Last night was one of those strange juxtapositions of experience the oddity of which isn't obvious till you think backwards.
9.00 to 10.00 was five a side football, requiring someone my age to have a sufficient sense of recklessness, to resurrect whatever skills I ever had, and balance these with a sensible consideration of what is still possible. Got flattened near the start and was playing catch up with my dignity for the rest of the game!
10-10.20 drove back listening to the CD of the month for me – Renaissance, Harry Christoper and the Sixteen, and listened yet again to Allegri's Miserere and felt that was Vespers and Compline sorted for the night.
10.20 to 11.00 a cooling shower, tea and buttered toast, and some time browsing in Karl Barth IV.3.2 chasing a paragraph I'd read earlier but hadn't marked and wanted to post on this blog – still haven't found it.
11.00 till 11.25 reading poetry while having a bottle of water and came across a poem by Robert Herrick that I'd all but forgotten but which used to be a favourite – an entire blog post could be dedicated to what that means 'used to be a favourite. Anyway here's the poem I read just before lights out – the quaint olde worlde spelling and erratic punctuation is found in a late Victorian anthology of devotional poems, bound in green leather which I picked up for 80p years ago.
GOD'S MERCY
Gods boundless mercy is, to sinfull man,
Like to the ever wealthy ocean:
Which though it sends out thousand streams, 'tis n'ere
Known, or els seen to be the emptier:
And though it takes all in, 'tis yet no more
Full, and filed full, then when full-fild before.
Does anyone still read Robert Herrick?
The photo is of the North Sea from Aberdeen front – not quite the ever wealthy ocean of God's mercy, – too cold for that!
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