Tuesday 3 February 2009

Alton Abbey in the Snow

The community here carries on in its own unpretentious way, with hope of some potential vocations. The pub landlords know us as old friends. Having been a regular at Alton with the same group regularly for 28 years, I thought I’d pretty much taken all the obvious pictures.

Add a burst of Snow, and everything changes. I keep expecting to bump into Mr Tumnus:
Snow does change everything — The shapes you thought you knew well blown up, soft and puffy, morphed, but with their inner secret better hidden, carpeted in a particular still silence.

In his wonderful book Finding Sanctuary, Abbot Christopher Jamison quotes a haiku blinked out by Abigail Witchalls, a young Catholic mother who was stabbed as she was out walking with her child and is now paralysed:
Still silent body
But within my spirit sings
Dancing in love-light.

3 comments:

greg said...

Great pictures of a very special place, which evidently connects more people than one might think! I hope you found the community in good form, especially Dom Andrew, freshly Deaconed a few weeks ago. Thank you for maintaining this excellent blog, a constant reminder of an Anglicanism that sometimes seems lost in disputes. Very best wishes from a regular, if quiet, reader; off to find this book now...

Mike Peatman said...

I see what you mean about Mr Tumnus. The North West has little snow and loses it almost immediately. At least we can still see it on the South Lakeland hills.

Lapinbizarre said...

Very moving haiku.

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