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Hallowed Ground (1 Viewer)

halftwo

Wird Batcher
The church dark, church quiet wood
The sun striking through the stained glass
Of autumn leaves: the silent branches pews.
In dark recesses Redwings whisper
And the consonant tsks of Song Thrushes
Disapprove the profane intrusion.
High in the rafters, in a cobwebbed
Hallowed hollow a bark-patterned Treecreeper
Picks at a Treecreeper-patterned bark.

Back out into light: an icy sky,
Cirrus-scraped cathedral dome high over the hill,
Then a hunting head-down Kestrel puts to flight
The bunting flock from the stubble
And those finches from the hedges,
And from the field the eye catches
The flicker of wagtails
Rising and twisting their escape.
 
Hi Sue,

Yes, I always love the spiritual of nature - but not so much think of it as a holy place per se.

But walking through my local wood it really struck me how the very low sun coming in between the trees to light up the interior was very much like a church window. The colours are still spectacular - the last gasp of autumn.

H
 
Lovely stuff Halftwo. I also like the Church-in-Nature metaphor. Reminds me of a birding walk I had with the local rector (as Anglican vicars are called here), after a period of trying to become part of his congregation (during a period of trying to find some kind of meaning underlying this whole Existence lark). I apologised to him that it didn't work for me, that I felt closer to God, whatever it is, when in a wood or marsh listening to birds, rather than in his church or those of my youth, and he replied, “That's okay, E—-, God built cathedrals long before people ever thought of them'.
 
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