Category: Life

Life will find a way

All that is required to restore native woodland in Scotland is to remove or significantly reduce the presence of Red Deer and sheep … Where deer-fencing is erected to protect an area the tree seedlings survive and soon grow too high for sheep (or even deer) to reach. Birch, rowan, willow, Scots pine and juniper rapidly recolonise in fenced areas.

Reflections on Barton Mill Pond

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Image of the day – 197

What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image whenever I can.

Reflections on Barton Mill Pond

This is one of my favourite places in Cirencester; on a calm, sunny day wind doesn’t ruffle the surface of the old mill pond and the reflections are correspondingly bright and still. A bridge crosses the water here and crouching down it’s difficult to take a bad photo, or easy to take a good one. (Depends on your mode of thinking.)

The mill burned down in an unfortunate fire in 1926 and was never rebuilt. Watermills (and windmills) were going out of business at that time as most industries were running on steam power generated by burning coal, or by electrical energy, also usually from coal-fired power stations. Water power and wind power, now seen as green and therefore desirable, were seen in 1926 as ineffective and unable to compete with the more efficient alternatives. This was long before the downsides of fossil fuels were understood.

A place for wildlife

100 years after the fire, in 2026, the mill pond still exists, fed by a sluice gate taking water from the River Churn. The part of the pond in the photo is usually in water all year round, though other parts dry up in many summers, partly because of some silting up near the sluice and partly because the bed of the pond has silted up too, so now the water is shallow enough for yellow flag Iris and other plants to flourish.

There are many birds to be seen in this area too. Mallard ducks breed every spring, there are minnows and probably stickleback in the water and from time to time a kingfisher hunts along the water channels and the pond. Often all you see of the kingfisher is a darting flash of vivid blue. There used to be (and may still be) a pike. A single but very shy little egret hunted around here for the last few years, but this year I’ve seen two of them, probably a breeding pair. And their larger cousin, the grey heron also puts in an appearance now and then.

All life needs is an opportunity

Take any piece of ground, anywhere on Earth, and just leave it alone, life will move in, even if you choose a patch in the Sahara or Antarctica. If you clear a piece of ground somewhere with a reasonable climate and leave it alone, in just a human lifetime you’ll have thriving woodland with a full selection of insects, birds and mammals, and probably reptiles and amphibians too. The experiment has been made many times, sometimes deliberately, sometimes accidentally. If you choose the Sahara or Antarctica you might have to wait a bit longer, but the life forms that are adapted to those extreme conditions will move in eventually. Let’s look at some examples.

Broadbalk wilderness (UK)

A wheat field was deliberately left to revert to a natural state at Rothamsted Research Station in 1882. The land was left unmanaged where before it would have been ploughed and harrowed after harvesting the wheat in late summer and drilled with seed again in the autumn. This field had produced winter wheat every year since 1843, but now the scientists wanted to see what would happen if it was left uncultivated; for the first four years volunteer wheat grew, sparser and weaker year on year and after four years completely choked by weeds.

In 1900 the site was divided into three. One part was left deliberately untouched and gradually reverted to natural woodland; another third was mown annually and maintained as grassland; while the third section had all woody plants removed annually so the land became a natural, open mix of herbaceous plants.

The results have been very interesting and the experiment continues today. Levels of captured carbon are still rising in the soils of the site, nitrogen levels have risen as well. The samples and data are available for study and reanalysis.

Chornobyl (Ukraine)

The Chornobyl nuclear power station accident in 1986 rendered the city and a large area around it unusable. People were evacuated and the most contaminated areas became a restricted zone. Since the accident, time and rainfall have reduced the surface radioactivity considerably and it’s now possible to visit the area. In fact, wildlife has moved into the area from the very beginning and the changing conditions and environment have been studied in depth.

Almost 120 000 people were evacuated following the accident, so activities like farming, hunting, logging, and development ceased over an area of 4,200 km². Forests, wetlands and grasslands have reclaimed abandoned farms and villages; and vegetation grows freely through derelict buildings and former settlements. The pine woodland killed outright by the initial high-dose fallout remains one of the most nuclear-contaminated places on Earth, but even there substantial regrowth has happened. The loss of managed agriculture actually increased habitat diversity, reconnecting landscapes previously fragmented by farmland.

Large mammals rebounded strongly. Long-term census data show abundances of deer, elk, roe deer and wild boar comparable to those in uncontaminated regional nature reserves. Wolves are notably abundant, roughly seven times as common as in comparable reserves. Reintroductions have taken hold including endangered Przewalski’s horses, released in the late 1990s and now ranging freely and breeding. European bison have also been established, while beavers have recolonised rivers, canals and the cooling ponds, in places reversing Soviet-era drainage systems. Lynx, foxes and hundreds of bird species are present too.

However, there’s a mixed message – the abundant populations are due to the absence of humans, yet there remains clear evidence of radiation-induced harm to individuals. Some species are adapting and changing, showing signs of radiation resistance, for example.

Returning woodland (Scotland)

It seems that all that is required to restore native woodland in Scotland is to remove or significantly reduce the presence of Red Deer and sheep. Grazing species eat the young seedlings of trees and strip leaves from saplings. Where deer-fencing is erected to protect an area the tree seedlings survive and soon grow too high for sheep (or even deer) to reach. Birch, rowan, willow, Scots pine and juniper rapidly recolonise in fenced areas.

Other cases are numerous

Similar cases of large scale change include:

Identifying common factors

A rule to cover all these examples will be useful. If the limiting, interfering factor(s) can be identified and removed life will usually return naturally – in any situation. Identifying the limiting factor(s) is the key to success. Reintroduction of missing species can also be a helpful part of the process but is often not necessary.

See also:

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You might also like:

Life always wins out
Seemingly a leafy town
Tree shading

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If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. (If you don’t see those links, click the article’s title above the main photo and they will appear.) Send a link to friends who might enjoy the article or benefit from it – Thanks! My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome and encourages me to write more often!

APEST in Jesus

Since Jesus is the best example of all five APEST gifts, it makes good sense to look to him for guidance in using them. I’d say read the gospels and notice the things he did and the things he said. Pay particular attention to the way people responded and try to work out in each case which of the five gifts were active.

APEST in Jesus

10 – Activating Church

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APEST (Diagram from What is APEST) – Click images to enlarge

Having looked at each of the gifts of service individually, we’ll check them one by one to see if we can find them active in the life of Yahshua (Jesus). Does Jesus himself demonstrate these gifts, and if so how? Let’s also bear in mind that if he worked through these special gifts 2000 years ago, we can be quite confident that he still does today. His character doesn’t change; he is the same yesterday, today and forever (Hebrews 13:8).

Each section begins with an Alan Hirsch quote which we then examine in the light of the character and nature of Christ himself. But before we do that, I want you to understand that all these gifts are equally important and equally valuable. There’s no hierarchy here, though there is a sequence. Apostles prepare the ground for prophets, who prepare the ground for evangelists, who prepare the ground for shepherds, who finally prepare the ground for teachers. At this point, the young gathering (or church) will be ready to begin sending out apostles and the cycle repeats.

You’ll find the quotes on Alan’s What is APEST? page. The tests are not expensive and I recommend them for both leaders and anyone with an interest in the topic.

Apostle

APOSTLES extend the gospel. As the “sent ones,” they ensure that the faith is transmitted from one context to another and from one generation to the next. They are always thinking about the future, bridging barriers, establishing the church in new contexts, developing leaders, networking trans-locally. Yes, if you focus solely on initiating new ideas and rapid expansion, you can leave people and organizations wounded. The shepherding and teaching functions are needed to ensure people are cared for rather than simply used.

Is Jesus an Apostle? He did not merely extend the gospel; he originated it! Was he a ‘sent one’? He was and remains the Sent One, bringing faith and truth from the presence of the Father sharing it freely here in the physical realm of Earth. If that is not transmitting faith from one context to another, I don’t know what is! Did he think about the future and bridge barriers? Just think of the old picture of Jesus as a bridge or plank crossing the gap between heaven and earth.

Did he establish the church? (I will build my church). He developed leaders (his disciples) and he networked trans-locally (the Samaritan woman at the well, healing the Centurion’s servant, raising Jairus’ daughter, calling Lazarus out from the tomb, and discussing truth with the Roman Governor, Pontius Pilatus). It would be really hard to argue that Jesus is not apostolic!

Prophet

PROPHETS know God’s will. They are particularly attuned to God and his truth for today. They bring correction and challenge the dominant assumptions we inherit from the culture. They insist that the community obey what God has commanded. They question the status quo. Without the other types of leaders in place, prophets can become belligerent activists or, paradoxically, disengage from the imperfection of reality and become other-worldly.

So, is Jesus also a prophet? Most certainly! Does he know the will of the Father? Way better than anyone else in history (you’d better believe it.) Is he particularly attuned to Yahweh and his truth for today? Most emphatically! Does he bring correction and challenge the dominant assumptions of his culture and of our own? He insisted (and still insists) that we obey what the Father commands. When did he not challenge the status quo? Certainly he does these things fully, wholeheartedly, and tirelessly. Jesus is, indeed, the greatest prophet of all time – by far.

Towards the end of his ministry, Jesus is clear that the temple will be destroyed and he foretells the misery and horror of those days, this done privately, just speaking with the disciples, but when these events unfolded in 70 AD under the Roman commander Titus they would have remembered his description and would have been confirmed and encouraged that he had the same prophetic spirit as the old testament prophets themselves. (Luke 21)

And Jesus had the same upward connection to the mind of the Father as well as the horizontal concerns about justice in the world that the old testament prophets regularly displayed.

Evangelist

EVANGELISTS recruit. These infectious communicators of the gospel message recruit others to the cause. They call for a personal response to God’s redemption in Christ, and also draw believers to engage the wider mission, growing the church. Evangelists can be so focused on reaching those outside the church that maturing and strengthening those inside is neglected.

Jesus is a recruiter par excellence. He called and worked intensely with a small group of close followers, he spoke to multitudes, but closely taught just a few. He is the evangelist, calling for a personal response from many individuals and not merely growing the church, but founding it in every sense worth considering. If you want to know what an evangelist is like, check out Jesus!

By the time Jesus teaching was complete and the time came for his death, resurrection, and a return to the Father’s presence, his disciples had understood him clearly and fully enough that the four gospel accounts could be written from what had lodged in their memories. They may not agree in every detail or always have precisely the same sequence, but that makes the four accounts more real and no less believable.

Shepherd

SHEPHERDS nurture and protect. Caregivers of the community, they focus on the protection and spiritual maturity of God’s flock, cultivating a loving and spiritually mature network of relationships, making and developing disciples. Shepherds can value stability to the detriment of the mission. They may also foster an unhealthy dependence between the church and themselves.

In what sense is Jesus a shepherd? He’s rightly described as ‘the great Shepherd of the sheep’. He is strong on nurturing and protecting; that was true as he moved among the people in first century Israel, Galilee and Samaria, healing the sick, feeding hungry crowds with abundant fish and bread from almost nothing (making very little stretch a very, very long way). He cared about wine running short at a wedding. He was the greatest of caregivers for his community.

He protected his followers, shielding them by giving everything he had, even his life. And he taught them to bring them to spiritual maturity so that after he returned to the Father, they’d be able to carry on his work once they had received his Spirit from above.

Jesus had a wide network of followers well beyond the eleven men that he closely trained. There were so many that he touched and discipled amongst Samaritans, Romans, Greeks, even members of the Sanhedrin. He valued stability, but not to the detriment of his mission.

Teacher

TEACHERS understand and explain. Communicators of God’s truth and wisdom, they help others remain biblically grounded to better discern God’s will, guiding others toward wisdom, helping the community remain faithful to Christ’s word, and constructing a transferable doctrine. Without the input of the other functions, teachers can fall into dogmatism or dry intellectualism. They may fail to see the personal or missional aspects of the church’s ministry.

And it’s not just a matter of explaining things more clearly or studying the meaning of Hebrew or Greek terms. It’s much more helping people through those ‘I just don’t get it’ moments until they suddenly cry out, ‘Oh, now I see!’ The teaching gift sparks revelation. It’s very clear in the gospels that his disciples had these moments of revelation, over and over again as Jesus taught them. He understood the truth and he understood their difficulties in grasping it. He communicated truth and wisdom more fully than anyone else could ever do. He is the teacher of teachers – quite literally. He did it by explaining, by asking difficult questions, by highlighting mistakes as they occurred, and by telling good stories. He also taught without words, by setting good examples.

Jesus taught his disciples, but he also taught the crowds. Here too his teaching went way beyond words and ideas, often he’d share a parable like the Good Samaritan that reached directly into minds where words alone failed to penetrate. This kind of teaching gift cuts through misconceptions and breaks into parts of our being that seem to be based somewhere other than the grey matter in our brains. There are facts and there is understanding; they’re two different things. Jesus cared deeply about both.

And when the wealthy, or the Pharisees, or the Temple priests needed a bit more than a word to pitch them over the edge from not comprehending to fully understanding, Jesus would show them what the Father’s heart was like – ‘Don’t stand on street corners praying where everyone can see you, go quietly into your own room where only the Father sees you and pray there.’ And sometimes there’d be a spark of comprehension. It might only be one person amongst a group of proud scoffers, but it’s so worth it when even one person sees the light and understands a previously hidden truth for the first time.

In the round

Since Jesus is the best example of all five APEST gifts, it makes good sense to look to him for guidance in using them. I’d say read the gospels and notice the things he did and the things he said. Pay particular attention to the way people responded and try to work out in each case which of the five gifts were active, sometimes it may be more than one. Sometimes it’s obvious, sometimes harder to discern.

You’ll see the gifts working (and described) in the New Testament letters as well, look out for them there as well.

See also:

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You might also like:

Pear-shaped
The city on the hill

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If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. (If you don’t see those links, click the article’s title above the main photo and they will appear.) Send a link to friends who might enjoy the article or benefit from it – Thanks! My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome and encourages me to write more often!

Understand and explain

Jesus taught his disciples, but he also taught the crowds. Sometimes his teaching went way beyond words and ideas, often he’d share a parable like the Good Samaritan that reached directly into minds where words alone failed to penetrate.

Students and teacher (Wikimedia)

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9 – activating church

Students and teacher (Wikimedia) -Click images to enlarge

The final APEST gift we need to consider is the gift of teacher. Just like the other gifts, the teaching gift is there for the building of the church, does not act in a controlling way, but is a life-bringing and helping function in the life of the church and the individual parts of it.

Where a teaching gift is active there will be a clarifying service at work. Confusion and misunderstandings will be swept aside. Decades, even centuries and millenia of mistakes and misunderstandings will be exposed and brought out for fresh examination. Teachers cannot sit still or take a back seat where they detect error of any kind.

What is the most fundamental definition of a teacher? It must be something along the lines of:

A teacher is a person who helps younger or less experienced people to grasp and excel in an idea or a process that they have not previously met or mastered.

The photo at the head of this post, and my words in italic above may make you feel the teaching gift is about extending knowledge. But that’s not quite what the gift of teaching is all about. The distinction is critically important so read this carefully… The spiritual gift of teaching has little to do with imparting knowledge, it has everything to do with growing character.

I just don’t get it!

And it’s not just a matter of explaining things more clearly or studying the meaning of Hebrew or Greek terms. It’s much more helping people through those ‘I just don’t get it’ moments until they suddenly cry out, ‘Oh, now I see!’ The teaching gift sparks revelation. Hold on to that thought as you continue reading.

Jesus taught his disciples, but he also taught the crowds. Sometimes his teaching went way beyond words and ideas, often he’d share a parable like the Good Samaritan that reached directly into minds where words alone failed to penetrate. This kind of teaching gift cuts through misconceptions and breaks into parts of our being that seem to be based somewhere other than the grey matter in our brains. Often, we express this as heart even though that’s biologically incorrect. But our languages are full of heart-based expressions – heartfelt, avoir le cœur sur la main, heart-stopping moment, sich ein herz fassen, good hearted or a heartless act. There are facts and there is understanding; they’re two different things, we tend to think of facts being in our heads and understanding being in our hearts.

When the wealthy, or the Pharisees, or the Temple priests needed a bit more than a word to pitch them over the edge from not comprehending to fully understanding, Jesus would show them what the Father’s heart was like – ‘Don’t stand on street corners praying where everyone can see you, go quietly into your own room where only the Father sees you and pray there.’ And sometimes there’d be a spark of comprehension. It might only be one person amongst a group of proud scoffers, but it’s so worth it when even one person sees the light and understands a previously hidden truth for the first time.

As always, community really matters

It’s still like that in the church today. There are many who don’t see the truth but now and then a light comes on for someone – Ding! Anyone with a teaching gift loves it when that happens. Understanding is like a staircase, each step makes the next one possible when the right time comes. The teaching gift enables the teacher to recognise that right moment and drop in the necessary grain of truth so that it makes a deep and long-lasting difference.

Look again at the photo at the top of this article, these are not strangers interacting, they are people who know one another, a teacher and his pupils, they care about one another, they are engaged in conversation, they are happy and comfortable together, the entire class is a kind of community. In the church environment we should all be learning from one another every time we meet. Some people have a gift for making things clear. Make sure you encourage them as much as possible.

Building the body of Christ

Jesus told his followers, ‘I will build my church’. He doesn’t want you and me to build it, but he does pour out gifts upon us so that we, together, can contribute something essential and useful. There’s an abundance of brotherly/sisterly love amongst us when we all pool our different gifts. And that in itself is a secret that has been lost during church history. We need to fully grasp that secret – we all have gifts and we do far better when we share them, recognising them in one another and encouraging one another by saying what we see. This will never happen if we keep thinking only in terms of individual people and individual gifts. We, together, are the body of Christ.

Don’t think in terms of a tyre here and a seat there. A gear lever and a rear view mirror. Understand that thinking about a car is very different from merely thinking about the different parts of a car. You can travel quickly over long distances if you have a car, but if you have only a tyre and a seat you’ll go nowhere. Building a car means recognising the pieces and putting them together in right relationship. Building community and church needs exactly the same skills and understanding.

A big mistake

There is one big mistake frequently made in mainstream churches today, OK, there are many mistakes made, but I want to highlight this one in particular because it’s very widespread and very harmful. It’s also an easy and natural mistake to make.

Many well-intentioned teachers don’t teach Jesus, instead they teach the Bible. Jesus is very much present throughout the Old and New Testaments. But teaching people to memorise or study verses may do little to help them grow in character or grace. Instead we need to bring Jesus himself into one another’s hearts and minds and be changed by his presence. We need to grow in love and in joyfulness, we need to be rooted in his peace, reflect his patience and great kindness and goodness, become faithful as he is faithful and develop the kind of self-control that never criticises and never directs anger or disappointment at the brothers and sisters.

We simply cannot be built on the foundation of Christ unless we come to know him well, so we’re not looking for technical knowledge of Greek and Hebrew, or deep Bible studies. Instead we need to know Jesus as our dependable, older brother, to recognise that he is always present and how to help one another find him again when we lose sight of him. We need to learn that the fruit of the Spirit is more fundamental than the gifts of the same Spirit, but that we need both to function as Jesus fully intends his church to do. ‘I will build my church’.

That’s it for this part of the series. Next time we’ll consider Jesus, the source of these gifts of service. Can we see all five APEST gifts at work in him? What can we learn from him in this regard?

See also:

I wanted to provide links or articles about the topic, just as I do in most of my posts, I looked at a load of stuff but nothing seemed to jump out for me, I didn’t hear Jesus whispering, ‘Yes, put that item in’. In the end I felt there were two videos I should include. Neither of them is specifically about the gift of teaching (though they both mention this gift in passing. Both of them are about the five APEST gifts as a whole. They are both interviews. Alan Hirsch and Neil Cole have both pretty much dedicated themselves to studying , teaching, and writing about APEST. My feeling is that I should link to these two interviews, so here they are.

I’ve met and spoken briefly with both Alan and Neil, and and I’ve heard them both speak in meetings several times. And I trust them to reveal something useful to you, so have a listen.

  • APEST, Interview with Alan Hirsch – YouTube (Follow Baptist Church)
  • APEST, Interview with Neil Cole – YouTube (Cynthia Anderson)

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You might also like:

Pear-shaped
The city on the hill
We are all priests

Useful? Interesting?

If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. (If you don’t see those links, click the article’s title above the main photo and they will appear.) Send a link to friends who might enjoy the article or benefit from it – Thanks! My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome and encourages me to write more often!

Transparency

Some people are not at all transparent, with hidden motives, fears, doubts, and agendas. Treat such people with caution – what you think you see may not be what you actually get!

Ducks on clear water (Photo by Jess Grzeb*)

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Image of the day – 196

What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image whenever I can.

Ducks on clear water (Photo by Jess Grzeb*)

What does it mean to be transparent? In different ways, this word can used of material, of people, and of organisations. The photo is almost surreal, it looks as if the ducks are floating in mid-air above the water.

*Many thanks to Jess Grzeb for letting me use her remarkable photo.

Transparent material

The water in this photo (Lake Bled in Slovenia) is about as transparent as water in nature gets. Light is bent as it enters the water from the air, and again as it returns from water to air. Both water and air are transparent, of course, but they have different densities and the speed of light is a little slower through water than through air. The main effect of this bending is that the water looks a good deal shallower than it actually is. You can easily check this for yourself, fill a bucket with water and put a straight stick into it. The stick no longer looks straight.

Air is a gas, water is a liquid, glass is a solid, but all three can be either transparent or cloudy. Smoke turns transparent air cloudy, suspended mud will do the same for water, and glass can be manufactured to be cloudy as well. But of course, you can only see long distances through transparent materials. The universe itself is for the most part incredibly transparent. With telescopes we can see unimaginably far across the universe.

Transparent people

If a person is ‘transparent’ we do not mean, of course, that you can physically see through them. But metaphorically their nature and motives are clear for all to see. They tend to be open-minded, kind, thoughtful and make no attempt to hide their thoughts and opinions. If they think something they tend not to conceal it, and if you disagree it’s probably no big deal for them. They’re often live-and-let-live people.

Transparent people are useful in society. They say what they mean and they mean what they say. They’re reliable and you can trust them. I was once described by a colleague at work as a WYSIWYG person. It’s an old term from the early days of word processing; back in the 1970s computer screens were rather primitive and could only display text in one, very basic, typeface. On modern devices you can compose the text and images as they will appear in the printed document, that’s WYSIWYG and it makes life far, far simpler. Some people are not at all transparent, with hidden motives, fears, doubts, and agendas. Treat such people with caution – what you think you see may not be what you actually get!

Transparent organisations

So we come now to the third category of things that may or may not be transparent. Governments and companies are good examples of organisations that can vary greatly in their transparency. Few or even no governments or companies are fully transparent, both have aspects that require secrecy such as details of military capability or of new products in development. But not all governments are equally secretive, of course; and the same goes for companies.

Some examples will help here. Here’s a topical example: the Russian government is clearly much less transparent than the Ukrainian government. The presence of a dictatorial president in Vladimir Putin and the presence of a corrupt and wealthy oligarchy puts Russia amongst the most obscured of governments in the world. They are not alone in this, but they are one of the most extreme examples. Ukraine on the other hand has an open minded, democratically elected president in Volodymyr Zelenskyy. There is still some corruption in the Ukrainian system (but show me a government with no corruption at all).

The USA is an interesting case, the nation’s constitution is clear and requires openness and a transparent, law-abiding government. But the rules seem to be regularly flouted or ignored by President Trump who apparently has little interest in (or patience with) order, truth, legality or indeed transparency.

Perhaps among the most transparent governments are those like Switzerland, Canada and New Zealand – WYSIWYG nations.

When it comes to companies, we see the same thing; a wide range from open transparency on the one hand to deliberate obscurity on the other, particularly amongst high-tech businesses with commercial secrets to hide or those trying to make fast profits on illegal practices. Much lower transparency than Lake Bled here!

Governments and businesses alike range from law-abiding openness and clarity to some that are murky and perhaps even corrupt. There is a strong inverse relationship between transparency and corruption.

See also:

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You might also like:

The changing USA
Trump, Vance and fruit
Understand and explain
The Governor gives way

Useful? Interesting?

If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. (If you don’t see those links, click the article’s title above the main photo and they will appear.) Send a link to friends who might enjoy the article or benefit from it – Thanks! My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome and encourages me to write more often!

Stars dancing in the sky

There is beauty in so many natural things – a waterfall, a flower opening from a bud, the swirling patterns in a shoal of fish or a murmuration of starlings at dusk.

Cirencester’s church tower

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Image of the day – 195

What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image whenever I can.

Cirencester’s church tower

On a clear evening during late May or early June, take a look at the western sky after sunset and you’ll see two very bright stars quite close together. They’re not stars at all, in fact. They are the planets Venus and Jupiter. The brightest of the two is Venus, setting slightly earlier than Jupiter until the beginning of June. The photo was taken on 25th May while the two planets were still far apart in the sky. Venus is brighter, the same side of the sun as Earth is. It’s just to the left of Cirencester’s Church tower in the photo. Jupiter is a little fainter, up in the top-left corner. Jupiter is a larger planet than Venus (about ten times the diameter, but it’s also much further away; far, far beyond the sun from our point of view. If you’re struggling to find the planets click the thumbnail image to expand it and you’ll see them both quite easily.

Passing close

The two planets will pass very close indeed in the first week of June. As I mentioned above, it’s merely a line of sight closeness, there’s no chance of a collision. Astronomers call a coming-together in the sky a planetary conjunction. At one time people thought the star of Bethlehem might have been a close conjunction like this, but these events can be predicted accurately far into the future and we now know there are no events from 2000 years ago that would fit the idea.

Nonetheless it’s a beautiful thing to see and you don’t even need a telescope. It’s something you can watch evening by evening with the naked eye or a pair of binoculars (providing the weather cooperates). Serious warning, don’t look until the sun has set. You can damage your eyes by looking at the sun, and seeing it in binoculars is particularly dangerous. Hint: go on watching after the planets move further apart, you’ll get a continuing sense of how active our Solar System can be.

What makes something beautiful?

It’s hard to pin down, isn’t it? There is beauty in so many natural things – a waterfall, a flower opening from a bud, the swirling patterns in a shoal of fish or a murmuration of starlings at dusk. There is beauty in athletics, the perfect pole vault, a new world record, a plunging, almost splashless entry into the water from a high board after a long series of breathtaking manoeuvres on the way down. A special sunset or sunrise. A list of beautiful things could go on for ever!

There’s also beauty in human relationships, children playing together, smiling and laughing; the elderly chatting together about times past. There’s beauty in the flavours of food and drink as well, some combinations are just so special, cheese and fruit, even really simple things like a ripe apple and a chunk of mature Cheddar, or some Brie with ripe grapes and crispy crackers.

Beauty seems, at its heart, to depend on everything good and right. Kindness and gentleness are beautiful things, anger and violence are ugly.

What about me? How can I become more beautiful? Think about it from your own point of view if you are reading this; what can you do or say or think or display that will make other people catch their breath and think, ‘Ah, there’s something beautiful here, something commendable, something I can appreciate and value.

Living and behaving in beautiful ways costs nothing, and greatly benefits those around us. So what is not to like? If everyone on the planet was determined to live better and more kindly today than they did yesterday, what a wonderful world this would become!

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