Springing thoughts

Two days after the last snow left

I saw the tiny hint of life

in colour, purple, on the mud

which rain had flooded winter-long,

and thought of Spring.

Encouraged by the silent sun

the lack of wind, the sudden song

- a blackbird sitting on a pole -

in air so silent I could hear

the rush of wings above my head 

as pigeons - should I call them doves?

 - set off briskly over roofs 

and gardens, sodden mossy lawns

and foodless shrubs where dunnocks live

I stopped, for long enough to feel.

But what I felt was not the joy

that children feel when freedom calls

but rather that nostalgic pain

more keen with every passing year

that tells me each Spring takes us up

the path towards that distant peak

where only faith says flowers will bloom.

C.M.M 02/18

Advent Song

Look, God, look

in the vastness of your dark

hear this song

in the chorus of the world

where I sing

for the glory of your coming

held by love

as the music pours from me

a flame within

as the night falls around me

hear my prayer

and come through the darkness

hold me waiting

as you wait to be born.

©C.M.M. 11/05

I wrote these words six years ago. Advent for me, as I've probably blogged before, is a wonderfully Celtic experience born of darkness and tiny lights and being out on the edge of the hugeness of what to the ancients must have seemed a limitless sea. I cannot conceive of Advent in the Antipodes. Not long after I wrote it, Mr B, aka the musician John McIntosh, mentioned that he might like to set it to music, but it took him to this year to do it, and it was finished about three weeks ago. It is quite, quite lovely.

Today it was performed for the first time. And I really mean that: until this afternoon we had never heard it with the four voices for which it was written. But today we had an Evensong at Holy Trinity, a variant on the traditional Anglican choral service in which a quartet - including me and Mr B - sang the anthem, the responses and a plainsong psalm with a harmonised response for the congregation. The church was dimly lit - a combination of half our usual lighting, all the candles, the red heaters that give at least the illusion of warmth, and tiny lights clipped to our music stands - and the atmosphere electric. When we stood at the back of the church to begin with the Matin Responsory, the silence was absolute; when Andrew prayed, the silences between his words fell like a blessing; when we sang the Advent Song I felt once again the limitless power that takes over when we are all totally immersed in the moment. There was for me the additional dimension of hearing people take such care over my words - it's an awesome thing to write something and have it handed back to you so beautifully. 

Andrew's brief homily reminded us in no uncertain terms that Advent is not Christmas. I don't think anyone there this afternoon was in any doubt about the magic of the season: the exquisite tension of the waiting, the longing. The great sound of the final hymn - Lo, He Comes - came like an explosion of emotion. And when it was over, and we finally tore ourselves away from the place where the  barriers between earth and heaven had grown very thin indeed, it was snowing. 

On a day such as today, I would be no-one else, and nowhere else. 

Grey day transfigured

Holy Trinity church
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

It's a grey morning. I'm already damp because my umbrella was in the car and I had to fight my way down the drooping garden so my legs are uncomfortable and I'm already chilled. As we swish up the back streets of Dunoon to church, I wonder what I'm doing. My mood matches the day; most of my summer activities are over; the sun has gone. I'd have been better staying in bed with a book. The organist seems in no better fettle, and I forgot to tell him we are supposed to be keeping the Transfiguration, so we don't really speak. Besides, we're a bit late.

There is no heating in church - it is, after all, summer - as I sort out hymnbook and liturgy (thank God - not the Grey Book). There are also no children, as the Rector is on holiday and has taken Mrs Rector who does the Godly play at the back of the church. Apart from some scraping and banging from the rear, later revealed as "sorting the electrics for the coffee", it is relatively quiet as the organ music begins. I recognise the music after the opening, drifting notes: the organist is improvising on a modern/traditional scottish folk tune. It is absolutely, heart-rendingly beautiful.

I am plainly not alone in thinking this. I hear a whisper from somewhere behind me: Ohhh - that's lovely. And a stillness falls on the people, even those who are still arriving. Prayer is suddenly possible, distraction and restlessness quietened by the lilting line, and I am glad I have come. Even when the music enters a dark, sombre place it seems entirely appropriate (I subsequently learn that the organist was distracted by the thundering down the aisle of Someone on A Mission and had to go where a wrong note took him) and the melody emerges, intact and serene, just in time for the final quiet cadence.

I am now in a place where anything can happen; the gloom has been dispelled and the transfiguration is possible. And reflecting on the experience, and the prayers and farewells and greeting of long-missed friends that took place when the Mass was over, I note that we need this variety. We need joy and noise and exuberance, and we need silence and mystery.

And somehow, in the profound silence, there is music at the very heart of things.

All Souls celebrated

It can take an unaccustomed service, something out of the ordinary, perhaps, to remind me what it is I love and value in my church. All Souls was such an occasion. A strange time to celebrate the Eucharist, at 5.30pm in the early dark of the beginning of winter; a stroke of genius to use the lighting on only one side of the church, supplemented by the red glow of the infra-red heaters and the flickering of candles - not just the altar candles, but an extra cluster in the choir. This was added to during the reading of names: as we remembered those we have loved and see no more we lit candles and left them there.

The names were underpinned by the quiet playing of the organ - the Kontakion for the Departed, and a further musical meditation on the In Paradisum - and there was also silence, a silence far more complete than we ever experience on a Sunday morning. And this is what I love: music and silence; singing and prayer; dignity and simplicity; words to recall and to heal; and at the heart of it all the Eucharist.

Requiem aeternam dona eis Domine.

Contrasts recalled

Found myself thinking back to our trip to las Vegas two years ago - one of our "let's escape the tail-end of the Scottish winter trips", another of which I shall soon be off on. A quick look at the flickr set of photos from the trip revealed a pleasing patchwork of colour; I've reproduced a section of it here.

The interesting thing for me is that this particular section represents what I most recall about the trip: the huge contrast between the silent tranquillity of the desert and the frenetic sounds and lights of the city. The desert is all pale blues and greys - even the vegetation has a blue-grey tinge - while the city, and in particular the Strip, is alive with colour. The liveliness, of course, is artificial, as fake as the interiors of the casinos replicating Rome, Venice, Paris. There, the noise is constant: the background of the tunes the one-armed bandits play incessantly, the changed chords for a win, the hum of machines rather than the sound of conversation.

But in the desert there is nothing. No birdsong, no sound of water, no wind, no smells. A purity of place that I have experienced nowhere else. And it is the desert that I remember.

Slip of the tongue?

A wonderful, poignant moment at this morning's Remembrance Sunday service. One of our few old servicemen went out to stand at the altar during the two minutes' silence, waiting to take the wreath out to the churchyard where there is a war grave, of a serviceman who died in 1918. After the silence he spoke the usual words - only this year we all heard him say: "They shall not grow cold as we who are left grow cold".

Dead right too. The heating hadn't gone on in time to make much difference, and someone had left the door to the tower open so that any heat was vanishing as quickly as it was created. The miracle was that no-one so much as sniggered. Guess we were all so cold we didn't really think about it till afterwards.

Hymn coming good

After a week of negative postings, time for a cheerier word. Two really good moments in church this morning:

First, there was a moment or two of perfect silence - apart from the quiet organ music which seemed, miraculously, to have hushed even the most insistent noise-makers - before the service began, as if all there were holding their breath in anticipation. (Actually, there were two further minutes of silent prayer in mid-sermon, but this was somehow less miraculous)

And secondly, the first hymn. We sang Wesley's O for a thousand tongues to sing.... to the tune Lyngham - a tune I first sang 45 years ago at choral camp to these words:

There was an auld Seceder Cat,
And it was unco gray;
It brocht a moose into the hoose
Upon the Sabbath day:
They took it to the Sess-i-on,
Wha it rebukit sore,
And made it promise faithfully
To do the same no more.

We were told at the time that these words were used so that choirs practising on weekdays could learn their parts without singing holy words, and we bellowed them with glee. Thing about this tune is the absolute need for the men to com in strongly without the upper parts at the last line, which is repeated several times in imitation till it all comes triumphantly together at the end.

Now, in our wee church we are somewhat short of men, especially since the eighty-something tenor decided we didn't give him enough to do and took himself off to the kirk, so this hymn could have been a sad failure. But what was joyous was the way that having faltered somewhat in the first verse the men there got steam up by the second verse and by the end of the hymn were giving it laldy. And it was all the more joyous because it was so unexpected.

So there you are. A great tune, seriously old-fashioned, and words full of poetic diction and curtailed syllables (to fit the scansion) - but a great result. And suddenly I felt at one with the world and in complete accord with my fellow-worshippers. Guess I'm in the right church, huh?