Passiontide insight

Another blue sky sunny day, warming up to 15C in the afternoon. The air is refreshingly clear and I think a little less polluted these days as the number of electric cars and buses increases. We went to the Eucharist at St Catherine's with about fifty others, including seven lively noisy young children at the end. Fr Sion spoke about the anointing of Jesus with nard by Mary of Bethany in the week before his crucifixion saying that its scent persisted for days, something I didn't know. That simple thought fired my imagination about it persisting alongside the stench of death at the site of the crucifixion, a reminder of human devotion and love for Jesus in his darkest hour. When I got home I wrote a pair of haiku around this story before lunch.

An act of loving / generosity means more / than its cash value
Nard perfumes the air / where blood sweat and fear persist / on Calvary's hill
(John 12.5)

I took my Olympus OMD-M1 with me on my afternoon walk in Thompson's Park and Llandaff Fields, I haven't used it since before Christmas, as I wanted to master handling the PEN-EPL8 with no viewfinder. The older camera has a viewfinder and is a pleasure to use. I took with me the 40-150 lens I bought a long time ago and haven't used much. It has limitations in its field of view, compared to my other telephoto lens but produces lovely sharp pictures once you take that into account. I got some nice shots of a mistle thrush on the ground, and a few others not so good, of a great tit singing high above me in a pine tree. In the last few days while the two crab apple trees' leaves were emerging, tiny buds swelled up and went pink in colour. A single bud has burst into a white flower. These trees will add to the spectacular blossom display we enjoy in open spaces close to home. How lucky we are!

After supper I read some more of the Marquez novel I'm going through again paying attention to the detail this time. His style seems to me condensed and rich in vocabulary, conversing as narrator with characters he observes and portrays with anecdotal asides, as well as their own words, creating an intimacy with his as the story telling maestro. It's the only book of his that I've read, but am not surprised that he won the Nobel Prize for literature. Now I'm feeling tired, so early to bed.