Been up the North East for the weekend. I was conducting a wedding on Sunday afternoon but we spent Saturday afternoon revisiting familiar places along Deeside and Donside. The countryside has been bruised and flattened by the long freeze and deep snow, but it still lifted the heart to look at dark green forest, mountains on the skyline, and on Saturday the kind of blue sky with a late winter sun which touches that deep place where longing waits to break and heal the heart. There's a beauty in the slow movement of winter to spring that combines elegy with hope, that reminds us how sensitive we are to being old, or young, and how much it matters that we have those days when horizons matter, because they compel vision outwards.
And during our weekend meanderings we saw an osprey carrying a large trout out of the Banchory trout fishing loch (the photo is from here); there were long skeins of geese honking their way north, chevrons of fellow travellers staying in position to make the journey easier for themselves and their neighbours; driving home on Sunday night a stoat still wearing its ermine coat decided to play chicken on the Aucterarder bypass - it lived to boast about it.
The wedding was - well what else? A Valentine Day wedding, two young people telling all the important people in their lives about their commitment to each other for the rest of their lives. They too had been touched in that deep place where longing waits to break and heal the heart. Sharing the day with a family I first met 26 years ago - to the day as it turns out. And the groom was the first of many child and family dedications I conducted in the ministry that started in Aberdeen in 1984. Much has happened since in their lives and mine, and the coming together in prayer, promise and praise was just one more of these miracles of pastoral friendship that make being a pastor more profitable than a banker's bonus! Would I exchange such days for a six figure sum? The question is ludicrous because the answer to me is obvious. Lest there be any doubt. No.
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