Reaching Jordan
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Pictures of an adult baptism taken at Yardenit on the River Jordan.
Image of “Deep River” sheet music copied from Wikipedia.
“Deep River” audio recoding sung by Marion Anderson.
Come To The Waters
Each morning sees many of my neighbours collecting water from a standpipe.
Water:
The latest, must-have, life-style accessory…
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Living Waters
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The ancient cathedral in Salisbury has a modern font.
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On it are written words of scripture.
In it is reflected the cathedral’s beauty.
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Consider The Lilies
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“Wealth, the beauty of youth and flowers are guests for only a few days. Like the leaves of the water-lily, they wither and fade and finally die.”
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A Bridge Too Far?
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“Sometimes, if you stand on the bottom rail of a bridge and lean over to watch the river slipping slowly away beneath you, you will suddenly know everything there is to be known.”
Winnie the Pooh
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“Sometimes, if you aren’t sure about something, you just have to jump off the bridge and grow your wings on the way down.”
Danielle Steel
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Faith — is the Pierless Bridge
Supporting what We see
Unto the Scene that We do not —
Too slender for the eye
It bears the Soul as bold
As it were rocked in Steel
With Arms of Steel at either side —
It joins — behind the Veil
To what, could We presume
The Bridge would cease to be
To Our far, vacillating Feet
A first Necessity.
Emily Dickinson
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Tropical Greys
Even the tropics have their grey days.
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Days when tourists fade away, leaving the beach to local lads
And livestock.
Days when all seems strangely muted.
When colour struggles to force its way through the rocks,
iron and concrete.
Days when skies, seas and ships are grey in uniformity:
And slow in motion.
Days when men stand watching,
And apparently, waiting.
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The Season Of Umbrellas
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Now is the season of umbrellas.
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The monsoon may still be somewhere over the Andaman Islands but along the Kerala coastline we see its harbinger.
Looking out from my door
the trailing edge of cyclone Laila
has brought more rain.
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Across the waters
Fort Cochin sits on a peninsular. To reach the mainland means taking a relatively long road journey or a shorter and more interesting trip on the ferry.
Even after four years of regularly taking this boat journey, I experience an almost child-like sensation of excitement as the boat leaves the jetty.
The journey provides a multiplex of sights:
Fellow passengers;
The engine being adjusted;
A working water way;
Boatyards from Portuguese and Dutch days;
And the modern port.
The mainland is reached after twenty minutes.
But after an hour in the modern busy city I am very happy to say goodbye to the expensive, high-rise real estate of Kochi’s Marine Drive
And take a ferry back across the water
To the quiet, faded glories of Fort Cochin
And its ramshackle jetty.
Back to home.
Neither Use Nor Ornament 
