backyard[/caption]Some days are special gifts but it takes something else, some extra gift to be able to share them. When I say days, I mean moments within days. And when I say special, I refer to some magic visible only to the inner eye. A day is a torrent of moments which pass us by, whether we attend to them or not. Then they vanish into a hole like a stream into a culvert; they join the great ocean of the Past, now immutable forever. If you think about Time too much it gives you a kind of vertigo. We call some moments Heaven, others Hell. I appeal not to your reason but your immediate experience, the thing in you which can be bored or astonished, according to mood. Richard Dawkins has brought out a new book, The Magic of Reality , mainly aimed at children. I turned over a few of its pages in the bookshop. One of his chapters is “What is the Sun?” He retells some of the ancient myths, then answers the question in his own scientific terms. He is confident that the reader will agre...

Originally posted on Wayfarer's Notes on November 1st 2014 seen just before I turned right for the road to Wooburn Green moot, adj.: Originally in Law, of a case, issue, etc.: proposed for discussion at a moot. Later also gen.: open to argument, debatable; uncertain, doubtful; unable to be firmly resolved. (OED) It’s a long time since I went wayfaring, so long that I became a malade imaginaire and my soul went into hibernation. The vicious circle had to be broken, and this is the log of what happened. To get out of town the sooner, I drove to Loudwater, then walked to Wooburn Green & back. Yet again, my musings circled round the phoney separation of sacred and profane, or to put it crudely, the mutual incomprehension of “believers” & “sceptics”. I took the voice-recorder along, to try & capture the moment. Some of what follows is nearly verbatim, some has been expanded later. ===*=== Perhaps they [believers in the sacred] have been right all along, in one way, and...

My life is a series of blessings, like a string of pearls. If a blessing is possible, surely it is bestowed, distributed, not hoarded by a miserly God. And if blessings occur, why should they ever stop? For a blessing by its definition is a supernatural thing. No obstacle stands in its way. So I take it as given that blessings rain down continuously, ready for me to catch in pan or barrel. The greatest blessing is to know I am blest. For otherwise a blessing might seem a curse, just as electricity might be a curse to someone who doesn’t know what to do with this powerful cable, that can deliver such fatal magic. I had only intended a short stroll but it turned out as a two-hour round trip. Three years ago I did a pastel of St Lawrence’s Church and the Dashwood Mausoleum. Yesterday I passed the spot where I drew it, and walked the landscape depicted therein. What a privilege, what a blessing to walk in the landscape of a painting! For I saw it in my mind’s eye as I traversed the path...