Of fear, cheese and a shoogly crozier...

Two rants in a row. Never mind, today feels more positive. Largely, that's the doing of two Argyll and The Isles clergy who managed to assuage the wrath stirred up by The Bigot of Ardentinny and the hapless local paper (do they really think about what they print?), so today I'm celebrating that.

We're so lucky. When you have a Dean who can cheerfully put into amusing perspective the lunacy found in some threads of Christianity and a Bishop whose sermons never fail to inspire, it seems almost worth the angst of worshipping on a badminton court (Andrew, I thank thee for that word). And when the local paper's intransigence and lack of savvy releases you from the tedium of writing half-baked localpaperese (I just made that up) after lunch on a Sunday, you find you have the energy to celebrate on your own blog.

So, from today, my mental image is of +Kevin, behind the altar, singing his own descant to "Sing Hosanna" at the top of his voice. There are others - the shoogly crozier at the beginning, the mitre at a jaunty angle as +K waited to be allowed to bless us (we needed to sing first). And it seems from Facebook that there may have been some cheese-throwing; one hopes it was inadvertent, but one never knows.

The local paper, remember, turned down a piece because it was too theological, didn't have enough "news" So here's today's news.

Do not be afraid.

Or a headline? NO MORE FEAR, SAYS GOD.

Good, eh?

Unlocking the brain

It's interesting what influences can unlock the creative bit of the brain. Having written nothing new for several weeks - and not having the slightest desire to - I found a poem forming as I drove home from Lay Training today. We'd been identifying themes for the church year and discussing with regard to Christmas the themes of birth and the reactions to that experience. Then I read an interview with Seamus Heaney, which reinforced much of my own experience of writing, and this acted as the trigger to go and do something about it. So almost 31 years after the event I found myself writing about the last time I experienced childbirth.

You can see the poem here.

Of poetry

I've been having an interesting exchange with BiL about a couple of the poems I've published recently. Of course I'm used to explaining why a poet does this or that - it was part of my job for long enough - but doing this about my own work throws up some new experiences. There was a time when I'd go off and try reworking a line because of a comment or question, but recently I've found that I'm quite sure that I've written what I want to and can explain it as confidently as if it were some well-known text. But how do I know? Well partly it's a result of study and reading a great deal of poetry with an eye for the poet's technique; partly it's an inner ear thing - the thing which has me scribbling out and redrafting as I work on a piece.

Another interesting aspect of the last few weeks has been the reappearance of the need to write after several totally arid months. One poem about my new grandchild - my total output over the whole summer - wasn't exactly white-hot creativity, and yet in the run-up to Advent I've found myself responding to a range of emotions in poetry, including one which I stuck on the back of a scrap of paper one night when I should have been tranquilly preparing for sleep. (This had me so energised that I lay awake till 3am - not a good idea) I have no idea if it'll last, this outburst, but it's great while it does. I've not even been to Second Life since Friday!

And a virtual Mars Bar for the first to spot the homage of the title of this post.