Letter to Monty

Dear Monty,

Being stumpy and saying goodbye to Hostas.

Charles Hawes intimated that I am short and stumpy in his blog charleshawes.veddw.com  I guess he is right I am diminutive.

To quote the prophet - ' the holy seed will be a stump in the land' . There is something powerful in the ability of a tree to regrow from a stump, to become a tree again, a tree with more branches because it was cut down.

It is the same with the autumn garden, seeing the hostas going to sleep knowing they will return in spring with more spikes of new leaves.

My stumpy body adjusts to grandparenthood just as my daughter's adjusts to motherhood. My jowls droop, grey hairs sprout from strange places, my belly sags and my gluteal muscles shrink so that my trousers no longer stay up on their own (all very attractive as you can imagine).

Here is the truth - we age, we ache, we slip slowly toward the soil.

Someone said this week that the ailments that befall us - the accidents, the illness, the mental trauma - is due to a spiritual attack - I forcefully disagree. These things happen to us all, no matter what our belief or creed our status. It is part of the human condition and is as true in these days as it was in the past and always shall be in the realm of time.

I am bankrupt in the face of my frailty. Belief for me is not reliant on the need for miraculous escape from such things. I think faith is about just believing, despite the reality and cruelty of life.

A friend reminded me that it is just the now that we have. Faith is an eternal now - a today. I believe that this is what the prophet was talking about when he said ' If you do not stand firm in your faith - you will not stand at all.' We stand - that is all - we just stand. We see the moon and stars and cloud, we see the sun and suffer the rain 'but his place of rest shall be glorious'.

I see it all in the garden and in the beauty of our frailty.

Paul.

I will try and be less melancholy in any future letters.