Category: Uncategorised

I'm a stationery mug.

Not a stationary mug, i.e. someone who is both daft and immobile.

No. A stationery mug, i.e. a liker of all the things you write with and write on.

Sure. The computer, the printer and Microsoft Word produce high quality documents with a little help from my fingetips – but I still like to write some things, holding a pen or pencil or ink brush, physically forming the words, ink flowing from somewhere deep within the mind, through hand and pen, and leaving a trail of meaning on the paper.

I own an expensive Waterman fountain pen which I use to write special letters and cards.

I own an equally expensive Waterman ballpoint pen to impress others when I am attending those committees where others tap away at various electronic artefacts, for my part preferring a well crafted lacquered pen like the unrepentant Luddite I occasionally am.

When it comes to what you write on, I like notebooks – especially A5 notebooks.

So like the stationery mug I am, I was browsing in The Works and came across cloth covered, finely decorated, A5 notebooks with good quality paper, a couple of hundred pages, and at a ridiculous remainder price.

In the big bookshops and other upmarket places that sell notebooks to the Journal writing public, you'd pay nearer £10 or more for a stitched quality notebook like these.

So. £2.99 each.

Stationery mug here buys 3 – one for my study desk in Westhill – one for my study desk at College, and one to replace whichever of these two gets filled first.

And what gets written in them? Some of the stuff that eventually makes its way into Living Wittily; plus other footnotes and quotes from whatever is being read; ideas as they form slowly, take and then change shape, and evolve into understanding; and those frequent fleeting gifts of thought that unless written down are like the sparrow in the Celtic legend, that flies in one end of the barn and flies out the other, and is gone, its vanishing intimating the brevity of life!

For years I've kept different kinds of what used to be called a Commonplace Book, a repository of what at different times has seemed apt, important, funny, significant, worth attending to, and to keep safe whatever is ( to coin a clumsy word) shareable, until the time comes to share it. Off to note down a thought I just had…..

The morning started with a large plate of cereal – muesli and crunchy nut cornflakes, healthy and not so healthy balancing each other:) Then a walk up Glen Dye  – not too long but far enough; and saw a golden eagle doing the lunch patrol, a sight always worth a long walk. Back in time to creep into Old Aberdeen bookshop and browse for a while amongst the shelves. And came away with three books, which will occupy around three inches of shelf space. Yes. I've started counting the inches and feet of shelving needed to home my books. But these ones are worth the space.

This is one of the best books on R S Thomas – recommended highly by that unapologetic evangelist for all things RST, Chris over on Blethers – see sidebar for the link.

The poetry of Thomas is amongst the most poignant and perceptive formulations of those unsettling and inevitable questions about faith, God and ourselves that human life and circumstance can push at us. It is poetry that can be tender and angry, wistful and defiant, playful and cynical, hopeful and resigned, gentle and harsh – but the darker wing of these four pairs tends to dominate. And that gives his poetry an authority and credibility for those who have walked through valleys of deep darkness, those who have braved disappointment without inner capitulation to self pity, and those for whom God is love, but love that is tough, at times mystifyingly so.

Maggie Fergusson's biography of George Mackay Brown has been on my get it list for a while. Too busy with other things, and reading other stuff. But mint hardback for a quarter of the new price means it now dispalces other holiday reading plans.

Brown's poetry is cherished by those who read him and stay with him. I remember first reading  "Song for St Magnus", written in 1993, and asking the Orkney saint to intercede for the women of Bosnia and Somalia. At the time a friend in our church had known Brown as a personal friend while working in the second hand bookshop around which he often lingered. She and Charlie Senior (Mentioned often in this book) had befriended Brown, and now and again we read his poetry together when life had become a bit much for her. In the Song of St Magnus the poet asks for priests:

In this time of hate

   (Never such hate and anger over the earth)

May they light candles at their altars

This day and all days,

    Till history is steeped in light.

And while we are talking about poets and their poems, this book by R F Capon is a celebrated exploration of Jesus' parables. I have no hesitation whatsoever in describing Jesus as a poet – both in his use of words, in parable and story, and in the way his own life enacted human experience with attractive persuasion, so that words and actions came together in a natural rhythm, a harmony of the spoken and the demonstrably real.

One of the best blurbs I've read adorns the back of this book:

"Capon releases the parables out of their right-handed prison and frees them into the land of left handed mystery where they belong. He reminds us that these parables are not theological propositions calling for analysis or requiring systems of thought. They are pictures, images, poetry – left handed communication calling for faith and demanding obedience." Jesus the poet – in words and life – he is the picture, the image, the poetry, of God. A thought that Paul had long before me – Colossians 1.15, now there's a poem! And Luke 15 – there's another one!!

The whole creation speaks thy praise

that so our soul rises

out of its mortal weariness

unto Thee,

helped upward by the things

Thou hast made

and passing beyond them

unto Thee

who hast wonderfully made them:

and there refreshment is,

and strength unending,

St Augustine, Confessions Trans F J Sheed.

Not long after Sheila and i got married, a salesman came to our door, and when I answered he asked, "Is your mother in son?"

Last night I went to a concert which was pay at the door, and was assumed to be a Senior concession.

So what happened between these two incidents of mistaken age. Quite a lot!

Anyway. Said concert was a performance by the National Youth Strings Academy with a programme of Coreli's Concerto Grosso, Bartok's Roumanian Dances, and Shostakovich's Sinfonia for Strings and Orchestra. The lead violinist was superb. During the Shostakovich piece she held the music together during the long sustained argument between her violin and the rest of the ensemble. The tension built up to the point where you are sure she will falter, the note will go flat, or her arm will get tired and the bow wobble – no chance – this was a brilliant performance by a group of young people who simply dived into the scores and didn't drown. And what they needed in mature experience and long honed skill, they made up in energy, gift and a compelling sense of thereness, right at the heart of the music. Loved it. 

The village of Kilfenora is famous for more than the filming of Father Ted during the mid 1990's. The name means Church of the Fertile Hillside, and within the ruined but covered nave there are several very fine carved stone crosses. Ireland is a land in which the geography and topography is littered with historical artefacts, and that history is demonstrably Celtic and Christian. Long before the sectarian divide which betrays the spiritual tragedy and the ethical paradox of Christians engaged in reciprocal hatred and mutual mistrust, and at times foments bloody violence in the name of God or land, long before that, there were deep traditions of faith, richly textured stories of Christian spirituality, mystical and mysterious figures whose lives were touched with fear and awe and a longing to draw near to God.

Amongst the landmark achievements of Celtic Christianity are the standing crosses, stone carved witnesses to the Gospel, centuries old reminders of a faith that is not easily erased, forgotten or ignored. And whatever else our postmodern hunger for relevance and meaning might question, these stone crosses silently bear testimony to a faith that can survive questions because our deepest human answers fall short of its own eternal realities. Creation, incarnation, atonement, resurrection; Father, Son and Spirit; sin, forgiveness, reconciliation; church, sacrament, service; peace, justice, joy; faith, love and hope. So standing for a while gazing at these larger than life stone crosses, I felt I was incorporated into something vaster than my personal experience of God, immensely wider than my own denominational tradition, defiant of all theology that makes claims of certainty locked into human words, and deeply rooted in a faithful history of dicipleship that our postmodern impatience might fail to understand, and again pay the price.

Ancient celtic cross,

silent witness to Love, carved

in grey weathered stone.

Sometimes we have to see what we see from the perspective of danger. The Cliffs of Moher are dangerous, and by accident or intent, have claimed many lives over the centuries. So there are walls and fences, and signs warning of danger, prohibiting passage, spelling out the consequences of risk taking. And I know about the  health and safety imperatrive – risk assessments and policies and strategies to help people stay healthy and safe.

But these cliffs are not only to be seen – they need to be felt, their long argument with the sea heard, their wind carved faces seen as the indomitable expression of defiance. To look over the edge, to sense your own smallness, to feel the wind pushing and shoving, to make the mental calculation of height and drop from cliff top to rocks or sea – that too is part of the impact of these cliffs. Still. We sensibly viewed them from safety – and we saw them, and felt something of them. But not their utter thereness; not the seductive pull to the edge to really see and fear; and not that humbling awareness that these storm sculptured walls, towering out of the waves, were there before us and will be there after us.

You can take photographs. You can listen to the crashing waves. You can gaze for ages at the long held lines of the Cliffs of Moher which for incalculably longer ages have held back the sea. And still there is a surplus of significance, an awareness that this is a place where our humanity is reaffirmed, paradoxically, because it is a place where our transient living fragility is contrasted with these aeons old petrified rock fortresses.

God is not an hypothesis derived from logical assumptions, but an immediate insight,

self evident as light.

He is not something to be sought in the darkness with the light of reason.

He is the light.

A J Heschel, Man is not Alone, page 75

Surely God will always receive a surprise of a handful of fools –

who do not fail.

There will always remain a spiritual underground

where a few brave minds continue to fight.

Yet our concern is not how to worship in the catacombs

but rather how to remain human in the skyscrapers.

A J Heschel, Insecurity of Freedom, page 23.

There are currently a number of problems relating to comments disappearing which Typepad are currently trying to fix. If you left a comment in the past week or so and it hasn't appeared, then something in the software has eaten it! Apologies for this, and also from Typepad who are trying to sort it.

There is also a problem with the edit function which means I am currently stuck with this font and size. Sorry for all of this. I'm hoping it will be resolved soon. Chris and Geoff and Catriona – your comments are amongst the recent casualites. If you still want them posted, then please resend them and I'll get them up. The problem arises when I want to delete spam – it seems deleting one knocks out other approved comments.

Will let you know when it is fixed. Meantime keep commenting and I will simply stop deleting anything till the problem is resolved by the very good team at Typepad. That ain't flattery – they are very good.