — two of his favourites were the beautiful Abide with me andLead, kindly light. The hymn Lead kindly light includes the lines: So long thy power hath blessed me, sure it still Will lead me on, O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, 'til The night is gone; And with the morn those angel faces smile, Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile. That's obviously a hope-filled reference to death and heaven, but that last line came into my mind this morning when a song I hadn't thought about for years came back into my mind. I was thinking about my children, and how I'd brought them up, the mistakes I'd made and the false trails I'd led them along, but also where I'd got it right and the positive ideas I'd worked to instil. As you know, I do my thinking in the bath, and at the time I was cleaning down the tub afterwards and getting my things together to return to my room. When I do this, I never put my nightclothes back on, but walk along to my room wearing nothing. Nobody else in my family has ever done this — parents, sister, children, partner; nobody. I started doing this, when my children were babies, not because I am an exhibitionist but because I want without discussion to communicate the idea that the human body with all its flaws is nothing to be ashamed of, it's just simple and okay. And I thought that was one small idea that I was glad to have taught my children. And then all unbidden came this song to my mind. It brought back vivid memories, because I came across it in my early teens and loved it and listened to it over and over again — on a vinyl disc that one of my generous and richer friends had lent me to play on the record player that another of my generous and richer friends had also lent me. Here it is with lyrics added — helpful because they are singing different things from each other in the second half and it can be hard to pick out the words. When I remembered that song, it also brought back, as if I was there again, the memory of walking through the village where I lived, the dark evergreens over the wall at the corner of the turning into Kettle Green Road, Mrs Haskell's shop and the general stores, the place we used to wait for the school bus and the home that hosted our youth group, the place where my early faith grew and changed and began like a little bean plant climbing up its pole. Teach your children well. A song I loved long since and lost awhile.
