Sunday, February 26, 2017

Looking down at Lough Dan

A line in today's Gospel:

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin,  yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. 

Yesterday could never have been considered in meteorological terms as a 'good day' yet walking along the side of Lough Dan, looking up at Knocknacloghoge, it was impossible not to see the fabulous beauty of it all. 

The pictures show a herd of sheep at the side of Knocknacloghoge and Lough Dan in misty rain.




1 comment:

Deirdre Duff said...

Mountains above Lough Dan are terrific – even in misty rain.
I’m no historian but apparently lilies, in the time/region that Jesus lived in, grew wild all around the place and were considered to be ‘weeds’? Whether that’s true or not, I bet those lilies weren’t the kind of mass cultivated flowers that we fly in from Holland today. At great expense to our climate.
Maybe I’m making those Gospel lines ‘say what I want them to say’. But could they be suggesting that nothing man made can ever be as beautiful as something made by nature/God? Ironic then that churches are ‘decorated’ with man-made stuff that so often seems to be made from materials sky high up on the list of resources whose extraction does most damage to nature - and to poor people - who inevitably suffer most from that damage. Like gold. Is the church’s gold ethically sourced?
I wonder how many of the 4.8 million famine confronted people of South Sudan could be helped if the church were to sell all its gold and give the money to the poor. And how much further damage could be prevented if it were to quit buying it in future. Interesting that just before the lilies there was talk of how one could not serve both God and money. Was gold used as money when that Gospel was written? Still big connections between gold and money today. Could the words ‘gold’ and ‘money’ be used interchangeably…?

Well...Maybe there is one ‘woman-made’ thing that just might give those lilies a run for their money; Mammy Duff’s brown bread – two loaves of which I have just managed to nab. Give me the right offer and I might share one; cash – or gold – only accepted ;-)

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