I heard the expression, of a climber, "she descended down". "As opposed to descending UP!!!" I screamed wearily at the screen. Doesn't the excellent word "descend" tell you that only a downward movement is going on?
What next? "She descended down, downwards, towards the bottom of the hill, not towards its summit"? "She ascended up, upwards, towards the summit of the hill, not towards the bottom."?
All those words, where only four used to be needed: "She descended", "she ascended".
On Monday, I tackled the rhubarb Captain Moth-Butterfly brought back from the Greengrocer and made the crumble he was looking forward to. It turned out very well (though I says so as shouldn't), and I wish I could have had more than a spoonful of it. And after that headline grabbing piece of news...
The Scaffolders have not yet reappeared, but their construction looms at our kitchen window and is threatening lounge and dining room. Our block is undergoing extensive, but routine, maintenance.
The scaffolding arrived last week, and I had a shock as I wandered into the kitchen in my jim-jams and found a large scaffolder at the window. I scuttled hastily off. Captain M-B claims to have heard a terrible scream and a thud in the wake of my appearance. Maybe the poor scaffolding lad was dazzled by my gleaming new teeth?
We, the Captain and myself, watched the Chris Packham programme: The Walk that Made Me last night. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000xqgp
It was on while the Captain was away in Corfu, and I recorded it as I knew he would enjoy it. I loved seeing it again. Chris talks movingly about his Autism/Aspergers and how much he spent of his childhood alone - but alone with nature. And how it helped him. Being on the spectrum myself I identify very strongly, especially with the horror of schooldays.
He was talking about his dad who, while still alive when the programme was made, could no longer do this walk with his son, as they had done so many times before.
I wonder if it will cause Chris to think, as I did so many years ago, about how short our lives are now, how quickly they go. And to wonder if there is any meaning, any purpose to it all. But above all I hope it will make him start to search for the Creator of this amazing, beautiful, complex planet, as I did, all those years ago.
Because if you do seek for your Creator with all your heart, he will let you find him . Here is the assurance, given 2,000 years ago, and recorded and preserved for us down the centuries to help and reassure us now. It says, of Jehovah:
"And he made out of one man every nation of men to dwell on the entire surface of the earth,and he decreed the appointed times and the set limits of where men would dwell, so that they would seek God, if they might grope for him and really find him, although, in fact, he is not far off from each one of us." - Acts 17:26,27
Truly Jehovah does not hold himself far off. He reads every heart. He knows you and me better than we know ourselves. And his purpose for us has not changed. He wants us to live forever in the restored earthly paradise.
I thought of that prospect this morning as I hesitated over a magpie on the balcony, looking like it was after one of our moths. Should I scare it away and save the moth - or should I let it catch a moth to feed its hungry young?
While I was pondering this ethical dilemma the magpie made up its own mind and got whatever it was after and ate it. It didn't seem to be a moth though. When I told Col of the tragedy he said he thought it might have got the jumping spider - which also eats the moths!
What an ethical mess we are living in. It is only God's Kingdom that can put all this right.
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