Today I have discovered what hashtag means as in #trinitysunday or #thiswouldhavebeenmydad’s104thbirthday. I hope that this will not be the sum of my learning over these last few months but this is #soporificsunday. After a delightful Zoom service this morning we set out for a walk and the ominous clouds circled us as the humidity rose. A heavy haze seeped down towards the Derwent and still the clouds threatened, retreated, thinned and thickened. Then, as the sun came out fiercely Anette invited us into her garden and fed us home-made ginger ice-cream so rich and flavoursome that I would happily have submerged in it. Returning home suddenly all sorts of gardening jobs presented themselves after the recent warmth and rain. Triffid-like weeds had sprung up, the hedges had suddenly become scraggy and unkempt, a bit like our hair. But this is Soporific Sunday. It’s difficult demarcating one day from another, but an advantage of the Sabbath is that it provides a moral justification for not doing anything – when you don’t feel like doing anything.
I would imagine that the Pharisees who hounded Jesus for his Sabbath behaviour would have regarded my Duolingo German lessons as equally to be condemned. However they are the perfect antidote for Soporific Sunday. They don’t involve more than a slight agitation of a finger and leave you with the impression that you have achieved something worthy. So for a few minutes I worked through all the possible permutations of I/you/he/she/it/we/they drinks/eats water/milk/bread. Now, if a German sees me drinking milk I can tell them that I am drinking milk. However, the likelihood of my drinking milk is very remote as I have never drunk/drinked/drank/drinks milk. This is beginning to sound like an announcement from Boris. Anyway at this precise moment there is a grumbling noise from the heavens but I think it’s meteorological rather than theological.
I read the lesson for our Zoom service this morning and the passage was very apt for the finishing straight of my daily blogs now we are down to the last 9 days: “suffering produces perseverance, perseverance character; and character, hope” a passage that always reminds me for some irreverent reason of the words from the song:
“The foot bones connected to the heel bone
The heel bones connected to the ankle bone The ankle bones connected to the leg bone The leg bones connected to the knee bone”.
At some point I will have to consider if this promise has actually worked out for me. Not perseverance. I didn’t sustain the undertaking to do pilates regularly for more than two weeks, and without the perseverance I can’t go on to character. So I must settle for being characterless. It all seems to work rather like Duolingo. I need to complete one module before I can progress to the next. Deirdre is doing her Spanish Duolingo in the next room, and every moment I hear this glorious trumpet blast announcing that she has achieved another level, a bit like that irritating noise when a Ryanair flight lands on time. I must ask St. Paul what does apathy produce. I have a horrible feeling I know.
Following these connections is a variant upon Tracking and Tracing. We’ve just learned that the relative of a deceased person discussing a funeral met with a clergyman who played golf with a friend of ours who is now self-isolating and has given up golf for the time being.
But connections don’t always work in straight and logical lines. My sub-conscious tends to free associate from actual experiences to lines of literature. I’m wondering if engineers’ minds free associate from a walk in the woods to a formula. So why do I keep thinking of Keats’s, “Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?” We have passed from spring to full summer and my early blogs were a bit song-like, encomiums about bird song and bluebells. Now the spring growth is flopping and seared looking and so am I because I feel a lot more jaded than I did then. I had hoped by now I would be effervescing away, keen to get out, do things and impose my character on the new normal. As I failed on perseverance, though, I don’t have any character to impose. Re-assuringly Rev.Ian this morning told us that we might be learning what to be rather than what to do. Now the thunder clouds have cohered around us and the rain is torrential and definitely not soporific.