In England, in December

ON BANDOS ISLAND

by me

Palms laced with frangipan

hide coral strand

Coconuts carelessly 

crash onto sand

Hermit crabs shop for shell

by mango root

At night giant bats glide out

hunting for fruit.

I thought this might be a good poem - one from our travelling years - to cheer up a bleak December day in the UK.  Not that I mind bleak. I love all the seasons. 

We used to go to the Maldives every year with the Aramco Shoal.  They are paradise islands, or would be if "the original serpent" were not still in the garden - as he is worldwide. So at the moment nothing is perfect.  Or, as Janet Frame, said "Everything should be perfect. Why isn't it?" Answer: read the first chapters of Genesis.

But the Maldives are breathtakingly beautiful, and very green - also very hot and very humid, with the sound of the sea ever present.

I am not even sure if this a poem, or a verse.  There could have been a lot beneath it. I could have been writing about how even in such a paradise-like place, we are still living in the tragedy of the loss of Eden. I could have been writing about the weight of tourism on the islands (as I did in "Waiting for Gordo").  But I didn't.  If there is anything beneath the poem/verse it is simply how heat and humidity can stop you thinking at all. You just observe, without drawing conclusions.

Saturday was shopping in the morning. We saw the Big Issue girl, and bought one. I managed a letter to a couple of Uni friends - while I don't send Christmas cards, we still get them, and I try to reply to each one - and we had a rare (these days) Saturday night outing, to a chili evening, which was great fun once we got there. We relied on our Satnav but what with being a bit puzzled by the new estates, our elderly eyes, and the dark and the rain, we managed to do a tour of every street in the district before we arrived at the one we wanted.

However, we made it back home, replete with excellent chili and good company, with just the one wrong turn en route.

Old age is difficult. It is a good thing you don't realise that when you are young or it could blight your whole life. The main thing though is to be grateful for every day and try to enjoy it - which on the whole I do.  I still love not having to rush off to work in the mornings, even though I have been retired for many years.

And I still appreciate not having to go to school - shudder.  Yet I now hope for an eternity of learning - learning wonderful things, in a loving environment, in paradise, in fact, when "the sadness that belongs to the world" is a thing of the past - when the Maldive islands will be even more lovely than they are now!

And talking of the sadness that belongs to the world, the tragedies in the News remind us daily that we are still living in the world of Paradise Lost.  There is a harrowing article in the online Guardian today about what is happening in Palestine.  It is a nightmare, especially for the children, the old and the sick. A nightmare.  And I do not forget that some of those taken hostage in the brutal attack that set all this off are still not found - and they are likely going through a continuing nightmare too.

How horribly successful "the world" is at setting brother against brother. 

I hope and pray that more and more of us - the damaged children of disobedient Adam - will seek for our loving Creator, the God of Abraham. He will care for us now, and for all eternity, if we will only come to Him. And he is already teaching millions of us - from "every tribe and tongue and nation" to live in peace as the brothers and sisters we truly are.

In such a hate-filled world, isn't that a miracle?