Pushing Back the Dreichness.

P1010822The Scottish word 'dreich' is characteristically expressive, and said in a slow Scottish accent conveys quite a lot of its meaning. A 'dreich' day is a day that is grey, damp, lacking in sunlight, cold, and not likely to do much to lift the spirits. It's usually used to describe the weather, but that same word with its cluster of associated downer words, accurately sums up our mood when our inner climate is grey, sunless and lacking life and energy.

The Psalm-poet found his own way of describing the soul exposed to experiences that have the same dampening effects on the spirit. "Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me?" (Psalm 42.5) The gift that the Psalm poet gives to his readers is permission; yes, he says, it's OK to feel down, let down, overshadowed by anxiety, undermined by sadness. While the usual expectation in prayer is to thank and praise God, we have permission to come before God with our complaints, our burdens, and our emotional life laid low by whatever experiences deflate and deplete us. 

The above photograph was taken on a dreich day in Drum Castle gardens. The climate that day mirrored exactly the semantic range of 'dreich'! The grey filter of drizzle, low visibility and muted sounds, cold and damp, and no chance of any sunlight any time soon. Then the robin began to sing. In the midst of greyness, this red-breasted singer was defying the elements with an elemental song of its own. Sometimes a sacrament just happens. You don't plan it; there is no liturgy; no time to rehearse it, or prepare for its coming. It just happens. It is a gift event, a moment of revelation when colour and sound defy and push back the greyness. 

Like all the rest of us, the Psalm poet had his share of dreich days, enough of them to know that they are not forever, and even when they last, they needn't be the only mood setter in town! He had his own song: "Hope in God, for I shall yet praise him, my Saviour and my God!" On a dreich day, this wee robin sat up there singing into the greyness, a sacrament of song, a parable about the power of praise to push back the dreichness!   

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