This is the second installment of “Fables and Reflections”
It consists of Fable Two and Anchorite poems.
The first installment (below) provided links to an Introduction and Fable One.
Each piece takes just a few minutes to read. There are 16 in all and I shall post them here every three weeks or so. The series is, in effect, a report back from a working life spent at a fraught frontier, one of Society’s fault-lines. They share learning and seek to offer guidance on how to survive and navigate and make real and beneficial human connection, where connection can be difficult.
Fable Two, “Dame Marjorie’s Dream,” suggests ways you can tell truth from falsehood, the healing from the harmful. In the process it tells a story about Dame Julian of Norwich, an anchoress of the fourteenth century. That is why I have added the set of poems, in case anyone would like to read them. Called “Anchorite Poems”, I think they are really about old age. And though suggested by Dame Julian and her time, I think they were actually inspired the late Elizabeth Bewick, whom I knew and loved.
Elizabeth Bewick was a published poet who lived in Hyde, on the edge of Winchester. While being typically English in some ways, she was also very much her own person, transcending cultural influence ; she was a shrewd and even rather intimidating loner, while being at the same time a kindly and active member of her local quiet community, surrounded by old walls of fervent, anxious, yet settled faith. On her 90th birthday, in the local church hall, on a beautiful day, I named her Dame Elizabeth of Hyde.
If anyone finds value or virtue in these Fables and Reflections, please send word of them to people you know who you think might want to read them. You could simply link them to the blog, or, alternatively, I am happy to send them out as email attachments to people who ask for them, and am already doing that. I would also be happy to send hard copy versions by surface mail to anyone who would prefer to read the pieces that way. Just send me your address.