The April sun went into hiding for the weekend. Saturday was all grey here, and very windy. All the sand that has not yet been swept up from the streets after the winter, whirling around... Suddenly it seemed much easier to "believe" in that cloud of vulcano ashes that has been putting a lock on all our airports in Northern Europe over the last few days; leaving people stranded all over the world, suddenly not being able to go where they intended to go. Bad enough for those who were going away; and even worse for those headed back home (expected back at work, and having spent all their holiday money).
Yes, I do know that the clouds I actually see now are "ordinary" clouds. The news just seemed all the more incredible when I first heard about it, and at the same time saw the sun blazing down from a perfectly clear, blue sky! (Ashes? What ashes?)
A powerful reminder that we really have very little clue what's going on around us, most of the time!
"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust..."
A walk earlier in the week (still under a blue sky) took me across the town's oldest cemetery. It has a lot of these really impressive graves with huge memorial headstones in enclosures surrounded by heavily decorated iron fences. (I always wonder: Why? Yes, I can understand the need to mark the place... But iron fences?!)
But in the same cemetery I also found the hepaticas (cf previous post), growing "wild" outside the fences, reminding of new life...
“Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection into eternal life”
~ Book of Common Prayer ~
Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away. No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.
~ Gospel of Matthew 24: 35, 36 ~
