Creative change

Days are so changeable – one day it is balmy sunny summer weather and the next cold windy and wet.

When the sun appears there is good heat in its light and baby leaves thicken and burst forth cheerily. But those bare branches, later to green, allow driving rain to pass easily.

The name suggests a 'big place of birch trees' and in Neolithic times this would have been an attractive wooded area.

The stones had been hidden for millennia and were discovered in 1940 by people cutting peat. Ancient field boundary walls and hearths suggest that it was inhabited and enjoyed from about 3000BC for several thousand years into the Bronze Age to about 1200 BC. Then the deep bogland formed and the site 'lost'.

The continually changing weather is mirrored in the endlessly dynamic land. The flow of time in place reminds us of our own lives and their many twists and turns in the cycles of life.

The Taoists talk of the dragon that is local and also of one that travels over the whole planet, its journey bringing modifications to create and enliven the Universe. Take a moment to recognise and bless your life's creative changes.