Trebah

As August comes to its end its most pleasantly memorable day for us was certainly the one spent at Trebah Gardens.  It was one of those perfect days at a perfect place that it is quite possible to get through years - or the whole - of life and never have (especially taking holidays in England!).

 

 

Bathed in glorious summer sunshine, visitors end their walk through the gardens at a private beach area, complete with ice cream of course.  It was almost too hot to sit there but we managed it  . . .

 

 

If only.

If only we could hold these moments as our constant way of life.

 

Poignantly, however, Trebah bears its own testimony to the simple reality that life is not a bed of hydrangeas.  There by the beach is a picture of another year - 70 years ago - at the same spot.

 

 

On our summer idyll came the reminder that as needs must on D-Day this spot had been found to be very suited to launching part of a military invasion.  The walk that we had just done had been the last peaceful walk that many of those soldiers did before losing their lives in Northern France.  It is the stark story of human life amidst creation's beauty.

A Greater Love, A Higher Vow

Here's the video we used in this morning's service.  It repays waiting for the remarkable transitioned coda at the end - it'll give me words to sing along with at the next royal wedding or coronation.  Jesus is what it's all about . . .

 

Methodist Heaven

It's a very nice balcony.

And a very nice cup of tea at a modest price.

Not at all in keeping with the prime spot overlooking the prime square of a Cornish tourist honey-pot fishing village on a brilliant summer's day.

 

The modest price is explained by the setting as the balcony of a Church.  The Church in fact.  But this is not a St Jibble's or St Jessica's but just a plain old Methodist Chapel.  The question is, why in Merrie Olde Englande was there a fishing village which the state church ignored yet where the Methodists took root?

The answer is on the plaque beside a tiny fisherman's cottage . . .