And I used to be a great walker.
We are enjoying Winter Watch from Scotland, and also the Polar Bear programme. Though it is harrowing. They have collared Lila, a mother bear with two cubs, and are following her. She is clearly an experienced and good mother, but times are hard. One cub has already been lost - we don't know how. And from the glimpse of her we get next week, she and her remaining child are not doing well. She has got so thin.
I don't understand why they can't help her out with a few feeds. To film a living being starving and not helping (if you can) seems wrong wrong wrong. However, maybe she and baby are going to be OK. She is clearly a bright and loving mother. And gentle too. At one point, the presenter gets between her and her food (a yummy dead walrus), and she and baby simply wait patiently till he leaves. (Don't try this at home!)
Now I may get a lot of letters from seals pointing out that Lila is not gentle at all as far as they are concerned. To which I would have to say fair enough - and cite some similar letters about them from fish. But the fact is that none of this should have happened. The first chapters of Genesis tell us, clearly and simply, that nature was not created "red in tooth and claw".
"And God went on to say: “Here I have given to you all vegetation bearing seed which is on the surface of the whole earth and every tree on which there is the fruit of a tree bearing seed. To you let it serve as food. And to every wild beast of the earth and to every flying creature of the heavens and to everything moving upon the earth in which there is life as a soul I have given all green vegetation for food.” And it came to be so."
This was not a world full of hunters and predation. This was Paradise - it was Eden. And we are promised a restoration of that Paradise, world-wide. The lion will lie down with the lamb.
Dougal the ExExpat send us some photos of his daughter today. And I find myself saying the same things our uncles and aunts used to say to us. "Hasn't she grown!" I wondered at the time why they were so surprised. Surely it would have been stranger if we hadn't?
However, I hadn't realised how time can change - how long a year is when you are a child - and how short it is when you are retired.
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