Our life has its seasons

from w
My favourite hymn book comes from New Zealand. It's called Alleluia Aotearoa and includes many hymns written by Colin Gibson and Shirley Murray with good melodies and contemporary words, without old-fashioned religious jargon. In the notes on 'Word Editing' is written - 'One of our stated guidelines was 'to recognise the need for inclusive language and imagery'... we have looked for images and metaphors new-minted for our own day and our own land - not borrowed from a dated theology, inappropriate geography or a past world view...'

One I particularly like is 'Our life has its seasons' which is a good one for today, the first day of spring. It's based on a well-known section from Ecclesiastes that was used in the old song 'Turn, turn, turn'. I think it is relevant also to the current discussion in Fiji on Sunday - Siga Tabu and whether there should be a reconsideration of the use of the Sunday as a special day without the excesses of shopping and special sales.

Part of the Gibson/Murray song goes like this:
There's a time to be hurting,
a time to be healing,
a time to be saving,
a time to spend,
a time to be grieving,
a time to be dancing,
a time for beginning,
a time to end,
but there's never a time to stop believing,
there's never a time for hope to die,
there's never a time to stop loving,
these three things go on.


The snow pea seeds have now started shooting so we should have a hundred plants to take from the greenhouse into the 'real' garden. We have five potplants and this little tub showing signs of life. We still have Stage Four water restrictions in Geelong which means we cannot turn on any garden hoses at all so it's still a matter of using cans and buckets of recycled water.

Oops! I said to my son you'll need a lot of trellis for those snow pea seedlings. He said, "They're not snow-peas. I only used that tray. They are lettuce!' Peceli's snow peas are thriving in the 'real' garden anyway.