Garden thoughts at Eastertime

Yesterday evening we had a meal with our friends Pete and Jane. The week before Easter we had gone with them to the open garden day at The Old Rectory in Farnborough (just on the Downs above :). Once owned by John Betjeman the poet, the house has been owned for 40+ years by the Todhunter family. (See John Grimshaw's Garden Diary, for more information and pictures.) It is a beautiful four-acre garden full of unexpected "rooms" and very relaxing. Here are photos from our day.

After we'd had tea in the courtyard, Jane and Pete took us over the road to the church, where there is a window designed by John Piper in memory of Betjeman. It reminded me of St Francis' Canticle of the Sun, better known to us as the hymn, "All Creatures of our God and King", containing the remarkable resurrection verse:
 And thou most kind and gentle Death,

Waiting to hush our latest breath,
O praise Him! Alleluia!
Thou leadest home the child of God,
And Christ our Lord the way hath trod.

O praise Him! Alleluia!...

Let all things their Creator bless,
And worship Him in humbleness,
O praise Him! Alleluia!
Praise, praise the Father, praise the Son,
And praise the Spirit, Three in One.

O praise Him! Alleluia!...

When we were looking at my photos last night, we also read George Herbert's poem The Windows. The rectory in Bemerton where George Herbert lived was nothing as grand as Farnborough's, but the church looks quite similar. Here is the poem.

Lord, how can man preach thy eternal word ? 
  He is a brittle crazy glass : 
Yet in thy temple thou dost him afford 
  This glorious and transcendent place, 
  To be a window, through thy grace. 

But when thou dost anneal* in glass thy story, 
  Making thy life to shine within 
The holy Preachers, then the light and glory 
  More rev'rend grows, and more doth win ; 
  Which else shows watrish, bleak, and thin. 

Doctrine and life, colours and light, in one 
  When they combine and mingle, bring 
A strong regard and awe :  but speech alone 
  Doth vanish like a flaring thing, 
  And in the ear, not conscience ring. ('Anneal' means toughen by heating and cooling.) I like the idea that God's grace is not communicated through words alone but in combination with lives tempered by God through the ups and downs of life.