Dear Friends,

 

This is a gloomy time of year, when many people find life a struggle, and I wonder why it is that human beings don’t follow their natural instincts, and the example of the animal kingdom, and simply hibernate for a month. Wouldn’t that be a good idea? A sort of ‘winter holiday’, to build up our reserves of energy, and emerge vibrantly re-charged for the Spring. One year I swear I’ll do it!

 

There are, however, signs of hope in the gloom – have you noticed that unremarkable flower, the winter heliotrope, which grows by many roadsides (a sort of shaggy, dusty-mauve in appearance), the only wild flower in bloom at this time of year. It has the most wonderful musky sweet fragrance, which cheers me up on these dark days.

 

Then there is the song of the thrush. Despite many local cats, including our own aged ginger moggy, we have been blessed this winter by the presence of a sweet-voiced thrush in our garden. Its heavenly song reminds me of that memorable poem by Thomas Hardy, The Darkling Thrush. I don’t usually quote an entire poem, but this deserves to be an exception, I think:

 

            I leant upon a coppice gate

            When frost was spectre-grey;

            When winter’s dregs made desolate

            The weakening eye of day,

            The tangled bine-stems scored the sky

            Like strings of broken lyres,

            And all mankind that haunted nigh

            Had sought their household fires.

 

            The land’s sharp features seemed to be

            The century’s corpse outlent,

            His crypt the cloudy canopy,

            The wind his death-lament.

            The ancient pulse of germ and birth

            Was shrunken, hard and dry,

            And every spirit upon earth

            Seemed fervourless as I.

 

            At once a voice arose among

            The bleak twigs overhead,

            In a full-throated evensong

            Of joy unlimited;

            An aged thrush, frail, gaunt and small,

            In blast-beruffled plume,

            Had chosen thus to fling his soul

            Upon the growing gloom.

 

            So little cause for carollings

            Of such ecstatic sound

            Was written on terrestrial things

            Afar or nigh around

            That I could think there trembled through

            His happy good-night air

            Some blessed hope, whereof he knew,

            And I was unaware.

 

I love this poem, so much so that I chose it as one of the readings at the memorial service for my first husband David, who died 10 years ago this February; we had enjoyed  many muddy winter walks in Dorset, so Hardy seemed especially appropriate. But I love it most because it reminds us of the need to go on hoping, even when times are so grim that any thought of hope is pushed to the back of our minds. Thank God for the thrush, who keeps on singing that song of hope, even when human hearts are full of despair.

 

In the Church’s year, February begins with Candlemas (the Feast of the Presentation), when we remember how that faithful old pair, Simeon and Anna, had refused to give up hope that one day they would finally see God’s promised Messiah, who would bring light to a dark and weary world. It is a great celebration of the quiet strength of the elderly, who persevere in their faith, even through years of desolation – just like the ‘aged thrush, frail, gaunt and small’: good for them! May their hope be rewarded, just as hope was rewarded for Simeon and Anna when, in the Temple at Jerusalem, where they faithfully worshipped each day, they at last caught a glimpse of the holy child who had come to bring light into the world’s darkness.

 

So the days gradually get longer, and the light will eventually break through.

Maybe our job, as those who believe in ‘that blessed hope’, of which so many are completely unaware, is to be, as it were, the song-thrushes, who, by our attitude, our demeanour, the things we say, the way we live, will help to keep hope alive for others, even in the dark times.

 

But don’t sing too loudly, yet  – I’m off to bed to catch up with a bit more hibernation !

 

With love,

Rosey