55) Songs from the wood
“Let me bring you songs from the wood:
to make you feel much better than you could know.
Dust you down from tip to toe.
Show you how the garden grows.”
So go the lyrics to the song. Just now there’s a New Holland honeyeater in the lemon tree, and a sparrow and a starling on the lawn. I love starlings. They have the sparkling night sky written onto their feathers if you stop to look closely. I remember watching a murmuration in Nashville years ago, hundreds of starlings against a lilac-tinted twilight. Spring has arrived here and there’s energy and colour in the garden. The ceanothus is alive with bees today. Each time I walk towards the front of the house, I spy it through the bay window, larger than last year, a sea of brightest blue. The sweet peas are climbing up, and the deep purple pelargonium is preparing to flower. The freesias are late, but at least they’re here now. The hard prune of the roses that left me very anxious a months ago has only done them good, with abundant new growth at the right height and some early flowers appearing. Today is a good day. I sense it. And all of nature in my garden seems to know it. Anderson’s song continues:
“Let me bring you love from the field:
poppies red and roses filled with summer rain.
To heal the wound and still the pain…”
Bring me love from the field. My heart is lighter with this new season. Like the poet says, “if I stepped out of my body I would break into blossom.” The gift, the joy, the bienfait of a sunny spring day. Wound-healing, and love-bringing. Love is possible on a day like this. Anything can begin on a day like this. I have a vivid memory of being in Wellington NZ years ago, taking in the views as I climbed up to the botanic gardens, and thinking, I could fall in love in a place like this. These moments don’t come around that often. At least, not for me…
I feel younger today than I have for some time. My chest is taking forever to recover from my recent car crash, and my face has been wearing the pain of it all. But I have trimmed my beard, had a haircut at the barbers, and look more like myself again in the mirror. I was fighting winter blues and struggling with age and frailty even before the crash. Yes, I know – I know that it’s a privilege to grow older and to see your beard turn to white. I know too that ministry can be so much richer when you’re seasoned by life.
I know it’s a privilege to reach this age. And God have mercy – even the lowest estimates suggest that a classroom of children have been killed each day in Gaza for each of the past 700 days… Lives that won’t be lived, and unimaginable trauma for those that remain. Christ have mercy.
For sure, it’s my duty to live my years well when so many don’t get even the chance to live. So, what am I doing, what have I done, and what is there still for me to do to bring justice and healing, to undo the wreckages, to right the wrongs?
“And what does the Lord require of you
But to do justice, to love kindness,
And to walk humbly with your God?”“‘He pled the cause of the afflicted and the poor… Is that not what it means to know Me?’
Declares the Lord.”“By this all people will know that you are My disciples: if you have love for one another.”
Over the years, in the name of justice and kindness and love, I have marched and voted and donated for refugees or LGBTQ folk or for Palestine or for the environment, and I’ve marched in the same way against neoliberalism and colonialism and the frightening rise of nationalism. Things certainly don’t seem to be getting any better recently. Have I done enough? Have I done anywhere near all I could have done? When people look at me, what do they see? In the mirror I see a man who should have done so much more.
But today is a good day. Like the song says, “On a clear day, I can see myself for miles.” I can see the road ahead, the work to be done, and I can get to work. A chance to do better. A friend of mine turned 60 this week and is traveling and reconnecting with old friends to mark the occasion. I will reach that same milestone in just 4 years. When I look back, I don’t want to think that those years were wasted. I want to be able to look the me-of-today straight in the eyes and say that I did my best with every moment. Says Tennyson, “Come my friends, ’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.” I want to say that I actively sought out a new world. That I lived my life outwardly and compassionately. That I said “No” to injustice and inequality. That I said “No” to poverty and violence. And I want to say that I did my best to honour the hopes and dreams that I still have for my life.
One of those dreams has been to return to England. But when I look at news reports, I see thugs wearing St George flags parading up the streets. I know their type – it’s immigrants today, but it’ll be gays tomorrow. Hatred with a side of violence. I wonder, is there even an England worth returning to, for this multi-cultural-loving, refugee-supporting man?
“And the poundstore Romeos all want a fight
And their breath is thick with Jagerbombs and appetite”
So goes Thea’s lament. That’s not the England I call home.
Another aspiration of mine is coming to fruition very soon. In a couple of weeks, I will formally be made a novice in the Third Order of the Society of St Francis. It has been a long journey to reach this point, that golden thread showing up at a Franciscan retreat in England in my 20s, again in a 12th Century chapel in the south of France in my 30s, on retreat at a Benedictine monastery in Australia in my 40s, and with ever-increasing frequency and intensity during my 50s. On Wednesday nights, my own daily rhythm of prayer joins in with other Franciscans and their own prayer routines, and there is fellowship and comfort and holy ground in all of it.
Another of those hopes and dreams is that I wouldn’t be lonely as I get older. I’ve always been blessed with friends. But I’m a fairly solitary man, and increasingly set in my ways. I love to retreat to a calm and quiet home and garden after all the people I meet in a day. And yet, recent injuries and accidents have left me feeling vulnerable and frail. The phone doesn’t really ring. I wonder, has my solitary habit turned into the beginnings of loneliness? I read an email this week between Lutheran colleagues, and one had written, “Hans, you’ll love Olly when you get around to meeting him!” It made me smile. I hope when I look back from my 60th that there will still be friends to gather together, and that I will know and have known continuing friendship and love. I hope it won’t be a lonely milestone.
Oh, listen to me, sounding glum now. I don’t mean to. Besides, it’s not that kind of day. I will finish my tea, fetch a few groceries for tonight’s dinner, and then head out into the scrub. The orchids are out – I’m hoping to spy some rare Caladenias.
“For you will go out with joy and be led forth with peace;
The mountains and the hills will break forth into shouts of joy before you,
And all the trees of the field will clap their hands.”
My garden is alive with praise right now. But I’m off to find it in the September scrub. “Come my friends, ’Tis not too late…”
Songs from the wood. Always.
Prayers and petitions for Gaza. While I’ve breath.
Love from the field. Well let’s hope…
Olly Ponsonby, September 2025
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Scripture refs. include – Mic 6:8b NASB, Jer 22:16, Jn 13:35, Is 55:12.
“Let me bring you…” from Songs from the Wood by Ian Anderson, https://www.collecting-tull.com/Albums/Lyrics/SongsFromTheWood.html
“if I stepped out of my body…” from A Blessing, by James Wright
“On a clear day…” lyrics from “Stranger in the is world” by George O Dowd, John Themistocleous, Richard Stevens, © BMG Gold Songs o/b/o Dark Music Ltd.
“Come my friends…” from Ulysses by Tennyson. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45392/ulysses
“And the poundstore…” from Karl’s Lament by Thea Gilmore. https://genius.com/Thea-gilmore-karrs-lament-lyrics