Under the weather?

Today saw probably the most concentrated snow we have experienced here in our time. The best part of 12 inches has landed, and almost everything has ground to the usual halt such weather induces in Southern England. I know we don’t carry the gear because it’s only this bad a few days a year, but we lost about 30 days last year to such snow, and you’d think if the total losses were grossed up over a few years, it would be worth someone’s while to kit up for days such as this.

Just for the record, another feature of this week has been me staggering around like Frankenstein’s monster with a wooden leg, thanks to an enterprising Indian critter unspecified that managed to infect a sac in my rght knee. Sad Sac is not over blessed with blood supply, so two batches of big chunky antibiotics have gone down the hatch — come next Wednesday we may have a result. It’s the only time in my life my knee has had a temperature without the rest of me having it, too. Insane or what?

Hunkering down in the snow?

Cloudy today, after yesterday’s great freeze, as we await fresh snow over the coming weekend:

Various people have been commenting on the closure of our schools — over 170 in Buckinghamshire. It’s fun for a day, but puts working families to considerable hardship, especially single parents.

I vividly remember a two mile trek to school through conditions like this in the days just before obsessive health & safety anxiety and the great car society. Someone was telling us that in the big freeze up of 1947 schools were assiduously kept open, because they were well heated with food supplies for all the children.

Perhaps we are experiencing extra inconvenience because of our dependence on the car — most teachers, like everyone else, live far further away from where they work than in the 60’s. We do have the Internet, but the freeze is forcing us to think local.

I am really impressed by the ways various Bucks churches were instantly opened and made available for overnight accommodation with people stuck in the last fall of snow. If we are in for an extended bout of such weather, it will become increasingly urgent for all of us to be looking out for neighbours who may be housebound, ill, short of fuel or basic supplies, or stuck for childcare — ask what you can do to help in Church in Sunday, if you can get there...

all pictues from Great Missenden yesterday, except for the picture from the Coventry Telegraph of Mrs Margaret Darmody (nee Pratt) of Leamington going to Coundon infants school in Coventry in 1947.

Life in the Freezer

Nordic weather hits our cold pocket of the Chiltern hills, sending daytime temperatures below zero, with a couple of inches of snow. Being Brits, with minimal gritting, all human life promptly grinds to a halt. Chicago it ain’t. One of the sights of Friday was a very large Mercedes trying to go down our road, but able only to go sideways — a wonderful demonstration of some obscure principle of physics that kicks in with snow, and the perils of rear wheel drive. With services on the blink, there’s always Schadenfreude for entertainment.



I believe the phenomenon is highly localised, but some say there is more on the way. Does this mean the first white Christmas around here in years? Could be. We've filled the house with teenagers, and hunkered down for a few days of Cold Comfort, abnd ordered in extra supplies of teenagers for the holidays...

Carpe Diem with e.e.cummings

This morning brought brilliant sunshine but, I suspect, a temperature barely above freezing. Globs of white remain on most high points, although some trickles of water have been running off higher surfaces around the Abbey. Sam, visiting from Australia, seizes the day, and produces a monastery snowman. Towards the end of Mass, a quiet holy moment was shattered by coalman’s gloop of snow clattering off the roof of the Church. Which way, I wonder is this thing going? Thaw, or a night freeze, followed by a fresh wave of snow? Only time will tell, but the sky is now a dirty grey, tinged with hues of mushroom and even pea soup. I doubt we’ve seen the last of this...

The six of us have thrown an extra element into our programme, taking a few hours to compare notes together on spiritual movement or lack of it, in the year. One experience emerging for all of us was that, different as we are, we are finding the way to God is not so much grand theory, but rather cutivating ways to be wholly present and attentive in the here and now, with its opportunities.

The truth is not some abstract thing out there, to describe, package or market, but rather something that reveals itself enigmatically around me when I hollow out space and make myself radically available to others. That’s when the Word speaks, including through Scripture, the whole world becomes Eucharistic, the angels sing, and suddenly, almost by surprise, I am praying.

So, grasping this morning’s bright sunshine, and the glory of the present moment, here’s a poem by e.e.cummings (one of the few with any capital letters):

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any — lifted from the no
of all nothing — human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

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.

Chiltern Hills Freak Early Snowfest

The first snowy October day in Great Missenden since 1935! Lucy and I were up at the crack of dawn to try and capture the weirdness of it all — autumn russets and deep brown, bright reds, some verdant green, and sparkling fresh snow.

All this, and half term, too. We arrived back home in to find a note from Catherine, Tim, Stewart, Nicholas, announcing they had gone off to goof about on sledges in the hills. The result seems to have been some vintage romping loonery, caught on Catherine’s phone:

The rats, sensibly, stayed snugly out of it. Some of us had to go to work — a good hour to get down to Eton College for an afternoon working through plans to invent the country’s first interfaith dialogue residential centre for young people; Worthwhile activity but fractionally less of a riot....