So we are now in the season of Pentecost, and Summer – officially. May is a month on the cusp of seasonal change – could be Spring, could be Summer; but now that June is here, Summer is, as the Mediaeval poem says, ‘i-cumen in’. It’s arrived. And I can see the logic of the government’s intention to use today’s date as a signal for a step-change in the way we manage the Covid-19 epidemic. All change for Summer!
But while it was officially still Spring yesterday we were out on the Forest for an early evening walk, hoping to ‘catch’ the skylark. We walked a couple of hundred yards from the car-park to an area where I’d heard them before, and I felt uncertainly optimistic. Then, from fifteen yards in front of us, a skylark burst up and away. It circled upwards, cascading song, then swerved away and plunged back towards the ground, swooping low and away from us.
A different sort of sighting from those I’ve written about before, this was a different kind of delight, too. For there is something very different and special about a delight shared with another. Hearing the first cuckoo in Spring on a solitary walk is one thing; spotting a skylark in company with another as Spring turns to Summer is a different order of experience. Shared delight is at the heart of being human; we were made for one another.
Fr John
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