Water..something and a Sudden Baby

  As the mornings are warming up, I've added some light gardenwork to my routines in the mornings. The new flower beds are crying for water in the burning afternoon sun. Every year I've managed to kill some sets of my countless plant experiments, this year it was the Zuchinis. It needs just one chaotic day, and voilà! They're dead. A lady I met one day in the lunch cafeteria however told me not to be sad; I could still get a perfectly good harvest by placing the seeds directly on the soil.

Bernard too talks about watering the plants. His aim is of course something else than giving life to the non-perennials. While Christ is a spring which can never be exhausted, a spring in which we are washed, he's also a spring that quenches the thirst. Happy will be those, says the Sage, who will linger in wisdom and will meditate on righteousness. And not the wisdom of the world, which brings death, but the saving wisdom, the will of God in thine own heart. It is modest, not sensual, peaceable, not turbulent. 

The third use of water to Bernard, is irrigation, which is especially necessary for young plants. Without it they will either grow poorly or die completely. Those who have sown the seeds of good works must seek out the waters of devotion. When irrigated by the spring of grace, the garden of a good way of life will not dry out but will flourish in perpetual greenness.

As much as it sounds like Bernard denies all worldly and sensual experiences from a devoted christian, he surprises his readers by giving them the fourth spring. He calls it the waters of zeal, boiling water, that come up bubbling from the spring of love. It is not an emotion; the ferver of the zeal is a sort of kick that cooks our affections, that are already flowing through the springs that wash away our sins and give wisdom when we are dwelling in the sweetness that flows from the spring of devotion. These are the four springs in Christ that are revealed to us when we live. The fifth, spring of life, is promised after this age.

It's not surprising that Bernard uses water as a symbol of life giving things. Every life form that I can think of begins their life hidden from the sunlight and more or less, swimming. It's a figure of speech easily grasped. This morning as I was listening to the early bird on my sunny spot, I got a phone call brightened up with babynews. My Bernardine thoughts were washed away in an instant; it's quite exiting waiting to see new things of all sort in your life, but expecting to see a new fresh person leaves everything else far behind. And when talking about the hobbitton folks, they show a new side of themselves time after time. You never know what they are going to be like in a year or so. First they are

exiting little buds,

then they might turn into

these perfect little things that take over the world and everyones hearts,

or

sweetest buds ever,

or perhaps what we see is

quiet a personality,

or who knows what!!

Okay, went a little Bernard with this. But my, what a source of inspiration! With the words of William Butler Yeates who talks about my favourite things, joy and inspiration, I leave you to expect, the next post ;)(Find the song in here.)           

 The Two Trees

Beloved, gaze in thine own heart,
The holy tree is growing there;
From joy the holy branches start,
And all the trembling flowers they bear.
The changing colours of its fruit
Have dowered the stars with merry light;
The surety of its hidden root
Has planted quiet in the night;
The shaking of its leafy head
Has given the waves their melody,
And made my lips and music wed,
Murmuring a wizard song for thee.
There the Loves a circle go,
The flaming circle of our days,
Gyring, spiring to and fro
In those great ignorant leafy ways;
Remembering all that shaken hair
And how the winged sandals dart,
Thine eyes grow full of tender care;
Beloved, gaze in thine own heart.


Gaze no more in the bitter glass
The demons, with their subtle guile,
Lift up before us when they pass,
Or only gaze a little while;
For there a fatal image grows
That the stormy night receives,
Roots half hidden under snows,
Broken boughs and blackened leaves.
For all thinks turn to bareness
In the dim glass the demons hold,
The glass of outer weariness,
Made when God slept in times of old.
There, through the broken branches, go
The ravens of unresting thought;
Flying, crying, to and fro,
Cruel claw and hungry throat,
Or else they stand and sniff the wind,
And shake their ragged wings: alas!
Thy tender eyes grow all unkind:
Gaze no more in the bitter glass.
Beloved, gaze in thine own heart,
The holy tree is growing there;
From joy the holy branches start,
And all the trembling flowers they bear.
Remembering all that shaken hair
And how the winged sandals dart,
Thine eyes grow full of tender care:
Beloved, gaze in thine own heart.

~W. B. Yeats~