When I was a child I used to go to the Onion Fair at this time of year. Autumn will always make me think of dark nights and the sound and the lights of a funfair. The sound of hurdy gurdy pipe music. Then there were the prizes. I used to like fishing the ducks out of the water channel and lifting them up to see what I had won. Sometimes, if I was very lucky, it was a goldfish; a tiny little living creature in a plastic bag and discoloured water. I would take the thing proudly home, and if it survived to the weekend on its diet of lumps of bread, it might graduate to a goldfish bowl bought from the local pet shop. If the pocket money stretched, it might have even acquired a friend to keep it company. However, the little fellows never lasted long. They would be found floating on the surface or even worse develop fungus that ate away at them, or develop sores. It was, I realised, just a problem with goldfish, they were sickly animals.
The pond
As I write this piece I can look out of the window, at a large stretch of green water. It's a 2,500 gallon pond, edged with algae-covered rocks. It looks as though it has been there for ever. In fact for the first two years of our life here when people visited the garden they would comment in a questioning way. 'Has the pond always been here?' Their brains told them that the garden seemed to be built around the pond, whilst the other bit of their brain said 'Wasn't this all lawn when Arthur lived here?'. Little did they know the blood sweat and tears of moving fifty tons of rock from our previous home, and making good the ponds we left behind without them. Lurking in the pond are the koi, they occasionally emerge to hoover obscene amounts of food from the surface. They are very large. The normal comment should anyone observe them when they arise like Leviathan from the deep is, 'Cor, they're big! Bet they cost a lot.' Well in fact they cost very little, because they were tiny when I bought them, they've just grown because they are at home in their environment.
Why do my fish prosper? Well I'll share the secret. All successful koi owners know it. I keep water. I don't keep fish. The baby goldfish in your bowl dies of stress, the illnesses that kill it are opportunistic, getting a hold because the animals immune system has been shot to pieces. Some of my goldfish who live with the koi here will die of old age, but the last sign of rots or ulcers on them were just after we moved here when they'd been disturbed by the journey. My koi thrive because they live in clean water. If you think I can be boring when I talk about computers and making compost, you should hear me talking about water filtration systems! They are not overfed, and have lots of natural greenery because I don't make the water clear. They are not disturbed and not overcrowded, they have space. The only antiseptic or chemical I ever use is natural salt, very biblical.
Stress
What can we learn about living from my koi? Well, that stress kills or at the very least harms us. Stress is part of being a human being but sometimes it can become too much. Modern life puts stresses on the human being, for which we were never designed. Just imagine people queuing to get onto the M6 from the M54, with raised blood pressures and sitting sucking in all that carbon monoxide.
To thrive we need to find time and space in our busy lives to rediscover the still inner core of our lives. We need times of space, of prayer, of time for God, time to think of those we love. You can't come and lie in my pond for fifteen minutes a day, you'd stress the koi. But you can find that just fifteen minutes of quiet prayer a day might literally change your life. Fifteen minutes spent in contemplation is not fifteen minutes wasted because you'll return to that great list of tasks that fill all of our days with a fresh mind and a proper perspective. If you can't pray on your own, start this new way of living by coming along to church on a Monday night, you'll notice the difference and soon your life won't be complete without it.
As I write this piece I can look out of the window, at a large stretch of green water. It's a 2,500 gallon pond, edged with algae-covered rocks. It looks as though it has been there for ever. In fact for the first two years of our life here when people visited the garden they would comment in a questioning way. 'Has the pond always been here?' Their brains told them that the garden seemed to be built around the pond, whilst the other bit of their brain said 'Wasn't this all lawn when Arthur lived here?'. Little did they know the blood sweat and tears of moving fifty tons of rock from our previous home, and making good the ponds we left behind without them. Lurking in the pond are the koi, they occasionally emerge to hoover obscene amounts of food from the surface. They are very large. The normal comment should anyone observe them when they arise like Leviathan from the deep is, 'Cor, they're big! Bet they cost a lot.' Well in fact they cost very little, because they were tiny when I bought them, they've just grown because they are at home in their environment.