What I really noticed yesterday at Church on You Tube was the green grass. When Edward and I first went to England in 2008 (I had already been in 2001 with my oldest daughter) we left huge piles of snow here all around our house and when we arrived there it was so green; it was culture shock I guess in some ways to have such lush green everywhere we looked and we were in London heading for the train to Dorchester where my cousin would meet us. It was so green in Dorchester and all along the way although I did keep falling asleep as we traveled along.
It always brings to mind my grandfather's favourite poem "And did those feet in ancient time" known best as the hymn "Jerusalem" in the Anglican Church:
And did those feet in ancient time,
Walk upon England's mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On England's pleasant pastures seen!
And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?
Bring me my Bow of burning gold:
Bring me my Arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold:
Bring me my Chariot of fire!
I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In England's green and pleasant Land.
Beneath the poem (from the preface to his epic: Milton: a Poem in Two books) William Blake inscribed a quotation from the Bible (just the portion in quotes): [And Moses said unto him, Art thou jealous for my sake?] "Would (to) God that all the Lord's people were Prophets", [that the Lord would put his spirit upon them] Numbers Chapter XI. verse 29
We only know that William Blake's parents lived in London, England. I suspect he is descendant of the North Molton Blake family but have never set out to prove that and probably will not. That might mean he is descendant of the Bretagne Blake family that first came to Devon in the early 1500s or he could be descendant of the Blake family at Calne (trying to discover if they were descendant of the Blak family of Rouen coming in 1274 to England) as they traveled far afield from Calne (no ideas on that).
It is a beautiful poem and continues down through the ages as the tribute to a beloved country by one of her beloved sons. With three grandparents and a father born in England (and the adults lived there until adulthood, with my father coming to Canada with his parents as a child of nine years of age), my English roots are clearly seen and of course I have just that one tiny Canadian line - my mother, her father and his mother with all the rest born in England as far back as I can trace. But I do have ancestral Scot and Irish lines slowly being discovered over time. Routledge from the Highlands and my maternal great grandmother likely from Ireland (perhaps in the early to middle 1700s) and Scotland before that (planters likely in the 1640s). But for the most part just very English from different areas - Devon/Somerset, Hampshire/Dorset/Wiltshire, London/Surrey, Warwickshire/Staffordshire/Leicestershire/Shropshire, East Riding of Yorkshire, Cumberland - amazing really to have such a cross section of England in my ancestral past.
Church was really very lovely yesterday and the green grass a memory of my times in England in 2001, 2008, 2010, 2013, and 2016. I think the joy of traveling was something that Edward discovered when I finally persuaded him to go to England in 2008 (I had been trying to get him to go for nearly 43 years then!). But once he made that first trip back and forth he just couldn't travel often enough - he loved it.
I am watching Moses on Netflix and it is very well done thus far into it.
The world has survived from World War II which I think was meant by Revelations to be the end of time (perhaps put into my brain by my grandfather; I just think I have always felt that way) but we survived and created the United Nations out of all that disaster. If only the dictators of the world would leave the rest of the world alone and let us make the world a fitting tribute to our God. Evil, jealous, greedy dictators continue in our world and create all the problems that exist.
On to the day. Teatime and Latin.
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