44. Redemptive peace

Draft 2
Man constructs images of his better self. Images that project the person he thinks is inside, to enable others to know him through his own eyes. See what I aspire to, not what I achieve. What I imagine, not what I am. To paraphrase Shaw, man is a dreamer who prefers to see things as they could be, rather than as they are.

This fine parish church is swaddled in rememberings of a green yet distant land, which early settlers regretted leaving whether they did so through incarceration, or through choice. They have created a fond memorial to their departed way of life more than to their redemptive God. Within these walls they have no need to view the olive-grey vegetation, nor be battered by the relentless harsh sun.

Similarly, modern parishioners are sequestered from a reality that reeks of civil disobedience and a lack of respect; where individualism reigns.

Draft 1
Built high on a ridge, deep within a scrubby eucalypt forest, is a reminder of a way of life foregone, of a landscape never to be glimpsed again. The distraught settlers probably did not see it that way, creating, stone by stone, a loving memorial to their God; a place of quiet contemplation wherein they could earn redemptive peace.

In the early days of the colony, this plot also served another purpose. It was a valiant attempt to keep the harsh Australian landscape at bay; to keep the bush under control; to ease the impact of the relentless Australian sun. Although the glorious stained glass window catches the rising sun, there are fewer windows in the nor’east and more in the south, reflecting their lost orientation.

As the years pass, this parish church is clarified into an idyll of the green and pleasant land, a bulwark to modern satanic mills.

Note:This is but a first draft. It was only after I had written the last sentence, that I realised what my topic was. So I shall rewrite later today. But first, some gardening, and then the bloody ironing. Only after all that,the pleasure of writing.