Hansard, Footprints and Late Sunlight.

Last evening I was restless. Lock down does that. For all our attempts to look for the positives, and all the well meaning urgings from others to find ways of using well the time and freedom from routine responsibilities, some days during lock down are just mince. 

Now, in Scottish vernacular the descriptor 'mince' has important negative vibes. Indeed, the Scottish slang use of 'mince' found its way into Hansard, the record of Parliamentary proceedings at Westminster in 2016.

Kirsty Blackman, MP for Aberdeen North described some of the standing orders as 'mince'. On being asked subsequently for a translation, she Tweeted,  "The word I used was *mince*." Mince is Scottish slang used to describe something which is below par or rubbish." That is now a footnote in the official record. 

So I use the word advisedly, and in its Hansard definition. Some days are mince. But not many days, and seldom a whole day. When such times come walking helps, and so does the spiritual practice of taking photographs.

My camera has become a way of re-framing the world. Walking with eyes attentive to what is there, and mind deliberately turned outward to the world, you begin to see what otherwise would simply not exist to the preoccupied mind. So much time and energy is needed to sustain the inner life of the introspective temperament; so in recent times I've come to recognise when the time has come to quieten the inner conversation, still the swirling movements of thought, and turn to the world outside of this ever present inner me. It's the thing to do when the day just doesn't seem to be working.

I walked down to Arnhall Moss, a mile from our door, and stood on the path, the sun slanting behind me, and noticed what looked like a sunlight footstep pointing the way. Of course it was mere coincidence, an accident of light requiring a far fetched hermeneutic to think that it could have been, well, meant. But in fact it was well meant. On yet another day of sameness and constraint, a Hansard day, that was beginning to feel like mince, "below par or rubbish", I stepped into a wood touched by late sunlight. And that light falling across my path  for all the world shaped to reassure, a beckoning forward, an invitation to walk in the sunlight and shadow. 

Only when I came home and looked at the photograph did I make all these connections, and sense the heart-lightening message of that sunlit footprint. And then a further nudge from Who knows where, the familiar rhythm of a favourite song we will sing again in our church as soon as we meet again in the freedom of friendship, fellowship, worship and praise: 

The Spirit lives to set us free, 

Walk, walk in the light;

He binds us all in unity,

Walk, walk in the light! 

And then from a very different source, another hymn, written by someone for whom many days were mince. The poet William Cowper suffered throughout his life with prolonged periods of depressive illness, a chronic sadness that could escalate from low grade self-doubt to desperate self-despair. Out of such inner anguish he wrote several hymns about how to survive days that are mince:

Sometimes a light surprises
the Christian while he sings;
it is the Lord, who rises
with healing in his wings:
when comforts are declining,
he grants the soul again
a season of clear shining,
to cheer it after rain.

Last evening in Arnhall Moss, I proved Cowper right: "Sometimes a light surprises..... 

Comments

[Leslie McCurdy]

I sense another series coming on, Jim, based on the "Scottish vernacular."