You know the bit in Psalm 23 where the Psalmist finds peace beside the still waters and the green pastures? Sometimes that works for me too. But more often when I need a place of solace, silence and solitude, I find it on the edge of the sea.
This has been a week of sadness following a family bereavement. By the end of the funeral yesterday and then the journey home I was tired and inwardly out of sorts. No surprise there.
But this morning I knew what I wanted to do. Sheila and I went down to the front, bought a capuccino to go, and walked awhile. Then I stopped, Sheila walked on and i sat awhile listening to the rhythm of the waves, watching the play of sunlight on water, sand and stone. Few things for me, reconfigure the mind and restore the rhythms of the heart more gently than the sounds and sights of this ancient toing and froing of the sea. I almost never come away from the beach without a stone - shaped and smoothed by the faithful monotony of wave, after wave, after wave - patiently, persistently and playfully rolling rocks against each other, the lapidary friction defining the grain and structure of each stone.
And maybe, just maybe, minds overtaxed and overtired learn again the significance of slowness; hearts carrying excess baggage lighten up in the sunlightl; and that fragile reality we call the self recovers equlibrium and the soul is restored. I often find that the presence of God becomes more tangible, or discernible, in those places where you can lose yourself - by which I mean, for a short time let go of that self-preoccupation that silences other voices and obscures the reality of the God who, as Nicholas Lash says, 'does not shout'.
Haiku, The Sea, and Grace Sufficient.
PRAYER
Not our neat rhythmic prose
but sunlight on sand and stone
speaks our heart's true need.
HOLINESS
The gentle rumble
of stone on stone; the sea's gift
of polished granite.
HEALING
The liquid mercy
of waves, the sand's kind friction,
grace that heals, and saves.
(C) Jim Gordon
I took the photo while finishing a wonderful capuccino to go from The Pavilion Cafe.
(c) James M Gordon, 2012. Please ask if you want to use.
Floral calculus,
beautiful geometry,
beckoning the heart.
Amongst the gifts from my grandfather who grew championship begonias, and from my father who showed me how to take cuttings, propagate and care for pot plants, is an appreciation for flowers. And from my childhood roaming Ayrshire farms and fields a familiarity that has never bred contempt for flowers wherever they grow. When Jesus said consider the lilies of the field it wasn't mere metaphor (if metaphors ever are merely 'mere'). Jesus was urging careful attention to beauty's detail, theological imagination to live with the delicate tension of accident and providence, and the contemplative logic of faith - if such prodigal beauty is God's gift to the world, "how much more" God's prodigal love for all he has made, including me.
So when I photograph a flower, I capture a moment of attentive gratitude, of theological imagination, of contemplative logic that when all are combined, become a wordless prayer of praise to God for beauty. To look at a flower, to really look, is to see and hear within, one of those elusive intimations of what makes us human, and capable of finding in beauty that which both breaks and heals the heart. Alongside the beauty of holiness, is the beauty that creates the longing for it.
You're welcome to write your own Haiku in the Comments. The photos were taken while on a day retreat with our College Staff.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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