Newsletter - 12 February 2023
THE FLOWERS OF SPRING
Last weekend I saw a single daffodil in bloom, the first of the season.
Coming from a country where winters are long and cold, the first flower of spring is always a special delight. But to see a daffodil at the beginning of February is beyond the wildest expectations of a Canadian.
Typically, where I come from, that would happen sometime in May.
Daffodils have held a special fascination for me ever since being introduced to William Wordsworth’s well-known poem as a school-boy:
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze…
Ten thousand I saw at a glance,
Tossing their head in sprightly dance.
The sight of such a field of dancing daffodils goes well beyond the scope of my climate-conditioned imagination. Yet, that is exactly what Nancy and I unexpectedly stumbled upon here in London. It was two years ago, in late February, shortly after we arrived in the UK during Covid lockdown. A grim time to arrive in our new home, but the daffodils in Green Park immediately lifted our drooping spirits and remain with us as a memory of special joy and wonder. Wordsworth wrote, far more eloquently, of a similar experience:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
Winter, as we so often lament, weighs heavily upon our souls. So let us take special delight in the first flowers of a spring that is now close at hand. For now, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come. (Song of Songs 2:11-12)
Deacon Ted Wood. cnn
Focus of the Week
NET FOR GOD DVD
Tuesday 14 February - 8 PM
These two words in Kirundi, the language of Burundi, mean "the melodies of peace". This film places us at the heart of the issues of peace and reconciliation in the Great Lakes region of Africa. It also takes us back to the origins of Net for God.