Tittle Tattle Newsletter
Sponsored by Harden Congregational Church
Issue 13 week beginning 21st June
Goit Stock House and Boating Lake 100 years ago and 50 years ago
Today
Today will never come again and tomorrow is not promised. It is so easy, the human thing to do, to concentrate on ourselves, to look inwards, particularly at this time of imposed isolation. Perhaps what we should be doing is looking outwards, not at some undefined moment in the future, but today. Today will never come again and tomorrow is not promised.
Shouldn’t we appreciate who and what we have in our lives and try to be a blessing to others. Let’s encourage someone, take time to care, love with all our heart, never take anyone or anything for granted, make a difference.
Let’s start today!
‘We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands concerning the word of life. This life was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it .’
[1 John 1]
‘Jesus said I am the Way the Truth and the Life’
[John 14]
Two love poems: centuries apart
In normal times, I manage to read a fair amount of fiction but for reasons that are not entirely clear, I am struggling to get immersed in a book. So the other day, I picked up a poetry book I have had for many years, entitled ‘The Nation’s Favourite Love Poems’ and found myself enjoying the poems all over again. Here are two of my favourites.
- This poem by William Shakespeare composed in the 16th century speaks of true love. He argues that true love is a love that never changes; if it does it was never true or real in the first place. Even though the people experiencing true love may change as time passes, their love will not.
Sonnet 116
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no, it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
- This poem by 20th/21st century poet, Vicki Feaver describes an experience many have known or can imagine; giving up someone we once loved from the desire to be free, only to discover that freedom can be pretty lonely.
Coat
Sometimes I have wanted
To throw you off
Like a heavy coat.
Sometimes I have said
You would not let me
Breathe or move.
But now that I am free
To choose light clothes
Or none at all
I feel the cold
And all the time I think
How warm it used to be.
Rainbow Children
