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Still in the process of choosing roses for our garden, and have bought a couple as gifts for friends as well. The photo below is of one recently bought and given to a home where roses are loved, and flourish under appreciative eyes. The name of this variety is Strawberry Hill and it is a David Austin rose. 

It's named after Strawberry Hill, an 18th Century Gothic villa (detail of it in the photo), built by Sir Horace Walpole, and now incorporated into St Mary's University College, London. The rose is a vision of loveliness, and the colour begins as deep pink slowly changing to pale at the outer rims. 

Decided to do a one stanza Haiku in appreciation.

Strawberry Hill Rose,

gathered petals of pink dusk,

sun-flushed clouds of dawn.

 

Yesterday I was at the National Galleries in Edinburgh. At one point I was standing within twenty feet of Monet, "The Poplars on the River Epte", Van Gogh "Garden with a Path", and the Singer Sargent portrait of "Lady Agnew". And the odd Gaugin, Renoir and Degas within sight. How good is that then?

But it was the Botticelli I went to see first and longest. "Virgin Adoring the Sleeping Christ Child". This masterpiece of art is also a richly theological and devotional statement. The idea that devotional is in some sense sentimentalised theology, or worse still, non-theologically controlled spirituality, is one of the less clever assumptions of those dismissive of those appropriations of art that combine aesthetic pleasure, thoughtful prayer, and theological reflection.

I'll want to make more of this painting later – but for now. What is the significance of the child surrounded by thornless roses? Very rarely is the Christ child portrayed as sleeping. The use of blue for the sky, the robe and the swaddling cloth, and blue as a symbol of heaven, is surely intentionally significant. The contrast of roses, organic thornless beauty, and the geometric sharpness and hardness of the rocks, suggests the meeting of life and lifelessness, fruit and barrenness, garden and desert rock.The roses and the Virgin's dress share the same colour and the child's feet rest on the soft velvet and satin.

What it all means? Incarnation is both mystery and miracle, yet there is in this painting a tenderness and vulnerability that does not suggest overwhelming power. The central image is of adoration as in the title; the loving gaze of a mother becomes prayer for her child, and merges in the mind of the viewer with our own knowledge of the story. This is unembarrassed Christian story, complete with Christian character, symbol and requiring a Christian hermeneutic. We know the tragedy that follows, but it is the tragic love of God intent on overcoming the tragic brokenness of a world where roses have thorns, and rocks crush, and doing so not in overturning power but through love incarnate, made human, surrendered to the same suffering and death that we all must face. And in that surrender, redeeming suffering, overcoming death and making possible new beginnings of life, the tragic is transformed into hope and a future in God. And all that concentrated in the birth of a child, a child asleep under the watchful love of a mother, whose hands are folded in supplication, the deep longing of love for what she has created, that which is part of her. And the scandal of Christian faith is that such a story as incarnation, love incarnate, is the story of the God we have come to know in Christ. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us…

An old postcard, found in a second-hand book and now a framed reminder on my desk of the meaning of study and rest as idealised in a different age. Notice the lack of a laptop, and I don't think he's holding his mobile phone to his ear, and it's a book not a Kindle or an Ipad.

It's a photo in sepia of Isaac Walton's commemorative stain glass window at Winchester cathedral. The author of The Compleat Angler, he is one of the celebrated writers in English prose and his book a vade mecum of fishing folklore, human observation and the detailed descriptions of fish and fauna which in an earlier age substituted for David Attenborough.

I have no interest in sitting beneath trees in the country reading a book on fishing, beside still waters and green pastures – but just now and then, in our very different unrelenting world, I do have a hankering to rediscover the virtues of slowness, and to do so without feeling guilty:) Takes lots of practice though, and I suspect a I would need a temperament adjustment, slowness not being one of my more obvious characteristics.

Just been to the most attractive Garden Centre right in the middle of St Andrews. It's up a close, roofed over, and filled with plants, shrubs, and assorted garden stuff – it also has what could be called a judicious selection of roses. There is beauty, delicacy, fragility and generosity in a rose – also vulnerability and poignancy, because such glorious extravagance of colour and scent is transient. Maybe such living beauty is only possible at the cost of permanence.

My father grew roses in every garden of each house we lived in – and that was quite a few. The one I remember with most affection was a huge white rambling rose that covered half a gable end of our cottage. Then there was the time I discovered the Peace rose, and for all kinds of reasons, emotional, theological, political and horticultural, I want one again. Emotional because of its story, political because peace-making is in my view the highest political goal, theological because every reminder, intimation, symbol of peace seems to me to touch the deep places in my understanding of God, horticultural because….well just because.

Mary Oliver has several poems about roses. Here are some lines from "The Poet Visits the Museum of Fine Arts".

For a long time

   I was not even

      in this world, yet

        every summer

every rose

   opened in perfect sweetness

      and lived

         in gracious repose,

in its own exotic fragrance,

   in its huge willingness to give

      something, from its small self,

         to the entirety of the world.

I took time today to look at a rose flower, not thoughtfully as in analytically, more observantly as in contemplative waiting. I've no idea how to guage perfection, but the rose I gazed at seemed richly formed, pink white and pale yellow shaped around petals more precisely fitted than any geometry could achieve, and to my eyes achieving what can only be described with the grammatically clumsy term unimprovable. Is it claiming too much to say that looking at and smelling such a flower gives the heart an emotional holiday, and then suggest that this act of recreative attentiveness can for each of us, sometimes, be compared to prayer. Not prayer as petition and intercession; not prayer with words at all; just the willingness to see in fragile beauty and extravagant if casual attention to detail, a miracle that argues against all the functionalism of our technology worshipping world. And in that miracle and argument the rose always wins – but not by arguing. Simply by being and by the beauty of that being, the rose through the utter functionlessness of its beauty, points us beyond our habits of calculation to a way of recognising in this God soaked world, that some things are invaluable in the sense of unvaluable, they are not amenable to the criteria of utility. Like love, kindness, and goodness, beauty, as Mary Oliver says, exists in gracious repose, extravagant self-giving, and encounters us with transformative grace. Or so it seemed as I spent two or three minutes in contemplative waiting before, of all things, a rose.

The blue rose is called Rhapsody in Blue – a David Austin variety that will soon be in our own garden.

One of the delights of Aberdeen is a very fine second hand bookshop run by a friend who is discerning enough to make sure the shop is full of books that are interesting, tempting, unusual, reasonably priced and arranged more or less in subjects and most of them reachable without precarious acrobatic maneouvres on shoogly steps or over-laden shelves to inch towards that one and ease it out of that far away corner up there.

And I came away with loot. A near mint copy of Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling, by Ross King, an account of the years it took to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling, written with the flair of a novelist but in fact a detailed account of genius at work, overcoming tedium, illness, lack of materials, unrealistic demands, and triumphing with one of the greatest achievements of Renaissance art. A rare hardback copy of Thomas Merton's The Monastic Journey, with woodcuts and a number of chapters on such themes as "Solitary Life", "Monastic Peace" and "Contemplative Prayer". And a book for a friend, The English Mediaeval Parish Church, which could be described in a catlaogue as "generously illustrated, spine faded but the volume well bound, solid and unmarked, a good clean copy of a hard to find book". Quite. And my friend will like it muchly. 

There were of course a number I left behind, those books that didn't make the final interview and had to be replaced on the shelf, reluctantly, on account of funds, or lack of same. A clean crisp copy of Simone Weil's Gravity and Grace; a double volume set on Van Gogh which I am tempted to phone my mortgage lender about;
oh, and is there anyone out there still reads Paul Tournier – even know who Paul Tournier was? Some of his books on Christianity and psychology, hugely popular in the 60's and 70's, published by SCM, but now no longer readable two generations on. But for a time this Swiss psychologist was a rare voice trying to build a bridge between Christian faith and therapeutic psychology. The photo belies the compassionate common-sense of this eminently caring man, whose books now read with a patronising tone, but only because we are now constituionally suspicious of all didactic voices. Tournier can sound like a genial grandfather calming over excited, or over-timid children. I still learned things from him that made me think differently about myself, other people, and the sheer complexity of trying to make relationships work in ways that minimise hurt and promote friendship. And yes, the photo does seem to depict a slightly tipsy member of a quiz panel on early TV, but that's Wikipedia for you 🙂

 I'm off on holiday. The East Neuk again. The beautiful village of Crail. Most of the important things already packed. Two novels, one serious and one espionage, a thin theology book, a wee gem called Gift from the Sea, and my slowly being worked through Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling. Some white canvas to sketch out a small tapestry project for a friend. The walking boots, suitably refreshed with dubbin and new laces. A sun hat for obvious reasons and likewise Factor 30. A notebook for thoughts I might think, and might think worth hanging on to. A dongle, in the hope that I'll be able to post a few times while away. Probably some clothes as well – and some food – and two or three to be listened to at leisure CD's. The address book cos I still think it's fun to get postcards as long as the writer doesn't gloat about being on holiday. Everything else is negotiable, optional and non-essential. Till the eruption of that subversive thought, "Oh, I might need that".

The title of the post is a way of demonstrating my self-awareness 🙂 Been a time of re-adjustment and uncharacterictic grumpiness – need time to assimilate, to understand myself in the sense of showing myself some understanding. Unassimilated experience becomes a relentless conveyor belt of what is happening to us, and sometimes we need time to see again, and love again, the human person on the receiving end of it all. Maybe a holiday helps us decide what to do with what happens to us, gives space to examine our choices, stimulates those inner processes that enable us to find again a degree of contentment with the life that is ours. Is that what de-grumping might mean? However, I'd like to explore contentment as a disposition. Not sure it's always a virtue – could be willingness to settle for status quo…..hmmmm?

It's a question I've wanted to ask for a while.

To most people it isn't a question likely to occur to them.

The problem only affects a small number of the population.

Indeed the problem only affects the number of the population who are small.

It's a height thing.

Not my height, the height of the object in question.

Here's the question.

Who fixes the height of hand driers in the loo?

What is the optimum height for the average sized person?

If you raise wet hands to use the drier, where does the excess water go.

There are two answers, both of them right.

Up the sleeve and /or down the sleeve.

Maybe where there's more than one they could be at variable heights.

For the record, I am 5'3" so around 3'6" qould ensure dry shirt sleeves.

Just a thought…..not a complaint…..just a plaintive plea