Since I began my Lenten project on using the 5 senses more, I've been visually noticing a lot more ordinary stuff, especially outdoors, and one thing I rather like, visually if not practically, is rust. And water stains on buildings, and green lichen on fences, and discoloured, stained or chipped walls. I suppose this is completely impractical, but all these apparently negative things make for better Instagram photos (even occasionally suggesting the shape of a cross into the bargain).
Weathering is bound to happen outdoors - call it honest ageing. It happens to faces too. At school I learnt the poem which begins 'they shut the way through the woods/ Seventy years ago./ Wind and rain have undone it again...' It seems futile to resist. Keeping things perfect, untouched, unchanged, sealed in a time bubble, is impossible anyway, especially for humans, so we may as well get the cameras out and embrace the effect of 'moth and rust' and take comfort from the fact that in glory, things will not suffer from such corruption, not even our bodies.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. If I'm not mistaken that's a full blown Easter resurrection thought....
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