Renhold church this afternoon. I really wanted the lit church - sun on stone - framed by the strange chestnut tree shapes. I liked the way that my view of the church was partially obscured by branches. I liked the way the stone bleached in the distance and glowed closer to. I liked the way that nature's shapes - curious, curved and crude - contrasted with the geometry of masonry. It felt as if the whole architecture of religion was bearing down on the pagan pathway. As if the chestnut gawped and jeered at the church's determination to matter. As if the looping branches which turn and turn again, alternating green-gold and black, were an antidote to guilt, a reminder that we are all part of a necessary mortality: mattering only as we are part of a larger, mutually supportive and recycling organism. On the roof of the nave a stone cross faces east. Above it, a golden weather-vane above the fleche tells me that today's warmer wind comes from the south-west. Tomorrow will be the shortest day, the solstice. We must use it wisely and well, as we should every day. |