Conkers

Is it just me or are there a lot of conkers on the ground this year?
Maybe it’s been a bumper year for them, with the weird weather we have been having lately anything is possible. I always thought it a shame that there was nothing else you could do with a conker, like make conker jam, or conker pie. It seemed a shame that so beautiful an object had so limited a use. However I heard recently that during the war school children were paid to collect them because they were used in the manufacture of bullets, something to do with the wadding in the gun cases but I am not sure.
Maybe there are a lot of conkers because the children have stopped playing with them... which would be a shame. They were always such fun, and well, yes a bit dangerous. Not so much the game itself, although you could “take someone’s eye out with it” if you tried really hard, more dangerous were the concoctions we came up with to harden the conker. Boiling in vinegar was a favourite of many but petrol was also mentioned by one friend and of course nail varnish and superglue.
Whatever the reason they are beautiful and always set me in mind of a meditation by Mother Julian of Norwich who when praying one day found a hazelnut and holding it her hand she thought about how God held her life in his hand.
“In this little thing I saw three properties. The first is that God made it. The second that he loves it. And the third, that God keeps it.”
A simple truth but one which is a comfort whatever we may face at this time.
So the next time you pass a conker, pick it up and as you hold in your hand think of your own little life held safely in God’s life. Made by him, loved by him and kept by him. You might like to keep it in your pocket as a reminder.
Or if that doesn’t do it for you, why not play conkers with it? You might end up with a champion!
James Allison 2009