Dear Friends,

 

Just before Easter, I went for a very brief time of retreat to a convent in Oxford – a serene and beautiful place where the nuns, who still dress in traditional habits with starched white wimples and veils, glide silently along austere corridors. There I witnessed the most rampant display of sexuality I have ever seen: in front of the main entrance to the convent, in a cloistered courtyard, was a rectangular pool, and it was full of heaving toads pushing one another aside in their urgent need to climb on top of the nearest female. In the water, as proof of all this activity, were yards of healthy looking toadspawn waiting to hatch. The accompanying grunts of ecstasy sounded like pneumatic drills. It was all very fascinating – although I must admit that the sisters seemed not at all perturbed by it.

 

This is that glorious time of year – my favourite – when nature goes into overdrive and bursts forth into new life in all directions. Trees are particularly wonderful now: vibrant clusters of lime green blossom, oozy sticky buds about to unfurl into new leaves, and clouds of white and pink blossom; it’s all very extravagant!

 

As we go into May, I always think of the Jesuit poet of Victorian times, Gerard Manley Hopkins, who wrote:

 

 ‘May is Mary’s month, and I

  muse at that and wonder why….

  Why fasten that upon her,

  with a feasting in her honour?

 

 Ask of her, the mighty mother:

 Her reply puts this other

 Question: What is Spring? –

 Growth in everything –

 

             Cluster of bugle blue eggs thin

             Forms and warms the life within;

             And bird and blossom swell

             In sod or sheath or shell.

 

             All things rising, all things sizing

             Mary sees, sympathising

             With that world of good,

             Nature’s motherhood.

 

The poem from which these verses are taken is called May Magnificat – recalling how Mary ‘magnified the Lord’ when she was told that she would bear the Son of God. Nature, too, in its fertility and growth, is a process of ‘magnifying’ – both growing and praising. Many flowers are named after Mary – lady’s mantle, lady’s smock, marigold, virgin’s fingers (foxglove) .… She reflected the generosity of God in her willingness to be part of his plan for the world, and the joyful words of her ‘Magnificat’ are a celebration of God’s goodness.

 

I guess we can all think of individuals who are more like inhabitants of the Kingdom of Narnia, in its winter chilliness, than human beings who turn to the light and warmth of their Creator so that they can flourish in the spring-time of new life.

 

            ‘Who would have thought my shrivelled heart

            Could have recovered greenness?’

 

wrote George Herbert in his lovely poem ‘The Flower’.

May the beauty and new life of this season re-invigorate our shrivelled hearts and make us want to shout out our own ‘Magnificat’ in response to the generosity of God.

As for the toads – well, maybe those grunts are their Magnificat!

 

With love,

Rosey