Friday 14 August 2020

Creationtide 2020

 


Every year at St John’s Church, Princes Street, Edinburgh we celebrate Creationtide, from the 1st of September till Harvest Festival. This is usually about the same time as the Feast of St Francis. Our theme this year is Nature and Wellbeing. To go with this we have selected a number of short quotations on that theme. You will notice that we have taken only one quotation from each author; even William Wordsworth and St Francis himself. We hope that these, with the accompanying photos, may help you to reflect thankfully and beneficially upon the wonder of nature. Some of the extracts are intended to provoke thought.

September 1

Saint Matthew, Gospel, Chapter 6 verses 28 and 29: Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They toil not, neither do they spin. And yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.


 

September 2

John Ruskin, Letters to the Workmen and Labourers of Great Britain:  Your garden is to enable you to obtain such knowledge as you may best use in the country in which you live by communicating it to others; and teaching them to take pleasure in the green herb, given for meat, and the coloured flower given for joy.

 


September 3

Konrad Lorenz, King Solomon’s Ring: The whole charm of childhood still lingers, for me, in such a fishing-net… With such an instrument, I caught, at the age of nine, the first Daphnia for my fishes, thereby discovering the wonder-world of the freshwater pond which immediately drew me under its spell. In the train of the fishing-net came the magnifying glass; after this again a modest little microscope, and therewith my fate was sealed; for he who has once seen the intimate beauty of nature cannot tear himself away again. He must become either a poet or a naturalist.

 


September 4

Roger Deakin, Wildwood: A Journey through trees: I live beneath the protective boughs of a sheltering ash. The tree springs up as a single trunk of nine-foot girth for five feet and then divides into three, each of its branched trunks four feet in girth arching high above me. I love its natural flamboyance and energy, and the swooping habit of its branches; the way they plunge towards the earth, then upturn, tracing the trajectory of a diver entering the water and surfacing.

 


September 5

Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory: Arguably both kinds of Arcadia, the idyllic as well as the wild, are landscapes of the urban imagination…The quarrel even persists at the heart of debates within the environmental movement, between the deeper and paler shades of Greens… You would never know it from the languid nymphs and shepherds that populate the pastoral landscapes of the Renaissance, but the mark of the original Arcadians was their bestiality. Their presiding divinity, Pan, copulated with goats and betrayed his own animal nature in his woolly thighs and cloven feet.

 


 September 6

Gerard Manley Hopkins, Spring

                                Nothing is so beautiful as Spring –

                                   When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;

                                   Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush

                                Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring

                                The ear it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;

                                   The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush

                                   The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush

                                With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.

                                What is all this juice and all this joy?

                                   A strain of earth’s sweet being in the beginning

                                In Eden garden.

 


September 7

Oliver Rackham, The History of the Countryside: Gamekeepers kept alive (as they still do) many otherwise disused woods that might have been grubbed out; they also kept up the coppicing. But they took it upon themselves to persecute beasts and birds of prey and to exclude the public from the woods. This need not have been so. France, Germany, and Switzerland are equally good shooting countries, and yet ancient woods are everyone’s heritage; in Britain alone we have lost that birthright, and with it our knowledge and love of woods.

 


September 8

Dorothy Wordsworth, Journal November 8th 1802: A beautiful day. William got to work again at Ariosto, and so continued all the morning, though the day was so delightful that it made my very heart linger to be out of doors, and see and feel the beauty of the autumn in freedom.

 


September 9

Keith Thomas, Man and the Natural World: Changing attitudes in England 1500-1800: The modern idea of the balance of nature thus had a theological basis before it gained a scientific one. It was belief in the perfection of God’s design which preceded and underpinned the concept of the ecological chain, any link of which it would be dangerous to remove.

 

 

September 10

Geoffrey Winthrop Young, A Hill:

                                Climb but a little hill: you too may find

                                The clouds ebb surely from your clearer mind.

 


September 11

Sir Walter Scott, The Heart of Midlothian: They landed in this Highland Arcadia, at the mouth of a small stream which watered the delightful and peaceable valley… Far to the right were seen the dusky and more gigantic mountains of Argyleshire, with a seaward view of the shattered and thunder-splitten peaks of Arran. But to Jeanie, whose taste for the picturesque, if she had any by nature, had never been awakened or cultivated, the sight of the faithful old May Hettley, as she opened the door to receive them, was worth the whole varied landscape.



 


September 12

Richard Hamblyn, The Cloud Book: As will have been apparent during the course of this book, clouds often play a valuable role in indicating short-range weather conditions, but when it comes to predicting longer-term climate changes, they are entirely unknown quantities.

 


September 13

Homer, The Odyssey (Calypso’s Isle):

                                Four springs in a row, bubbling clear and cold,

                                Running side-by-side, took channels left and right.

                                Soft meadows spreading round were starred with violets,

                                Lush with beds of parsley. Why even a deathless god

                                Who came upon their place would gaze in wonder.

 


September 14

Leonardo da Vinci, The Artist’s course of study: Nature is so delightful and abundant in its variations that among trees of the same kind there would not be found one which nearly resembles another, and not only the plants as a whole, but among their branches, leaves and fruit, will not be found one which is precisely like another.

 

 

 

September 15

George Basterfield, The Harebells of Mosedale:

                                Twenty desolate harebells

                                  Playing a modest part,

                                Chime a tender sweetness

                                  Down in a climber’s heart.

 


September 16

David Blackbourn, The Conquest of Nature: Water, Landscape and the Making of Modern Germany: The brave new world of dykes, ditches, windmills, fields and meadows, a landscape of “wealth and almost Dutch cleanliness”, delivered many undeniable benefits [to Oderbruch]...It is harder today to summon up unqualified enthusiasm, which passes over the costs of that conquest… The inhabitants, no more than 170 families in the Bruch proper, were amphibious. They lived primarily as fishermen… For much of the year, except during low water and winter ice, their only means of communication through the labyrinthine waterways was by flat-bottomed boat. This way of life was destroyed.

 


September 17

William Dunbar, Of the Nativitie of Christ:

                                Sing, hevin imperial, most of hicht,

                                Regions of air, make armony!

                                All fish in flude, and fowl of flicht,

                                Be mirthful and make melody!

                                All, Gloria in excelsis cry –

                                Hevin, eard, sea, man, bird and best –

                                He that is crownit abone the sky

                                Pro nobis puer natus est.

                               

 

 

September 18

John Lewis-Stempel, The private life of an English field – Meadowland: My daughter’s school carol service, in Hereford Cathedral… Later that night, I go down to the field, and stand there in the vertiginous dark, with the lights of the stars above me. The mountains make for high walls, the stars for candles. There is no difference between the cathedral and the field.

 


September 19

Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales:

                                Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote

                                The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,

                                And bathed every veyne in swich licour

                                Of which vertu engendred is the flour;

                                Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeeth

                                Inspred hath in every holt and heeth

                                The tender croppes, and the yonge sonne

                                Hath in the Ram his halve cours yronne,

                                And small foweles maken melodye,

                                Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages.

 


September 20

Thomas Traherne, The First Century, number 28: Your Enjoyment of the World is never right, till evry Morning you awake in Heaven: see your self in your father’s Palace: and look upon the Skies and the Earth and the Air, as Celestial Joys.

 


September 21

George Orwell, Some thoughts on the Common Toad: I think that by retaining one’s childhood love of such things as trees, fishes, butterflies and toads, one makes a decent future a little more probable…At any rate, spring is here, even in London N.1., and they can’t stop you enjoying it…How many times have I watched toads mating, or a pair of hares having a boxing match in the young corn, and thought of all the important persons who would stop me enjoying this if they could. But luckily they can’t.

 


September 22

Alfred Wainwright, The Northern Fells: Book Five is dedicated to those who travel alone, the solitary wanderers on the fells, who find contentment in the companionship of the mountains and of the creatures of the mountains.

 


September 23

Christopher North, The Angler’s Tent:

                                The mountains ring: Oh! what a joy is there!

                                As hurries o’er their heights in circling dance,

                                Cave-loving Echo, Daughter of the Air.

 

 

 

September 24

Gilbert White, The Natural History of Selborne: Echo has always been so amusing to the imagination, that the poets have personified her; and in their hands she has been the occasion of many a beautiful fiction. Nor need the gravest man be ashamed to appear taken with such a phenomenon, since it may become the subject of philosophical or mathematical enquiries.

 


September 25

John Buchan, Memory Hold-the-door: Wood, sea and hill were the intimacies of my childhood, and they have never lost their spell for me. But the spell of each was different. The woods and beaches were always foreign paces, in which I was at best a sojourner. But the Border hills were my own possession, a countryside in which my roots went deep…This attachment to a corner of earth induced a love of nature in general.

 


September 26

William Blake, Laughing Song:

                                When  the green woods laugh with the voice of joy

                                And the dimpling stream runs laughing by,

                                When the air does laugh with our merry wit,

                                 And the green hill laughs with the noise of it.

 


September 27

Beatrix Potter, The Fairy Caravan: Tuppenny ran and ran, splashing through the puddles with little bare feet… Tuppenny felt like a new guinea-pig. For the first time he smelt the air of the hills. What matter if the wind were chilly; it blew from the mountains… The short-cropped turf would soon be gay with wild flowers; even in early April it was sweet. Tuppenny felt as though he could run for miles.

 

 

 September 28

G.M. Trevelyan, Preservation of the Scenery: The happiness and the soul’s health of the whole people are at stake. The preservation of natural beauty as an element in our nation’s life is a cause that deeply concerns people of every sort who are working to maintain any ideal standards and any healthy life… If natural beauty disappears, religion, education, national tradition, social reform, literature and art, will all be deprived of a principal source of life and vigour.

 


September 29

Daniel Defoe, The Borders of Lancashire and Westmoreland: Here we entered Westmoreland, a country eminent only for being the wildest, most barren and frightful of any that I have passed over in England, or even in Wales it self; the west side, which borders on Cumberland, is indeed bounded by a chain of almost unpassable mountains, which in language of the country are called Fells.

 


September 30

Anon, Robin Hood and the Monk

                                In somer, when the shawes be sheyne,

                                And leves be large and long,

                                Hit is full mery in feyre foreste

                                To here the foulys song.

 


October 1

Arthur Ransome, The Picts and the Martyrs: Dick became interested from another point of view. “Like natural history,” he said. “There’s no good in hating wasps because they sting. What matters is to understand how they do it. It works both ways. When you understand you don’t mind so much, even if it’s you who gets stung. Like that mosquito. I forgot how beastly he was when I was watching him and saw him uncurl his proboscis and shove it in and start sucking blood up out of the back of my hand… Of course it was scratchy afterwards just the same.”

 


October 2

Isaac Walton, The Compleat Angler: My honest scholar, all this is told to incline you to thankfulness; and to incline you the more, let me tell you, and though the prophet David was guilty of murder and adultery, and many other of the most deadly sins, yet he was said to be a man after God’s own heart because he abounded more with thankfulness than any other that is mentioned in Holy Scripture… Let us not forget to praise him for the innocent mirth and pleasure we have met with since we met together. What would a blind man give to see the pleasant rivers, and meadows, and flowers that we have met with since we met together?

 


October 3

William Wordsworth, Ode – Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood

                                Thanks to the human heart by which we live,

                                Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,

                                To me the meanest flower that blows can give

                                Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

 

 


October 4

Saint Francis, Cantico delle creature

                                Laudato si’, mi Signore, per sora nostra matre terra,

                                La quale ne sustena et governa

                                Et produce diversi fructi con coloriti fiori et herba.

[Be praised , Lord, for sister our mother earth, who maintains and governs us and puts forth different fruits with coloured flowers and grass.]



Wednesday 12 August 2020

History Pieces Free on Kindle 13th August to 9th September

 

My various Kindle pieces will be free on the following days. Usually I will post the link on the day; some days I will not be at home to do this, but it should be easy enough to find the piece if you wish to.

 

August

13     Scotland and the Causes of the First World War

14     The Protestant Reformation briefly explained

15     Why did the Allies win the Second World War?

16     The Jacobites

17     The Congress of Vienna Reassessed

18     The Cold War

19     The Curse of Donald Bane

20     The “Glorious” Whig Revolution: 1670-1720

21     Socialism and the Early Years of the British Labour Party

22     The Place-names of Scotland: A First Introduction

23     The Unification of Italy

24     Cockburn’s Edinburgh

25     The Great Liberal Reforms 1906-1914

26     James IV: Scotland’s Renaissance King

27     The Causes and the Course of the First World War

28     The Baker Street Irregulars

29     The Development of Democracy in Britain 1850-1918

30     An Introduction to the Scottish Enlightenment

31     Getting to Know Edinburgh

September

1     Three Wise Men

2     Bismarck and the Making of the German Empire

3     Bonnie Dundee and the First Jacobite Rebellion

4     Slavery and the Causes of the American Civil War

5     Hitler’s Rise to Power

6     An Introduction to the Renaissance

7     Votes for Women!

8     The Causes of the Second World War and Appeasement

9     The Russian Revolution of 1917