Readers will know that every now and again I mention that if they want to meet the ‘Thinkers’ of their parish they need only talk to the volunteers who mow the churchyard. The man who manoeuvres his machine around gravestones finds his head full of thoughts, and I recommend mowing to anyone who wants to stimulate his mind into thinking thoughts which, in the words of a Gilbertian character, “Would astonish you.”
I am often astonished. Astonished when drivers do not acknowledge someone who has pulled over in our narrow lanes, and at those who throw bottles and chip papers into the hedges. Also astonished that some do not realise that the beauty in which we live and the vibrancy of local organisations depends entirely on people doing their bit!
An old Yorkshire saying goes “There’s nowt as strange as folk” to which my grandfather would add, “And strange folk make a strange world.” This strange world is one that regularly baffles a lot of us. Why, we might ask are things which are obvious to us not so obvious to our city cousins?
For example: Local folk see ‘nature’ at work, and clearly understand that each species predates for food and that a plentiful supply of food will cause predator numbers to rise. We also know that, because humans are the dominant species and that the UK population is growing at the rate of 400,000 each year that, if we do not control other species then they will eventually eat their own food source to extinction.
For example, we know (because we see it) that magpies and corvids steal eggs and eat young song birds. They do so in a systematic way with one bird keeping watch whilst the other ‘works’ the hedge. As corvid numbers rise song bird numbers decline and this occurs in both the city and countryside. Corvid and raptor predation is not the only cause however: Previous farming practices, cats and ‘tidy’ suburban sprawl also adds to songbird decline.
Thankfully, politicians now encourage farmers to plant hedges and leave field margins, and so Country folk now hope that wildlife charities address these ‘other’ reasons for songbird decline. They could educate their donors and use their millions to campaign for ‘control’ of predators. If they act quickly there may yet be a future for songbirds and hedgehogs.
There is no end to my astonishment. It continues at the ability of people to pretend! Footballers who pretend to agony when they are only hurt, BBC producers who pretend to be impartial but who promote a one-sided view of events. The pretence of UK legal beagles that we have a ‘Supreme’ Court, when it is subservient to a Foreign Court in Brussels, and Politicians who pretend that they can change things whilst privately knowing they are impotent.
These examples demonstrate self deception but may also be attempts to hide a truth to one’s own advantage. Either way countryfolk are not fooled. Especially those brought up with the New Testament saying, “The Truth shall make you free.” Free that is, in the sense of letting go of yesterday and thus unclogging our minds to allow us to enjoy today.
But back to those elite thinkers who mow the churchyard. Not for them, self deception or self aggrandisement. They are too close to truth to be misled by the siren voices of the media or the powerful of this world, nor do they mislead others. The mowers of this world are free to enjoy life. Its ups and downs, its joys and its sorrows, its fears and its hopes. They know truth and understand that, like their labours in the churchyard, it is free.
This month we began and end with the churchyard. On the way we talked about powerful people and truth and pretence. All of which reminds me of the memorial outside the Parish Church of Kingsbridge, Devon.
Dated July 27th 1793, Robert Bone Phillip. Aged 63 wrote:
Here I lie at the Church Door.
Here I lie because I’m poor.
The further in the more you pay,
Here I lie as warm as they.
View from the Pew 