Living Wittily

Scunnered: more on tartan existentialism via Haiku

Some more wisdom from Scunnered:

ARISTOTLE ON SCOTLAND

Nature produces

nothing without good reason:

except midges and neds.

 

BLIND MAN'S BLUFF

Me? Humility?

Noted for humilty

me, noted for it.

 

SEE

Ordinary folk

on investigation are

extraordinary.

 

And finally....not an answer to Dawkins or Darwin - more a question fatal to the dawkins mindset

DARWINS PETIT EVOLUTION

There's no designer

in evolution. But what

of clear light of love?

 

All taken with thanks from Scunnered, Des Dillon, (Edinburgh: Luath Press, 2011). My book of the Year for the dentist's waiting room, the long checkout queue, an easily held read while drinking coffee on the move, a devotional time when you don't feel particularly devout, placing surreptitiously inside your personal organiser to help you make it through tedious meetings, and nplacing beside the phone for those conversations that go on and on..... just a few suggestions on how to get the best out of this gem.

 

Scunnered and other Scottish Philosophical Concepts

Des Dillon's wee book, Scunnered. Slices of Scottish Life in seventeen gallus syllables, (Luath Press), is a tonic. Sometimes funny, sometimes angry, somtimes amusingly angry; considering in haiku such philosophical concepts as midges and neds, the Gulf War, wind turbines, psychology, consumerism and much else, trivial yet serious, wistful but laser sharp.

ATTENTION SEEKERS.

Self assertion is

the very heart and core of

all conversation.

 

THE NECESSARY BLINKERS

Life - a series of

disappointments glued brightly

together by hope.

 

HA HA LLELUJAH

Cosmic but comic

angels fly because they take

being holy lightly.

......................

More of this tomorrow!

What does that have to do with the price of fish?

Now here's a retail mystery that is hard to understand but easy to solve - if there's the will to do so.

I stopped on Thursday night for a fish and chip tea on my way to Aberdeen.

The menu offered for £8.15 small haddock with chips + pot of tea + buttered roll + ice cream.

I ordered but said I didn't want the roll or the ice cream.

Went to pay and was charged £7.55 for the fish and chips, and £1.20 for the tea - total of £8.75.

I said I had had haddock and chips (three hads in a row:)) tea.

No I hadn't had the ice cream or roll - but if I took them now I could have the cheaper price.

So I have to eat more calories to get it cheaper, huh?

Or I take the roll and ice cream, but leave them on the table, and get the cheaper price.

Or I don't take them at all, and pay 60 pence more for less food.

Now how does that work?

I reasoned reasonably, persuaded persuasively, charmed charmingly, looked pained painfully, and eventually was charged for the fish tea at £8.15

That was at the Bridge of Allan chip shop - and let me say, the fish and chips were superb. So not knocking this fine establishment, (which I've patronised for years and will again), just asking them to not create the kind of offers that either waste food or waste waists!

Fish Supper Haiku

Light, crisply battered,

deep fried piscean banquet,

served with chips, and tea.

 

Buttered roll, ice cream?

Superfluous additions

to a perfect meal.

 

Fish Supper Fibonacci

Fish.

Chips.

Enough.

Fish and chips!

Forget the ice cream!

Battered haddock, not buttered roll.

Calories, cholesterol and saturated fat

are all fine in moderation, so choose your vice carefully and stick with fish and chips!

 

 

Haiku and Holiday in Ireland 5: The Burren, the Faith and the Pub

Amongst my favourite books are those which don't have their edges trimmed. Instead of neat guillotined sides there is a roughly textured layering of paper sheets, not a concession to economy but an aesthetic delight that makes each page unique, and when lying on its side, gives the whole book a soft sense of happenstance, the binding together of different sheets into a finished whole that looks so right that any attempt to machine it into uniform neatness would be unthinkably crude.

Imagine then a large geological volume with sheets made of rock, miles long and wide, lying on its side with the edges facing the sea, grey and green in colour, and formed over millions of years. The layers are clearly differentiated but belong together, the geological pages lie flat one on another and their edges are untrimmed.  And if you can imagine that, then you have some idea of what The Burren is. A massive geological structure and substructure that dominates northern County Clare. We visited it and walked on it, over it, alongside it by the sea. And looking at those places where it layered its way down to the sea was like standing beside a gigantic volume of natural history, created millions of years ago.

The Burren has some of the most diverse fauna in the world. Even the small area of seashore we explored displayed all kinds of small plants, flowers and grasses. 

1.

Laid aeons ago,

Carboniferous limestone,

layered stone pages.

2.

Barren Burren rock,

diversity of flora -

fertile paradox.

We also visited a number of Irish pubs, and as well as the company and conversation, I took time to look at some of the pictures and writings on the pub walls. In several we saw fading photographs or pictures of three very different historical figures. I couldn't help sensing that the fading pictures were slow process reminders of a slow relinquishing, generation by generation, of the Catholic faith, the Christian tradition that has so defined the history, culture and spirituality of Ireland. There were often pictures of Jesus or Mary; sometimes a photo of JFK; and often images of John Paul II (and the present Benedict XVI) - but I was interested in the reluctance to remove the pictures of the Pope of the people. A long conversation with two Irish friends, over a wonderful meal and an afternoon of meandering, themselves no longer regularly practising their faith, but a tangible sense of loss, and anxiety that their grown up children, and their grandchildren would be very different people living in a historically changed Ireland, leached of the dynamic cultural colour that comes from shared religious belief.

Whatever theory of secularisation we buy into, and however we interpret the decline of Christian faith and belonging in Western Europe, there is something profoundly unsettling in living through a transition away from those values and convictions that have, like the Burren, been laid down over generations till they all but defined the human landscape. And the Church of Jesus Christ, in its varied traditions and expressions, is called now to exist in a place where familiar landscapes, known topography, cultural comfort zones and previous privilege are being swept away with the same ruthless thoroughness as those last glacial ice flows that stripped vegetation and topsoil from 1200 square kilometers of NW County Clare, leaving a more barren surface - but one where smallness, diversity and beauty could still flourish.

And maybe that is as good a metaphor as I can think of for the reinvention of the Christian community - flowers in rocky places, beauty surviving an ice-age environment, Christ-embodying community flourishing in a globalised world where human value, and humane values might otherwise perish in an inhospitable climate.

Haiku and Holidays in Ireland 3: The Burren and the Drystone Dykes

The Burren is a remarkable slab cake of layered rock that dominates the north west corner of County Clare. We drove round it and through it, walked on it and over it, and meandered at its edges where it meets the Atlantic Ocean. Sheila captured some of the flowers in the rocks on the camera - more of these the morn.

One of the features of the landscape we saw is the dry stone dykes and walls. I've always wondered at the skill, precision, and artistic flair of the dyke builder. All shapes and sizes of stone, worked and cut to fit into a straight, stable length of wall, and without the use of cement or mortar. So walls are built, statements of separation, dividing lines of ownership or rights, symbols of ownership and its boundaries.

When I was a boy I used to accompany old Jimmy Welsh, (not the artist in stone shown in the photo), the tractorman and dyker at one of the farms where I grew up. Every summer he repaired the drystane dykes around the fields, and once built a new dyke alongside our farm cottage. I was his helper as a 7 or 8 year old. Never learned his skill, but have since seen the dyke years later, standing neatly, straight and testimony to a skill I hope we never quite lose from our countryside.

Looking at these in Ireland, I couldn't avoid the Robert Frost poem, with its line, "something there is that doesn't love a wall - that wants it down."And I was left with those mixed emotions admiring the skill and beauty of a well built drystone dyke or wall, and realising its function, to keep out, or to keep in. So I wrote a couple of Haiku - not to make any particular point. Just to note that there are important points that walls make.

1.

Hand built drystone walls;

mortarless human constructs,

neat, strong, exclusive.

2.

Hand built drystone walls;

mortarless human constructs,

neat, strong, inclusive.

3. 

Hand built drystone walls;

low enough for shaking hands,

and conversation.

Haiku and Holiday in Ireland 1. Joyce Country and Connemara

 Last week we were in County Clare, over in Ireland, visiting family and having our first visit and sighteseeing trip to the Eire. The flight from Edinburgh to Shannon was ridiculously fast at under an hour - but still long enough time to wonder if the Ryanair cabin crew were taking the mickey trying to sell smokeless cigarettes! While there I had a go at some Haiku, trying to condense richly varied experiences into 17 syllables. As a piece of indulgence because I am still on holiday I'm going to inflict some holiday photographs and several Haiku on unsuspecting, and even suspicious visitors. 

Recently been listening to Chris De Burgh. Used to have several vinyl albums and never replaced them with CDs. One of his best love songs is Connemara Coast, which I've listened to a lot recently. The love for the country and his woman are both celebrations of beauty that needn't negotiate a surrender - the heart is won.

We spent a brilliantly sunlit day going up through Connemara and Joyce Country as far as Kylemore Abbbey (pictured) - a round journey of 270 kilometres. The scenery through the mountains and valleys was as wild, rugged, inspiring and beautiful as the west coast of Scotland. I still enjoy the freedom and the joy of driving through country that is there to be admired, and especially if the scenery is so attractive it becomes a matter of responsible citizenship to stop rather than drive on while distracted by such unabashed natural beauty. Oh, and I promised to mention Joyce's Craft Shop up in a place called Recess - because I'd asked the proprietor how I could get a piece of uncut Connemora marble for a friend, and he raked around a barrel over in a corner, found a lovely wee piece and told me to take it back to Scotland for nothing, and tell everyone that though Ireland is skint it's folk are still generous. Absolutely so. 

Here are two Haiku written out of sheer pleasure taken in looking at scenery that was breathtaking. Cliche? Yes, but a cliche is a description that though used often is sometimes used quite precisely. That's how I'm using it

              Inagh valley

Grey green pyramids,

landscaped stone, embroidered trees,

mirrored, framed with sky.

Sphagnum moss, gnarled trees,

ancient sky-reflecting lough,

green and blue at peace

The first describes a beautiful land; the second does the same, and quietly suggests a better harmony of colours than the history of Ireland, and our own West of Scotland, have often afforded. Sky and water, grass, trees and moss - the light and life of nature knows nothing of sectarian colour codes. This was a peace full day.

Haiku, Isaiah, and cultural fatigue syndrome.

Preaching this Sunday on Isaiah 40 and on the theme of weariness. I often explore Scripture text by reframing its themes into the disciplined focus of Haiku. Sometimes it works better than others - but most times it allows a serious playfulness, and invites an alternative approach to exegesis - contemplative exegesis. The three Haiku below acknowledge the soul fatigue and body weariness we often experience in the stampede of the Gadarene swine that we call daily living, in a culture built on an unquestioned assumption of constant economic growth and now facing the realities of an eaually unqestioning recession.

Isaiah 40 is a text for a culture like ours, which bought into the worship of finance and lost heavily when it's god began to dissolve by acid of its own making - a culture that now needs to find a less exhausting deity, a different liturgy and a new vocation as stewards of a fragile creation. One way Christian's witness to the Gospel in such a culture, is by a life less driven by acquisitive competition, and more impelled by agapaic generosity. But that will mean Christians like me learning to see the world differently, because from the heightened perspective and with the precision sighting of the eagle. But such a radically different worldview only comes when we wait, and are ourselves upborne by strength beyond our own, by the one Isaiah describes with defiant confidence, as the Creator and Redeemer.

Three Haiku on Isaiah 40. 29-31

Unable to run,

weariness weighs down the soul

unwilling to wait.

...

To walk and not faint;

yet the body has limits

we cannot transcend.

...

Borne on eagles wings,

resurgent strength uplifts me,

changing my worldview.

Two Haiku: Looking at the Sea from Crail Harbour

Two Haiku: Looking at the Sea from Crail Harbour

I

Sea, sky, stippled light,
faint pencil-line horizon,
fading into haze.

II

Surface sunlight, gleams
like hammer-beaten silver
on liquid landscape.

Picasso, Pentecost and Haiku

 

Picasso, Pentecost and Haiku

 

Invading Spirit,

Gatecrash our solemnity

With holy fervour.

The Church that’s drinking

Intoxicating Spirit,

Never lost for words.

 

Rushing mighty wind,

hurricane force holiness,

mission impelled church.

 

Searing tongues of flame,

“Inextinguishable blaze”,

purify our hearts.

 

Speak in other tongues,

Of love, of peace, of pardon,

People reconciled.

 

     Tower of Babel,

    Communication breakdown,
    New hermeneutic.

 

Pentecostal Gift,

As Given, Giving, Giver,

“The Go-Between God”.

                                                       Jim Gordon

Scottish Weather Forecast in Haiku

Dreich heavy drizzle
insinuates, and slowly
seeps through your Berghaus.

Raindrops in trillions,
the same amount down the drain
bailed out RBS.

Scottish May Forecast:
mist, mizzle, miserable,
wind driven soggy.