Hear our Silence workshop at Ammerdown, Bath:
Saturday February 10.
Hear our Silence weekend - Journey into Silence
Abbey House, Glastonbury: July 27-29
Journeying with Julian of Norwich
Ammerdown. October 13
For details and booking contact John Skinner:
1 Purzbrook House
Musbury Road
Axminster EX13 5JG
tel. 01297 631313
We spent last Friday at Glastonbury. At Abbey House, overlooking the ruins of what is claimed to be the earliest Christian church in England. The myths and stories interlace: is Arthur buried here? is Patrick of Ireland also resting alongside?
But we were not here for questions. We had come to find silence.
Our day began with half an hour silence. We sat in our circle, ten strangers all with the same mind. We explored that silence within and, when it had finished, we began to share with one another what that had meant to us.
Of an instant, the humdrum exchanges of daily communication had been set aside. We were asking, telling and listening - about what we all really cared for.
We have given over fifty such days all around the country. This was one of the most memorable, for its setting, yes, but for the people who came to the silence and to share.
See Events for our 2007 Diary.
Julia will be thrilled to learn that her words of protesting wisdom have been duly recorded this week in our local Axminster rag - Pulman’s Weekly.
If anyone spoke more eloquently than my grand-daughter on mankind’s wanton thoughtlessness, it must be Gerard Manley Hopkins.
Binsey Poplars
felled 1879
My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,
Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,
All felled, felled, are all felled;
Of a fresh and following folded rank
Not spared, not one
That dandled a sandalled
Shadow that swam or sank
On meadow and river and wind-wandering weed-winding bank.
O if we but knew what we do
When we delve or hew -
Hack and rack the growing green!
Since country is so tender
To touch, her being so slender,
That, like this sleek and seeing ball
But a prick will make no eye at all,
Where we hew or delve:
After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.
Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve
Strokes of havoc unselve
The sweet especial scene,
Rural scene, a rural scene,
Sweet especial rural scene.
(Footnote: if you wander across Christ Church meadows today and stroll as far as Binsey, you may look across the river and see a fine row of poplars. Hopkins’ lament did not fall upon deaf ears: all damage is redeemable.)
Hi. My name is Julia Skinner-Grant and I’m going to tell you why we need to protect our precious earth.
We should take better care of OUR planet - Earth.
So don’t litter.
Littering is bad for animals and it is bad for the earth -
it’s polluting the earth and makes the animals sick.
Driving cars is bad for the environment so drive fewer cars.
Bike or walk places - don’t drive there.
But be careful so that you won’t get injured or else you will have to be in a car or a bus.
Have fewer wars because wars get smoke everywhere and pollute the air we breathe.
When the air is polluted people and animals get sick. We don’t want that to happen.
Plant more trees. Trees help to clean the Earth for us to live and make it prettier.
It’s living - the whole land is living.
Be grateful - earth is the only planet that we have.
We should make every day earth day.
Julia spoke these words in her synagogue last week. The Rabbi wondered whether he should retire!
My grand-daughter Julia is just six and she lives in Washington with her little sister Ceci. They are both aware of the danger their Earth is in: what better plea to us all than ‘the whole land is living’.
Who will listen?
October 5 is my father’s birthday. I still honour him on his day, though he died on July 11, 1970 - 105 years since his birth.
He was youngest of seven children. Born to working class parents, his father a shop-keeper, his greatest regret was being forced to leave school for work at the age of 14.
My mother met him at Lyons Corner house opposite Charing Cross station. They both worked there: she a Nippy (waitress with white starched headgear), he the doorman, top hat, full length green coat and white gloves to welcome the clientele.
They were both 22 when they married.
Soon Dad moved to Smithfield to work at J T Hart Jnr, a sandwich and cooked meat shop whose business was to feed the porters of the adjacent wholesale meat market and anyone else who wanted quality food at a fair price. Sawdust on the floor, but a good meal quaranteed.
He kept his hand to the plough for thirty years, becoming manager and eventually buying the business which he ran all through the war years.
If there is one aspect of my father’s character that signalled him from others it was his generosity. Due to his unstinting hard work and his acumen as investor on the post-war London stock market, he became a wealthy man.
My mother would say: ‘I’ve asked him: how much are you worth? But he will never answer.’ Sufficient to provide for his wife and four children, buying each of us our first home.
Yet my father was generous to a whole host of other people whom he helped without fuss or even mention. During the war years of rationing, he would make regular trips to a Franciscan Friary near our home in Lewisham. Much later, I met one of the monks who remembered his generosity in stocking their meagre larder and keeping the community going during lean times.
He would say, if someone asks you for money, just give it to them. A loan is too complicated. He offered his brother-in-law £1000 in the Sixties to start up a plastics mould company. Ten years later, after he had died, the same sum was repaid to me to help my wife and I set up The Red House, our children’s bookshop in Thame.
What goes out, comes back.
Thank you, Bert, my Dad for giving me a sense of generosity.
I have tried to follow suit: but never quite made it into your league.
A Happy Birthday.