BLEND BLOG no.2 Through all the changes, we walk into spring

For nearly a year, some of us at the Living Well community have been able to gather around the piano on Friday afternoons, as a distant part of the Friday lunchtime queue. We wait for food, for music and spoken word and good conversation. In recent weeks we have noticed some signs of spring: slow, small sparks of optimism, accompanied by appearing daffodils ; there’s even the odd hyacinth. 

Spring kicks in, as we leave a traumatic year behind us. What in our world will go back to what used to be normal? What will be changed? Will we almost look at a new world?

As we face a more hopeful future of spring, we deal with traumatic losses. Changed and forever marked - on our own and as a community - we also re-enter a world facing its own climate change. Coming out of this year, we might have to rework some of our relationships with friends and family, as well as the relationship with the natural world around us. Both areas need our attention. 

How are we coping with what we leave behind and are we marked as we move into what is next? How will we (still) engage with a world, which is crying out for our care and consideration?

The two poems below were written by two writers in our Blend Community. One poem carries the theme of leaving loss and ‘an old world’ behind.  The other brings our relationship with the world and its climate change to our attention. 

Somehow they remind me of a Psalm about change and decay around us. The Psalm speaks of a God who doesn't change, but who is neither absent from his creation, subject to change: ‘Long ago you laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you endure; they will all wear like a garment. You change them like clothing’ ….

Change and decay can be hard. Personally, without putting questions and worries aside, and being aware that all change is far beyond my grasp, I try to keep putting my trust in the One Unchanging: Beginning and End beyond the horizons of my limited understanding.  

May you be moved by our two poets below.

And may spring unfold to us promises of what is new,

Kerst 

RON

What do you Remember

You were always there he said

Not now

It just seemed so

You do not need to be there - to be there

The Furrow and Seed

The River and Flow

The Barn and Corn

The Shire and Stable

The weft and weave of Country Life

They were You

Lifting your pickle spiked with hay

Leaning with easy grace between Earth and Sky

In those Early Days

Not Now

Your Death has shaken the soil off my country boots

Closed the five barred Gate to my Country Past

Animal Farm

peck peck peck each other through the cage

listen to the sound a mammal outrage 

wonder why you're all not well 

poor creatures in a living hell

to make them more tasty fill them with drugs

it’s not their fault we’re the mugs

we changed our habits 

turned more savage 

poor creatures on the rant and ravage 

we’ve got spots while they are pure perfection

we are naked in the opposite direction 

one day too long you will find out the meaning 

species to species it’s not their demeaning 

so tighten your belt careless talk costs life

look to the creatures they know how to survive 

leave them alone and eat less is more 

and we can bring the ship to the shore 

so shove off to the high seas

we don't want your help 

after all we eat grass we are one and the self

so now is the time of truth and some wine 

eat less, love more and don't watch the time