We have extended our ornithological knowledge, joining proper bird-watchers at Titchwell and Pensthorpe. Our two brains together identified avocet, dunlin, sanderling, oyster catcher, redshank…
A lady advised us, ‘If you want to learn more, ask the person with the most expensive looking equipment.’ We did. We then managed bar-tailed godwit, purple sandpiper, ringed plover… There’s still much we don’t know.
I’ve just read ‘Stand tall little girl’; Hope Virgo tells her story of her battles with anorexia. Earlier this week I watched Freddie Flintoff talk of his ‘secret’ bulimia. I’m still learning about eating disorders.
There’s much publicity about and concern for dementia sufferers in care homes – and the effect isolation is having on them and their families. Friends around me help me understand dementia better…
And other friends continue to help me understand P.T.S.D., depression, addictions, OCD, Tourette’s, … There’s much I still don’t know about the range and effects of mental illnesses.
Solomon, who was supposed to know everything about everything said: ‘There are three things that are too amazing for me, four that I do not understand: the way of an eagle in the sky, the way of a snake on a rock, the way of a ship on the high seas, and the way of a man with a maiden.’
I am continually drawn to a God who says: ‘As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.’
Brennan Manning writes of a God who is beyond our understanding: ‘…phrases such as ‘the tenderness of the Father’, ‘the compassion of the Son’, and ‘the consolation of the Spirit’ are only hints of the ineffable…. We are drawn into the ever-deepening and more direct awareness of the divine incomprehensibility.’
Perhaps the person with the most expensive looking equipment doesn’t always have all the answers.
Ref: Proverbs 30:18-19, Isaiah 55:9, Brenan Manning ‘Ruthless Trust’ pp60-61
malcolmsmusings.org 