The Good Life ... evening 13/40

So his life is over. Richard Briers died today at the age of 79 after very sadly lamenting recently about destroying his own lungs by smoking so much.

I remember him as a young Tom in the 1970's sitcom, 'The Good Life', with Felicity Kendal. I'd join millions for each episode to watch them as they carved out a self-sufficient life in a London suburb.  There was always something deeply attractive about the simplicity of their life, it's muddy earthiness, and the unconstrained excitement about the simplest of produce from the garden.

Even though there's so much to weep over, there's no escaping that life at the orphanage has much of 'The Good Life' quality about it too. There's the indelible interweaving of people and seasons, crop and table, harvest and happiness which in our world has been 'supermarketed' out of our experience. There's a captivating beauty in the land that's cultivated and in the dam from where the fields gulp their water ...

Our teams love heading up to the dam and enjoying the peacefulness of the good life it offers, and they love climbing the steps, floor by concrete floor, to the top of one of the main buildings to watch sunsets that burn into memory, and silhouettes so different to those on our own horizons ...

There's a feel of 'The Good Life' in the absence of clutter too. I spoke to my son Sam at the orphanage again at the weekend and discovered he's now read five books since arriving there. Five! Before going he hadn't read one book cover-to-cover in his life! But that was because of clutter ... always something else to step between eye and page and distract. But not in India. Life is simple, and somehow for that reason life has a goodness to it also.

I'll remember that in the tent this evening. The goodness that is the traveling companion of 'less' and allows us to find joy in the simple pleasures of shelter, safety, clothing, food and warmth.

The fantastic news is that with the help of today's wonderfully generous donations our total including Gift Aid has burst through the next thousand pound way-post and now stands at £3167.50. We can hardly begin to imagine how much simple 'Good Life' that will buy so far away ...

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