The Passion in Oban

Driving home from Oban yesterday, as the dusk fell after a wonderful sunset (pictured over Oban bay), we talked about Bach's Passion according to St John, a performance of which we had just heard. And it was a good performance, with the Glasgow Chamber Choir in fine form, an orchestra with some super players in it - that cello continuo! - and some moving solos. Martin's Christus was electrifying - real hair-raising moments - and in a way it was this compelling performance which made me think about the whole story of the passion.

You see, there is a good bit of music still to come after the final words of Jesus - "It is accomplished". (OK - it was in German, but I know the story). And for me, that was too much. It was an anti-climax. I wanted it to end there - maybe a chorale, softly, but nothing more. This is what always happens, and in a way, it's what happens in the Bible too. The Passion narrative is so gripping, so enormous, that what comes after is hard to deal with. And that's me now, 2,000 years on. What must it have been like at the time?

Of course, if the disciples had drifted off in tears after the crucifixion and had left it at that, I wouldn't be where I am now. None of us would. But whatever happened to them - and I don't know what happened any more than anyone else does, not really - it changed them. They were inspired to go out and tell the story, and the story's still being told. And it's that, rather than speculation about what became of the body of Jesus, which convinces me that the resurrection is real. Because otherwise the Holy Week events, the Passion, would be the end. We'd drift out, in silence.

But instead, the music goes on.

Pheasantries

At the end of a perfect spring day, with nary a cloud in the sky, I am left pondering the risky life of the pheasant. We were walking along Loch Striven this afternoon, where pheasants are raised for sport and fed from sinister-looking drums on legs tucked invitingly among the silver birch trees by the loch. Pheasants invite a mixture of hilarity and pity as they scuttle along in the manner of a speed walker determined to keep one foot in contact with the ground at all times. You feel like yelling at them: "You're a bird. Fly, dammit!" - and then they do, whirring out of the undergrowth with heart-attack inducing suddenness.

I thought of these birds, thinking food comes from blue drums, living among their friends in the sunshine, loving and begetting and doing what they do (sorry - I'm misquoting a poem here) - only to be shot and eaten come the season. And I felt sorry for them - briefly. Because I eat meat. And these birds, as Mr B sapiently observed, have much more fun playing chicken with the cars than any chicken in a battery - or even free ranging.

But enough of this bucolic rambling. Tomorrow we head off to Oban to hear Bishop Martin sing the part of Christus in the St John Passion, in his own cathedral. Neat, that.