Message from Julia
It is good to be able to be sent on my way with such huge appreciation and affection. Thank you to everyone who has contributed to my present and for all the well-wishes I have received over the past months. I trust the new vicar will feel as much loved as I have been.
It has been a long year of grieving. The time is coming for us all to embrace new rhythms, relationships, realities. There is a huge task ahead to bring healing through the arts and creative practices. I am glad to see St Peter’s commitment to supporting musicians and artists embedded in the documents produced for the appointment of a new Vicar.
Relocating to Wales in a pandemic is not how I had been planning my ‘retirement’. Life these days is slower, not because we are living in a rural community (broadband is better here) or because we are growing older (we have more time for healthcare), but because everything is disrupted by Covid/Brexit.
We are living each day led by the weather, restoring a terraced hillside cottage garden and decanting 50 years of numerous interests and pastimes.
The Book of Nature is my constant companion. Thanksgiving daily for the ever-changing landscape and soundscape – hills, sky, birdsong, brook. It is simple to practice here an awareness of deeper things. Prayer babbles like the brook running alongside the house.
Wondering how to be a priest without a flock, I was struck by these words by the 13thcentury Persian poet and Sufi mystic, known as Rumi:
Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder.
Help someone’s soul heal.
Walk out of your house like a shepherd.
May we all bring healing and peace wherever we walk
With many thanks & love to all
Julia Porter-Pryce
Image above:
Tibetan Tree Peony
This unknown medium high, deciduous shrub with large yellow ball shaped flowers appeared in the garden in May. We eventually identified it as Ludlow’s tree peony, endemic to south-east Tibet, where it is called lumaidao meaning ‘God’s flower’.
