Maybe Avoid Public Spaces on Bank Holidays

 I had been very excited to visit one of London’s “hidden gems”, Kyoto Garden in Holland Park. Monday (5/2/22) was a bank holiday, which didn’t mean much until I got to the otherwise somewhat lackluster Holland Park and walked around marveling at the crowds of people walking around. The garden-in-the-park turned out not to be 1) all that much of a garden - it was basically a walking path around a pond - and 2) particularly “hidden”. The path was swarmed with wanna-be influencers getting their photo at the (admittedly lovely) man-made waterfall. Forget about serenity and reflection. I trekked around the park, did my loop around the pond in Kyoto Garden, and headed back to my Airbnb to pack up to move to the student flats the next day.

(My pictures do not necessarily load on the blog in the order the are saved on my phone; but I got tired of adding them one at a time. Eventually, I may get on here on my laptop and re-arrange them. But probably not.)

The British-est embodiment of a park EVER.

Love the wisteria.

Everyone getting stalled at the waterfall while waiting to move around the pond.

The most photographed element of Holland Park (by way of Kyoto Garden)? I suggest yes.

Lord Holland. Yes, that’s HIS pond. It’s…. a mess.

I love crowds. Especially stupid, oblivious crowds. Bank holiday? Thank you, no.

I headed from Holland Park into the Design Museum, largely because I needed to refill my water bottle and use the restroom, and the Holland Park bathrooms were out of toilet paper. It was interesting, and I needed to be in a better headspace to really appreciate it. (Also, to look better in pictures. Ongoing challenge!)

Life and Death

 Super-dramatic title, I know - but Brompton Cemetery is actually a fascinating example of how spaces of death are merged into everyday life. I spent an hour Sunday afternoon (May 1st) wandering around a city-block-(bigger?) sized graveyard stuffed full of historical artifacts. It’s been around for a couple of centuries at least, and has been planned (re-designed?) with community life in mind. The paths are full of walkers and joggers, and there is a posted dog-walking route through the space. Gravestones are piled together, all different eras, singles and family groups, and everything is roughly laid out in blocks. These sections have varying levels of greenery; some are nearly waist-high fields of weeds and wildflowers, some with stands of trees and bushes, others cut down to turf. I do wonder if there is a grass-cutting schedule…

There’s a major theme running through exhibitions and discussions right now on the Suffrage Movement, and Emmeline Pankhurst was one of the leaders.

Usually, when the community is invited in to this kind of space it’s because vampires are looking for a snack (Buffy).

A very small selection of the headstones and markers on offer - TONS of crosses and Christian symbology.

Fascinating place (includes - locked up! - catacombs) for walking and thinking and pondering mowing techniques.

Although…

 What is WITH the accompanist? What is his deal? The Sacrament hymn was beautiful as he played it, and it was also incredibly distracting (particularly the key change on the third verse). Does he expect no one to sing the parts? Does he not know, for all his apparent skill on the piano, that it is very hard to sing parts when there is random accompaniment all over the place? Anyone in the congregation with perfect pitch must have been going NUTS with the key change and knowing the notes on the page no longer matched what they heard. Or is the fancy impromptu arrangement his way of making the singers concentrate more on the words, since they couldn’t follow the written notes anymore?

Is he being deliberate, or just having fun? Obliviously, delightedly, talentedly, jackassedly having fun?

Argh.

ETA: Next post - Sunday wanderings in a crazy cemetery. Well, not that crazy. And not specifically limited to Sunday; that’s just when I happened to be there. Lots of picture, lots of thoughts. 

Church Is Wild, Y’All

 Caught a bus, made it to church on time, super proud of myself. Also forgot it was May 1st and, therefore, Fast Sunday, and had yogurt before leaving the house (but not the candy bar - Bounty! - in my bag). Slightly less proud of myself, but not cranky. So.

The meeting was a little bit crazy. The accompanist is highly talented and overdramatic; it’s not a BAD thing to play the hymns as written! People can sing the parts to the music when you do! (FYI, floppy-haired drama piano dude.) One of the first testimonies was from an older gentleman (my age? Urgh) with a fantastic beard who talked like a preacher from the early 1900’s. I’m fairly certain that one is not meant to preach to or ‘exhort’ the congregation while bearing testimony. Love the British accent, though. A slightly more confusing accent was up next; he looked like a Spaniard and greeted us in Spanish but his English bore traces of Scottish (verified when he talked about dedicating the ground to bury his father’s ashes in the garden of his mother’s house in Scotland). Great story: he talked about how this experience showed him his family is afraid of inspiration, and testified that following the Spirit is actually a revolutionary concept. The things we take for granted are definitely strange and new, sometimes!

Then an elderly man in a motorized wheelchair came up the aisle, shoved a stroller out of the way that was (literally) in the spot he wanted to ‘park’ in next to a bench, and proceeded to run over a little girl’s foot (twice) while trying to navigate the chair to where he wanted it. He had no idea - at least not until she started wailing. He caught on at that point.

An earnest young man said, as part of his testimony: “I believe in righteousness.” I haven’t thought all the way through that yet, but I love it.

It seemed like almost everyone who got up mentioned when they had been baptized, and a few counted down the anniversary. Justin was visiting from Arizona (he invited everyone to come visit him in the States) talked about a time he was having “a discouraging, but not disheartening, experience”, and I thought that was so profound. Adds some perspective, and a measure of control, even when we’re having some of our hardest times, yeah? He went on to talk about how the Lord is always mindful of us and the things we’re going through. Then a young dad got up, and mentioned how, during an episode of sadness he had the (very normal) thought: “This too shall pass.” However, he was then edited by the Spirit, which revised the thought to: “This too is a gift.” He said that every moment of this life is a gift; it has literally been given to us. Then he bore testimony of the gifts of the Lord and the Spirit and I thought: what about giving all the moments of our own lives as a gift to our Heavenly Father? Give Him the happy moments to share, and give Him the sad/difficult moments as a display of trust that He will know what to do and will help us get through them.

It was cool that nobody was blasé about their testimonies. They were sometimes slightly inappropriate, but what they were saying was always heartfelt and important to them. 

Somebody quoted Sister White from the April 2022 General Conference, on how waiting on the Lord is and should be a sacred place. (I need to go read/listen to that talk. Well, all of them - I was a little out of it this last Conference - and that would be a good one to start with.)

So when I looked back at my notes - I took notes! - I realized that I have a complete Sacrament Meeting talk here, made up of concepts and connections from things people talked about in their testimonies. It was fascinating, and quite lovely. I’ll have to report back (I will probably not report back) if I ever get the chance to give that talk.

Oh, and in this ward the sacrament was at the end. I suppose that might be tricky for some, but after a meeting of testimonies and wonderful moments (even with children shrieking - and not just the one who’d had her foot rolled over!) I felt well-prepped to take the Sacrament.