Serene beauty beyond bad tiding’s reach
The Lord leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. (from Psalm 23)
In an often fast-paced, stressed out, and conflict-ridden world, God gives us quiet moments in which we can still catch little glimpses of a serene and timeless creative beauty that remains untouched and unperturbed by the fray. One such moment occurred for me the other evening while I was watching a travelogue series called Great Canal Journeys. The show follows octogenarian actors Timothy West (“Tim”) and Prunella Scales (“Pru”) on their canal boat holiday journeys. At the time the series was filmed, this young-at-heart couple had been married for over 50 years and had been traveling the canals together for almost as long.
When the series began, Pru was already experiencing some of the early challenges which accompany Alzheimer’s, and the show touches upon navigating that difficult world almost as much as it deals with how to maneuver through troublesome locks on a canal. Pru’s condition meant that for her, much of life now had to be experienced “in the moment.” One of the benefits of slow-paced travel on a narrowboat is that it can provide the opportunity to do just that—to take a moment to appreciate and reflect upon the beauty of creation, and upon life, love, and legacy.
One such moment came during their journeys along the canals of Ireland (season 3, episode 3). There was a stretch of canal which was particularly wooded on both sides, and Tim remarked that it was almost impossible to tell the difference between the overhanging branches and their reflection in the water. The mirrored landscape made him think of something which A.A. Milne had once said in a poem, The Mirror. Pru, her younger memories still secure and out of reach of the damaging effect of dementia, then went on to recite some of the words. It was truly touching.
It was this poem and the picture it paints of nature at ease, that became then for me in that moment God’s little gift of peaceful refuge amidst the barrage of bad news which had dominated the headlines that day. My computer screen had been filled with stories of growing conflict and more death in the Middle East and political assassinations here at home. But untouched by such wearisome and worrisome reports, and inviting the observer into a moment of peace, was this 100-year-old children’s poem1 pointing to the created beauty of green trees, still waters, and graceful swans. To quote Milne’s contemporary J.R.R. Tolkien, I re-discovered in that moment that “Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
THE MIRROR, by A.A. Milne
Between the woods the afternoon Its fallen in a golden swoon, The sun looks down from quiet skies To where a quiet water lies, And silent trees stoop down to the trees. And there I saw a white swan make Another white swan in the lake; And, breast to breast, both motionless, They waited for the wind’s caress … And all the water was at ease.
At the time of this writing, Great Canal Journeys can be viewed on Amazon Prime. Episodes can also be found on YouTube.
📷 Photo by Drazen Nesic on Unsplash; 🎨 Textual art by MD Sub-creaTions, using the font IM Fell English.
“When We Were Very Young,” a collection of poetry by A.A. Milne, was first published in 1924.