Letter to Monty

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21/10/12

Dear Monty,

Pillars, stones and mountains.

There is an anchor that keeps the soul steadfast and sure as the billows roll,
fastened to the rock which cannot move, grounded firm and deep in the saviours love.

So much about the thing I believe the most in life is being tested and shaken, this is a good thing. Walls crumble, grand statuary topples and falls, not one stone will be left on another...'all that we treasured lies in ruins'

Plas Brodanw is haunting me at the moment. I tried to sketch the house, to capture something of the strength of it, and of the mountains beyond. But I have yet to get hold of it.






Someone said to me this week that we have to make plans, otherwise there would be nothing to live for. This is a statement that I agree with. This is what drives most of us (if not all of us if we are honest) into the unknown days ahead.


There are few certainties in life. Perhaps we avoid the emptiness by filling our days with plans.
Perhaps Brodanw was CWE's way of carving out a sanctuary, a place which would last in an impermanent ever changing natural world. We just have to do these things.

Anyone who makes a garden is doing something fundamentally good for their own soul. It means they are creating a space for themselves in which to breathe. Planning, having a vision or a spark of an idea is what drives us forward into the next day or week, and is in stark contrast to our workplaces which are now so over regulated that there is no room for freedom of expression.

Peace can be found in sunlight, in shadows cast on a wall, in the light back lighting autumn leaves. We are so rich.




Paul.

Comments

  1. Gardener in the Distance25 October 2012 at 13:53

    You're good and brave, Paul, when the world and the habits of humankind fluctuate so much.
    For me, too, there's a continuity in gardening, or in a 'native' contact with the earth, that outlives the dictates of fashionable thinking.
    The small conquers the giant. The last will be first.
    The garden, at Plas Brodanw, or anywhere else waves a flag, as all true culture does, however much the outside world attempts to deconstruct it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Paul Steer28 October 2012 at 14:07

      Thank you, those are wise words...but I neither feel good or brave ! I too fluctuate. But there is an anchor in me that does not, I suppose that is the anchor that I see reflected in the natural world. Thank you again.

      Delete

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