Flowers and ash

On grief, and the possibility of transformation

‘Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing.’
—Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

‘Do not be afraid, you wild animals,
for the pastures in the wilderness are becoming green.’
—Joel 2:22

‘The flocks of light are preparing to return home.’ Photo by John Cox.

Poem: Lines on the brink of spring

After all of this absence;
after you were forced to endure
so many days of frailing
and stone; now, now—
the flocks of light
are preparing to return home.

There is rumour of a hungry glint
in God’s eye; you breathe an anticipating air
and can sense the temples of green
yearning to become again.
The sap is stirring.
The bulbs and the blood are ready.

Soon all will be carried by song;
soon the woods will drip
with the violet and buttered dew
of bluebell and primrose.

There is hope that within this turn
you will remember the creature within you—
the one who prays for a garden to grow
and hears something whisper
Yes.

©Gideon Heugh

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Dear reader,

I am writing this from the midst of implausibility.

These words come to you from a desk that I struggled to imagine seeing again so soon. I am sat in a study looking out at a garden that I would not have believed could be mine even a few weeks ago.

A nuthatch is scuttling up an oak tree that was planted a hundred years ago, when this cottage was built. Two brimstone butterflies are flitting about the swelling buds of the rhododendrons. A bumblebee sleeps in a cup of crocus; a shock of cerulean blue becomes a jay drifting between hazel and chestnut. Moss warms in the sun. Heart aches within a chrysalis that it can now dare to dream of one day leaving.

A year ago I lost my home—the one that my daughter grew up in; the one that I had worked so hard and waited so long for. Our little house at the end of the road on the top of the hill by the edge of the woods. It was perfect, and it broke my heart to leave; an inescapable consequence of redundancy and divorce. I will never forget walking from empty room to empty room, body convulsing with sobs as I said goodbye.

The desk went into storage, and the bookshelves, and my daughter’s bed with the heart carved into it. The life that I had dreamed of and created crumbled into dust; into ash.

‘A garden that I would not have believed could be mine.’ The new Green Chapel HQ. Photo by Gideon Heugh.

Ash. A week ago, I went through the rites of the Ash Wednesday Holy Communion—an ancient ritual to mark the beginning of the Lenten season: that time of stripping back, letting go, repenting.

Repent. It means nothing religious. It means change your mind. It means come back. Come back to the soul of things. Come back to the really real.

It means remember who you are—reconnect with that unbroken, unbreakable spark of goodness at the core of you.

To begin this process, we are reminded that we are going to die. And not just that final snuffing out of our flesh, but all the ways we die in life. The homes we lose. The loves that leave us. The dreams that burn up in our hands even as we try desperately to hold on to them.

Fragility. Mortality. This is where hope begins. Not in saying ‘everything is fine’, or even ‘everything will be fine’, but in accepting that life can be tragic.

Dust you came from, and to dust you shall return.

Ash. Dust. Dirt.

Dirt. What if we called it soil?

Soil does not seem like a living thing. It is made from death. It is consequence of break, fall, rot. Yet good soil—soil formed by the layered years of dead matter—thrums with life. Billions of organisms live in just a teaspoon of healthy soil, feeding off the decay and transforming it into fecundity. Out of these civilisations of rot, trees and flowers and crops grow.

Soil is composed of endings, yet this is what makes it able to generate beginnings.

We came from soil, and to soil we shall return.

Repent. It means return.

What will grow from the layers that we lay down, or that are stripped from us? What will the ash from the burnings of our lives fertilise? Maybe we’ll never find out. Maybe it will be just a single flower in a landscape of grief. Maybe a single flower is enough. Maybe it will grow; maybe its seeds will spread far beyond our limited vision.

‘A bumblebee sleeps in a cup of crocus.’ Photo by Gideon Heugh.

It is no small thing to ask someone to believe that change is possible. Not with the way the world is. Not with the lightless days, months and years that many of us have faced. Winter is very real. And all-consuming.

Yet it is does not exist in a vacuum. Nor is the fallow without its own meaning. There is a pantheon of seasons, giving and taking from each other; utterly mutual. There is a wheel, and the wheel turns—often slower than we would like, often imperceptibly; yet it turns. And we, too, can turn. We can come back. Back from the brink; back to our souls.

It is no small thing to ask someone to believe. Yet I have died a lot of times in my life. And some of those deaths have made me stop wanting to live. I have faced the long nights. And here I am, putting my hands into a growing ground.

I am blessed now with a new home, and it is better than I could have hoped for. And while I am far from healed, I can perhaps imagine healing.

We might not always get the miracle, the sudden turnaround. But one day—one day—we might feel a subtle change in the air; a breath that once felt heavy becoming something else within us. We might wake up and realise for the first time in a long time that we are awake. The sap will stir. The bulbs and the blood will be made ready.

Gideon

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A little note to say…

I won’t be putting The Green Chapel behind a paywall. I believe that poetry and ideas about God and other lovely things should be as accessible to as many people as possible. Having said that, I am an independent artist, so I need all the support I can get. If you’re able to make a small contribution, I’d be incredibly grateful—it will help me to keep doing what I’m doing, and keep it free. Just click the button below. Thank you, GH.

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