Looking back on yesterday's carol service, two very different reflections - one mine, the other from a total stranger. Mine first, though. And this was how strange it was to hear a poem of mine read by someone else - for yesterday was only the second time this has happened to me. Suddenly something intensely personal takes on its own life - grows up, if you like - and heads off into the world in the manner of your child going off to school holding someone else's hand. Furthermore, because another person reads with different phrasing, the words take on a different resonance, so that yesterday I heard something new, even though I knew it was coming. The first time this happened, some years ago, I didn't know that the person leading the meditation was going to use a piece of mine, and I found myself thinking "this is very familiar - I wonder who wrote it"...
The second feedback of the day came in a chance meeting in the street, when a woman whose husband had attended the service reported to Mr B that he had enjoyed the singing immensely - but that it was of course a younger choir than was usual in Dunoon, with young voices. And I thought of our group, reading glasses and all, average age pushing 60 - and smiled.
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