An overcast start to the day, but noticeably a few degrees warmer and less humid as the sun rises. The nearly full moon was high above the house, encircled by a halo when I looked outdoors before going to bed at midnight last night. With the curtains open, moonlight shone through the shutters as it headed for the horizon when I woke up several hours later. Enchanting moments with a sound track of distant barking dogs and night birds at the threshold of hearing against the silence of night.
Canon Lucy Winket spoke well on BBC Radio Four's 'Thought for the Day' at breakfast time, from a dutiful mention of Prime Minister Boris Johnson being in Intensive Care with everything being done to care for him now covid-19 has immobilized him, to Jesus being the one to whom cruel and vicious things are done to destroy his life.
These few days for me are all about facing up to that grim reality about what human beings can do to each other 'through ignorance, through weakness, through our own deliberate fault', as our prayer of general confession at the Eucharist admits. As Christians, the world's blame games should be nothing to do with us, although sadly they often are.
We can and should blame ourselves in relation to what's wrong in our lives, and acknowledge our contribution to the sorry state of a polluted, sick and damaged world, through choices we made as participating consumers. Only when we are this honest can we begin to help make amends properly. Our contribution to fighting the pandemic may be no more than obeying orders, staying in isolation, trying not to add to the colossal burden on global health services, but it gives us time and space to think deeply about where we go from here, and how.
On my afternoon walk yesterday I was surprised to see a small lizard, about two thirds of the length and a quarter of the bulk of the others, maybe a juvenile, dive off the concrete ledge of the raised flower bed on to the path a foot below, and scamper off. It was so light it seemed as if it was floating to the ground. As if this wasn't enough, this afternoon I saw two lizards locked in combat fall to the ground off a ledge twice the height, spinning as they fought and writhed, again almost floating through the air, but much too fast to get more than a glimpse of. I reckon I could wait there for weeks and not see such a spectacle again let alone photograph it.
After tonight's Zoom prayer group and Evening Office ensuite, I finished tomorrow's audio talk and emailed it to Dave for uploading. Then I walked up to the rubbish bin in the dark under the full moon with a kilo of vegetable peelings and skins in a bag. No organic waste collection here. Such a pity. It's the first time I have been there on foot in ten days. Time moves fast. Jayne messaged me to as what shopping I needed to see me through the Eastertide holiday week. Supermarkets are shut for several days after tomorrow, it seems. Not that there are any Semana Santa processions to close down for this year. But the workers certainly deserve some respite after a frantic few weeks.
When I returned I had an eccentric washing frenzy and ended up with a line full of clean underpants drying overnight. Then I spotted up on the wall above the line a brown gecko. My first sighting of one here and maybe seven years since I last saw one. An amazing gift under the Passover moon.
