This year March will be entirely taken up with Lent and its various traditions, not forgetting Mothering Sunday on 27th (advance warning for all parents and children!).
March is traditionally associated with wind, but we have already had more than our share in February (perhaps we can hope for a March discount!). I’m not sure about naming storms as we do now – it seems to me we only encourage them into special efforts to live up to their elevated status.
Lacking elevated status was “Woodbine Willy” who died of influenza in March 1929 (8th), aged only 45. Many people thought that he (Revd. Geoffrey Anketell Studdert-Kennedy was his proper name) had worn himself out as a chaplain in the First World War, spending weeks looking for, and after, troops in the trenches where he was always ready to supply Woodbine cigarettes to those who wanted them. I suppose in 2022 we would not encourage the smoking habit in such a way, but times change – remember that the then Queen distributed tins of tobacco to members of the armed forces. Funny how things turn out.
Talking of pollutants, Rudolf Diesel was born in March 1858 (18th). He of course became famous for the invention of the engine named after him, but he died at sea in perhaps suspicious circumstances in (or falling off) the SS Dresden in September 1913. A steam ship ….. funny how things turn out.
He might have benefitted from the work of Sir William Hillary, a wealthy Isle of Man lifeboat volunteer (six broken ribs amongst other rescuing injuries!) who on 4th March 1824, called a meeting in London which agreed to form the National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck which in 1854 became what we know as the RNLI. Funny how things turn out.
Finally in this roundup of March miscellany, we know the great hymn
New every morning is the love
Our wakening and uprising prove;
Through sleep and darkness safely brought,
Restored to life and power and thought.
It was written by John Keble who died on 29th March 1866. Keble’s hymns are well-loved, and I think we do well to remember a verse we sometimes omit
Old friends, old scenes, will lovelier be,
As more of heaven in each we see;
Some softening gleam of love and prayer
Shall dawn on every cross and care.
Keble felt that the more we can see of God in anything or anyone, the better it (or they) appears (appear?)
Even March winds.
Colin Dixon