Just back from 4 days of a self-indulgent holiday break at Crieff Hydro, and feeling that life is good and God is to be thanked. Smudge was delighted to see us – she was at the feline equivalent of the Hydro, but happy to be back stomping around her own place.
Amongst the things to do in the rain – visit old churches. Fowlis Wester is as old as they come in Scotland. A church has been here since the 13th Century and this is one of my favourite quiet places, first discovered in 1972. Time has passed the village by, it used to be a thriving trade centre into the 19th century, and it's now hidden from the main road unless you go looking for it.
The leper squint is one of those generous concessions of a bygone age to those who were otherwise excluded. From this window, and this distance it was still possible for people with leprosy to see the Eucharist being performed, to hear the words, and thus to feel some kind of connectedness in a society where fear, ostracism and a primitive health and safety policy imposed a non-negotiable exclusion. I don't know how many other Scottish churches have a leper squint, this is the only one I've seen, sat beside and wondered about thos all but lost souls for whom this was a window into heaven and the hope that somewhere there was a love that would ransom, heal, restore and forgive.
Leaving the church the sun came out and a glance across the graveyard the snowdrops were astonishingly white against the greys and greens of granite, grass, moss, lichen, the juxtaposition of mortality and eternity, life's promise contradicting death's certainty.
Good places old churches, and old graveyards where the saints of yesterday rest in peace, while encouraging people like me to, as Jesus says, '"work while there is still daylight"!
Spring is here :))
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