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Brian Draper |
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Brian Draper |
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This week, I visited Mottisfont Abbey, whose gardens contain an ancient spring, which has never run dry. Its 3m-deep pool looks still as a mirror, yet it flows into a channel that brought fresh water to the village for centuries. As I stood there reflecting, a thought from the Book of Proverbs sprang to mind:
"Many words rush along like rivers in flood,
but deep wisdom flows up from artesian springs..."
Wisdom is such a rare thing - 'hidden treasure', as the Bible calls it - that instinctively, we seem to know it when we find it.
And yesterday's media gently reported the discovery of some such wisdom, flowing up in the form of the words of Kate Greene, who died this year from cancer, having been diagnosed in 2008.
One night last year, at around 4am, she feared she wouldn't make it through till day-break, and so she began to write down her hopes - for her husband and two young boys, in what turned out to become 100 simple points of common sense, advice, principle and wonder.
"Always kiss the boys goodbye and goodnight," she wrote.
"Teach them to be on time, and to mean what they say."
"Get a dining-room table and try to eat together at least once a week."
"Teach them to respect women, and never double date."
"Never leave more than a week before making-up - life is too short."
In the face of her own mortality, Mrs Greene drew deep - and her searing clarity makes you ponder whether life must really be so complex after all.
She distilled the essence of what she loved to do, and wished she could have done, for the sake of her children. "Mummy," she wrote, "would have loved to have hand-fed a wild robin, like she used to feed the squirrels."
For us, there's still time, for such inspiring things. Her list certainly makes you wonder, and wonder is a good thing, as any contemplative will tell you.
"Grow a sunflower now and again," she wrote. I think that's my favourite, and for your interest, I checked, and the best time to grow one is after the last frost in spring. So why not put a note in the diary, as a fitting memorial both to this wise woman, and to her idea; to engage in a creative act that could help us search ourselves, and to ask what truly matters to us, in the end.
"Knowing what is right is like deep water in the heart," says the Book of Proverbs. "And a wise person draws from the well within."