But the garden is alive
With foraging birds
I normally put any commentary about my poems and other pieces before the text in question. This time I thought it better to leave it to after. That's because I shouldn't really be explaining this at all if I were a real poet. But this short piece in some ways is an exemplar of what I have been using poetry, and especially my stumbling attempts at haiku, for over the past year, and in a certain less conscious way, throughout my whole life.
I make it no secret that I have struggled with depression for a long time, and some of that is exacerbated by a number of factors.
1) Over-work. Not anyone else's fault - its usually due to my own lack of discipline.
2) Particular stresses. Certain almost unavoidable situations (which I won't go into here) trigger varying degrees of anxiety in me, which in turn plunges me into a black hole. I don't see stress as a bad thing, indeed a certain amount of it is required for me to do my best work, but too much, or stress at the wrong time or area of life, can produce an intolerable strain. These usually pass, and I have become better at identifying and managing them, but while they are present, processing the worry/anxiety can become all consuming.
3) The attempt to rationalise/solve everything. I value my ability to analyse and strategise. I see it as a gift. But it has limits. I am not God. I am neither omniscient nor omnipotent, and that is hard to accept at times... This can lead me into unhelpful mental exercises where I try to solve intractable problems or at least explain them. This is exhausting...
4) The frustration at being unable to exercise the more creative side of my brain/personality in a more active way as part of my "day job". As well as someone who values my ability to rationalise things (classic left-brain), a big part of me is my aesthetic/artistic right brain... And over the years I have allowed my left brain self to dominate my right brain...
Then last year on sabbatical, I rediscovered how important my artistic side was not only in itself, but for helping with all that went before. It is genuinely like exercising a different set of atrophied mental muscles. I don't, and doubt I will ever be given time to exercise my artistic form of choice, drama, to any degree, in ministry... It takes too much time and resources to do properly. But poetry is a helpful surrogate, and the pocket-sized form and strict discipline of haiku even more so. Its like artistic "Kendal Mint Cake" - with all the energy to keep you going. This has resulted in the stream of half-baked haiku since last summer that has resulted in Steve Stockman dubbing me "Haiku Dave."
Add that to my discipline of taking Mondays off where possible, and, since last summer, of devoting Monday mornings to more creative tasks, and we end up with the context of this morning's poem.
For the past few weeks I've been using the kitchen table, with a base for those endeavours, with a view of the back garden, beautifully remodelled during our sojourn in America last year, making it a haven for wildlife of all sorts. And that has brought to mind Jesus' instruction in the face of worry to "watch the birds" (Matthew 6: 26-27) I've preached about the efficacy of that on many occasions, but this doctor has rarely taken his own medicine as it previously brought back traumatic memories of watching seabirds in the freezing rain whilst suffering the after effects food poisoning from a Charlie McNair tuna roll (only Edinburgh citizens of a certain vintage will understand that reference) as an undergraduate zoologist. But the past couple of weeks have been a joy, and definitely therapeutic. The activities of birds and squirrels in the back garden (unfortunately the squirrels don't get a name check in the above haiku... the restricted number of syllables wouldn't allow) don't entirely drive the infamous "black dog" away, but they can help keep him at bay for a while and do help to put wider things, over which we have no control, into perspective.
Today I awoke to news of increasing pessimism regarding the ability of the world's governments to contain the Covid-19 outbreak, consequential impacts on the world's stock markets, which will impact us all whether we have shares ourselves or not, warnings regarding impacts for those such as myself with complicating conditions, and appalling behaviour by people hoarding food and toilet rolls and stealing hand gel from hospitals. AND its cold and pouring with rain...
But outside, in the garden, the birds - blackbirds, crows, sparrows, blackcaps, blue tits, coal tits, great tits, chaffinches, bull finches, wood pigeons, collared doves, feral pigeons, magpies - and our friends the squirrels (who have been engaging in a three-way battle with the crows and magpies over the fat-balls my wife puts out) get on with life...
(ps the picture is taken from a blog piece by someone written about rain in a french garden... I haven't seen any goldfinches today, nor could I take such a beautiful photograph as this)
Cold grey rain slants down
But the garden is alive
With foraging birds
With foraging birds
Selah
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