July

Dear friends,

It is holiday season - schools have broken up and I have seven weeks before I have to get up at 6.40 again, but it is cool and wet and thundery.  We are off next week to Cyprus where we will have to adjust to the heat.  A family holiday is a gift, spending time together instead of each doing our own thing, and making the most of Joy before she goes off on her gap year in October. 

The first piece for my website http://www.janeupchurch.co.uk/ was written a couple of weeks ago when it was too hot to do anything.

July

It is July and the sun is sitting heavy on my shoulders, calling up the moisture from the earth so the air is thick and sticky.  In the dappled shade it is delightful if you have nothing much to do but bathe in the heat and turn your face to the occasional ruffle of breeze like a wind-chime in a window.  The sun makes all the colours shine like a bride on her wedding day and lights even the shade so there are no secrets.  No secrets and no wish to run and tell for languor settles on us all. 

To read the rest go to http://www.janeupchurch.co.uk/view/words

Our inner world can affect the way we notice the world around us, sometimes cutting it off, sometimes linking with it in a re-enforcing relationship.  And sometimes it breaks in unbidden.

The obligations of the day

The sun is singing, singing over my head and over the clenched heads of morning-drenched daisies and the few glistening drops of rain that still huddle in the grass.  The week has been windy and cool and we have shut down from the summer and retreated into internal affairs.  But today as I walk distractedly down the garden the sun is calling, calling over my head and welcoming me back into favour. 

To read the rest go to http://www.janeupchurch.co.uk/view/words

Sometimes I feel cut adrift from the world and lose that easy link of thought that twines from the past to the opening future, like losing my anchor.

Losing anchor

The ash tree
holds the sky,
chewing chunks of half-digested
blue between its boughs.  But beyond
the sky is full again
and stoops towards the tree
to hold its branches.

To read the rest go to http://www.janeupchurch.co.uk/view/poems

So I will see what the summer brings, what change, what purpose, what rest.  I wish you all a time of refreshing for bodies and spirits and dreams.

Love Jane