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Part I—Now the Green Blade Riseth
I love flowers. Though maybe ‘love’ isn't the right word. I'm not good at gardening, because I don't give my plants the work and thoughtful care that true love requires. I do love having flowers around me though, especially spring flowers, so I have been spoiled rotten these past three months. Because of coastal Cornwall’s subtropical climate, the daffodils, snowdrops, camellias, and gorse have been in full bloom since January. They've been joined now by primroses, daisies, and purpley-blue bells like these ones that I found in the hedgerow.
Winter has been tenacious and unusually cold this year, and it has made me consider what I love about spring flowers—not merely their bright colors and clean smell, but their resilience. There is nothing “‘at once so frail and so indomitable’” (Brontë 350) as a gorse bush blooming through the heaped-up snow. Or a Gothic heroine. Either one, gentle reader. Them’s my lifelong inspirations.
I’ve lived an easy life, without much to be indomitable about, but I feel a deep, visceral joy at Easter when I see living symbols hard at work. Daisies pushing up through frozen ground. Life and love pushing up through death and isolation. “Love is come again, like wheat that springeth green” (Crum 4).
Part II—Gothic Novel Countryside
I got to look at north Cornwall's wild, desolate beauty when a friend working with the National Trust walked me around the ruins of the tin mines near Botallack, and again when Tanya Woodward and I walked along the coast from St Ives to Zennor. While clambering over rocky ground where the scrubby gorse grows only knee-high (and my knees are nearer the ground than most) Tanya and I agreed that this was quite different from the forested, pastoral landscape of Hampshire, where she's been living for the past few months.
This, we concluded, was Gothic novel countryside. I later learned that Daphne du Maurier's stories are set in Cornwall. Jamaica Inn is less than an hour's drive northeast of Penzance. Then there's the house three doors down from St Mary's Church. I walk by the house about six times every week, so I won't tell you how long it took me to notice the sign:
I felt like a total creep, lurking across the street, trying to get a picture. The whole point of the picture was that this house was once inhabited by the mother of three Gothic novelists, so I suppose 'total creep' was appropriate. I just hope the current inhabitants weren't too unnerved.
What's Happening
As part of my research into New Monasticism, I visited Lee Abbey, a Christian community in north Devonshire. The community was most hospitable (they even surprised me with a birthday cake!) and I felt even more at home when I met a community member who hails from York, Nebraska.
I also witnessed birth for the first time at Lee Abbey, and I got to help feed some of the lambs. I got all excited and preachy about it in a Shout I wrote for the Penlee Cluster website. https://sway.com/5qBjkrg0hV7tpWMk?ref=email
I've had my first taste of a proper Cornish Cream Tea (the words 'proper' and 'Cornish' are synonymous, really). When the Church of St Pol de Leon held a cream tea for members of the community, I was given the task of making the scones look pretty. I was shown how to spread the jam smoothly, and then place a dollop of clotted cream on top. Now in Devon, people spread their cream on first, and then the jam. But in Cornwall, the jam goes on first, then the cream. The jam goes on first. Jam. First.
I've now spoken twice about my research into Celtic Christianity and New Monasticism—once at St. John's and one at St Peter's. Next up, the talk goes to St. Mary's and will reach St. Pol de Leon in
May. Whee!
I went to the Easter sunrise service held in the Quiet Garden at St Pol de Leon, and to the 10:30 morning service at St John's. No sunrise photographs, because I was holding the Christ candle. Each service was uniquely lovely.
The week after Easter, Tanya Woodward came to visit me from L'Abri!
It's The Little Things
that'll get you kicked out of the county. In Cornwall, JAM FIRST y'all!
a seal basking on the beach
a fox
All the Malteser's and Thornton's and Cadbury Easter eggs. All of them.
Sources
Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. 3rd Ed. 1847. 350.PDF File.
Crum, John Macleod Campbell. "Now the Green Blade Riseth." In Moore,
475.
Moore, Geoffrey. Hymns Old and New: New Anglican Edition. University
of Michigan: Kevin Mayhew, 1996. Print.