Driving Mrs Captain Butterfly - and Immigrants

Silver Y, Autographa gamma

We have a Silver Y moth resting on our kitchen windowsill - exhausted after its flight across the Channel.  Captain Butterfly is photographing it now - and we will leave the windows open and hope it makes its way successfully.   Amazing the programming in those tiny brains that guides them on such long journeys.

Jehovah is the Grand Creator indeed.

One of my sisters drove me round my magazine route yesterday morning.  So kind of her.  I had a pounding headache and was glad not to do it. We had a good talk with Tony, and met the son of another of my calls - a lady I rarely find at home as she works shifts.

Jehovah has made me part of a warm and loving family and I am so grateful - though, sadly, I am the very opposite of a people-person, but all any of us can do is our best.

Finished Claire Tomalin's Hardy bio.  Even if you are not a Hardy fan, it is a good read. It is an insight into the past.  And I was struck by how clearly Hardy and his mother perceive the hand of "the god of this system of things" - who, the Bible tells us is Satan the devil - even though Hardy was an atheist.

He saw that something very evil was behind war, the force that turns brother against brother, when he wrote that brave poem  The Pity of It  during the throes of the first World War.

1 John 5:19 tells us, simply and clearly:  "We know that we originate with God, but the whole world is lying in the power of the wicked one."

Claire Tomalin writes:   "Whatever Jemima (Hardys mother) expected of life, she did not nurse unrealistic hopes and dreams. She had worked out an idea - or possibly got it from her angry, unfortunate father - which she handed on to her son:  'Mother's notion, and also mine: That a figure stands in one van with an arm uplifted, to knock us back from any pleasant prospect we indulge in as probable.'"

Though Hardy rose to great heights from very humble beginnings, nothing ever caused him to lose this world view.

Yet he saw the beauty and the glory of the creation. And one of his last poems - maybe his last poem - shows a love for the perfect advice in God's word, as it is based on the Inspired definition of love in 1 Corinthians 13.   "Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous. It does not brag, does not get puffed up,  does not behave indecently, does not look for its own interests, does not become provoked. It does not keep account of the injury.  It does not rejoice over unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth.  It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  Love never fails."

Surview   by Thomas Hardy

"Cogitavi vias meas"

A cry from the green-grained sticks of the fire
Made me gaze where it seemed to be:
'Twas my own voice talking therefrom to me
On how I had walked when my sun was higher -
My heart in its arrogancy.

"You held not to whatsoever was true,"
Said my own voice talking to me:
"Whatsoever was just you were slack to see;
Kept not things lovely and pure in view,"
Said my own voice talking to me.

"You slighted her that endureth all,"
Said my own voice talking to me;
"Vaunteth not, trusteth hopefully;
That suffereth long and is kind withal,"
Said my own voice talking to me.

"You taught not that which you set about,"
Said my own voice talking to me;
"That the greatest of things is Charity. . . "
- And the sticks burnt low, and the fire went out,
And my voice ceased talking to me.

http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/2796/

Interestingly, the Latin tag at the beginning of the poem - Cogitavi vias meas - is a quote from the Psalms:   "I have examined my ways, in order to turn my feet back to your reminders." Psalm 119:59

Interesting too how language changes.   The word "charity" has a different ring to it now - suggesting Comic Relief and those New York ladies who lunch and who all have their charities and go to important Charity events.

Which is why modern translations say love is the greatest of things - because Jehovah, the Source of all things - IS love.

.