Ash Wednesday on the Atlantic coast of Brittany

The small rain down doth rain... it has not stopped, all night, all through the day, sometimes decreasing in volume, sometimes a tiny pause (just long enough to open the door of our little chalet and sniff the fresh soil) ... then hammering down again. A couple of days ago there was even a hailstorm. I enjoy the gentle pattering, love the way it crescendos into excited drumming, with the wind spitting spray across the grass outside, and shaking the last bedraggled leaves off the branches of the huge oaks.

I feel so safe inside this little house.
The large windows look out onto the slow-flowing river with the clutch of yachts’ masts swaying rhythmically, while across the water the bank rises steep and green to where a white house tops the hill, watching serenely what goes on below.
This is a countryside of trees, their many shapes now outlined bare against the grey sky.
Today is Ash Wednesday, a grey day, a day of fasting and quietness.
(I am beginning to grow a little peckish (!) but only have to feel the rolls above my waistline, to strengthen my determination not to eat until supper time...)

Perfect happiness. Just forget the ubiquitous flesh!
Safe and dry; the rain pounds down, the sky behind the white house is a soft unending grey, like the ashes placed in a small cross on the foreheads of those kneeling before the altar (for people who don’t know what I’m talking about, this is a reference to the ash of Ash Wednesday, easy to look up on Wikipedia).
Yes, a quiet grey day. As one of my friends remarked recently, how hard it is to concentrate on nothing: that is, be still, be silent, empty one’s thoughts, be unperturbed and undisturbed, no stress, no fretta fretta...
Yes, the feeling of perfect happiness. Kiss it as it flies — I’m sure Blake was right about that; certainly never bind it fast.
(He who binds to himself a joy
doth the winged life destroy
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity’s sunrise.)
The rattling rain outside seems to increase my quietness within. It’s good like this: I am constrained to sit (old woman with one leg) and watch the great sky beyond my windows. And curb my unquiet thoughts, channelling them into sweet pools of restfulness.
Hm hm. Ashes. Dust. Poor naked creature.
Sweet silence, have I found thee here? I don’t manage to empty all the wondrous words into the wind, words I have shored up through many years; or even to place them neatly on smooth shelves. I use them, of course. Ballast in the stormy waves! My comfort and consolation.

The rain is pausing. I hear a robin singing: jocund seems a good word for his trilling...
Back to the ashes. No, I definitely don’t want to meditate on gloom. No: rejoice and be merry, set sorrow aside. The next stop is the Resurrection.
A heart’s clarion and so forth.
The rain dents the surface of the river, the masts sway, the robin’s song crescendos under the grey sky.