Backward in Fear?

Having an extra hour on a Sunday morning gives time to think about what we do - on Sundays, for sure, though not exclusively - when we go to church. Having spent yesterday with a former Moderator of the kirk (great crack, Andy - and a great lunch), having listened, interminably, to the news on the car radio about the defecting Anglicans who are tempted by Rome, and having been Sponged the previous day, I'm feeling particularly turbulent this morning. There. I just asked Mr B how watching the Forward in Faith* people on the telly (somehow even more disturbing) made him feel, and I've just summed up my own reaction: turbulence just about does it.

The rotten thing is that much of what these people (no women priests, certainly no women bishops, no openly gay men) do in their religious practices used to be attractive to me. I still love really good music, incense, order - but I abhor the smugness, the "I'm a man and I'm ordained and you, my dear, are not in my league at all when it comes to the worship of God" underlay, the willing piety of the permed ladies, the self-righteousness. And on this grey Sunday morning I contemplate the essentially man-made edifice that is the church and I despair. I despair partly because I know that all my non-Christian or non-church friends and rellies probably think that what was on the news yesterday was my church and either despise or pity me for it.

But thankfully, it is not my church. My church still has a way to go before it sorts out the Christ-like response to gay Christians, gay church people, the gay ordained; it has yet to elect a woman as bishop though there is no legal barrier to such an election; my church tends to be anything but smug though there are pockets of undeniable smuggery. Personally, I'm on a wee crusade to remove the words "us men" from the Creed as said by the celebrant in Holy T (they don't say it in Southwark Cathedral, I note); Mr B is working to remove the dire hymns of the past from our repertoire (leaving us, it has to be said, with a very small selection that meet any sort of criteria at all); I look forward to this morning's sermon from a lay woman that will disturb and challenge in the light of the week's news.

But there is much to be done before we shake off the bigoted and the entrenched. And yesterday's news, as far as I'm concerned, is good news. Let's wave them off to the diluted form of Rome to which the Holy Father invites them. God speed, folks, God speed.

*Or, if you like, Backward in Fear.

Sponged, again

Yesterday evening I was in a packed church - and St John's, Princes Street is quite a size to pack - to hear Bishop Jack Spong talk about the difficult subject of eternal life. Difficult? From my early teens I've realised how difficult, when my father used to quizz me: what kind of eternal life did I envisage? Would I fancy it as a spotty adolescent, or would it be more like an eternity of arthritis? He knew, and even then I knew, that these were facetious questions masking an uncomfortable reality - Richard Dawkins would have felt quite at home chez nous in the early sixties. And of course, it's the simplistic notions that the Dawkinites, and plenty of people who actually simply know very little about religion, keep insisting are the bread and butter of the Christian faith and any other you might care to mention. No wonder they dismiss us as daft. And no wonder we get fed up.

But Jack Spong had this crowd feeling anything but fed up, if the applause was anything to go by. He's just brought out another book: Eternal Life: A New Vision, and reading it would give you a better idea of his drift than reading this post. But a few bits stick: the God-filled man that was Jesus showing that the Kingdom of God was within him, and telling us that it is also within us; the living of a life of loving that aligns us with God who is timeless; the self-conscious humanity that is at once our original sin and our saving grace. And a joyous recognition of the impossibility of sharing our experience of God in words, in this question: Can a horse tell another horse what it means to be human?

The laughter showed the relief of those who had realised that the high and crazy and the low and lazy were not for them, and that sharing their own experience didn't fill pews. That's not our job, said the bishop in his wonderfully American way. We're not here to do that. The faith we hold is not to bring peace, but to help us to grasp reality and have the courage to go on facing it. It takes, he said, a lot of courage to be human and realise that we are finite - the whole nature of humanity is to be anxious.

In the end, I can't even redeliver this talk, any more than I can redeliver religious experience without resorting to art. But the realisation that there are so many of us - including people we met whom we know in more conservatively Christian circles - was thrilling. Our churches may be falling down around our ears, they may be populated by people of my age and older - but maybe that's as it should be, at this time. And for sure I came away with the conviction that if the church is diminishing, it should probably not moan about the failings of society.

It's time to take a long, hard look at our own failings. And then? I don't know. But it should be good ...

As Richard Holloway, winding up the evening, put it: we'd been well and truly Sponged. I recommend the treatment!

Love's Labours Lost

Love's Labours Lost
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

I know I've blogged about this already, but I needed to return to the experience of the Globe Theatre and Love's Labours Lost when I didn't have a cat's bottom distracting me by hiding the screen, to say nothing of the typing paws.

The thing is that in all my life I've only once been to a performance of a play by Shakespeare that I didn't know already, and that was so long ago that I have only the vaguest memory of it. (I think I was still at school, and it was at Jordanhill College and may have been As You Like It) And it struck me forcibly that much of what I get from a performance of, say, Hamlet, comes from anticipation and speculation: how will the Ghost be treated? How will they stage the prayer scene? How will Hamlet say the big soliloquies?

Think of the Olivier film of Hamlet. Olivier took a part of one of Hamlet's speeches about the King's behaviour and used it as a voice-over for the very beginning of the play, so that the words about "particular men" who, "carrying the stamp of one defect", "take corruption from that particular fault" and so is brought to disgrace. The whole slant of the character of Hamlet is changed by this, as he seems to be talking about himself in a way that would suggest he is very aware of why he is unable later on to kill his uncle - and yet his soliloquies show that he cannot understand his difficulties.

I've gone into that simply to show how very different the experience of a play is to someone who has studied it for years - and to wonder what Will himself would have thought of such a reaction. Maybe he'd have torn his hair out, maybe he'd have been puzzled. But it was fascinating to try to "keep up" with an unfamiliar play, without benefit of the text, and not find myself laughing at something several lines too late. I noticed an earnest fellow in the row in front of me poring over the text as the play unfolded - but felt he was missing more than he gained.

Enough. No more. 'Tis not so sweet now as 'twas before - and I've gone on long enough. The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo: You that we; we this way.

Change and decay ...

The new cell phone arrived while I was away. Actually, two phones - one for Mr B as well - and they came early despite my earnest conversation with the man from Vodafone to the effect that there would be nobody chez nous until yesterday. However, a neighbour signed for them and since last night they have sat, still in their packaging, on the sitting room floor.

Now it's midnight of another day and I've only just opened the box of one of them. It's very similar to my old one, with which I have been deliriously happy (that's hyperbole, but you get my drift), but longer and thinner. Whether or not this will be a good thing only time will tell. Apparently it has a better camera. And the one for Mr B is identical, which will be good in that he'll now be able to work mine if the need arises, but bad in that I can see one of us going off with the wrong phone.

But I realise that once again I'm on the threshold of change. And though I know that as soon as I start using it all will be well, right now I'm wondering why I have to change at all. My old phone - all of three years old, I think - is a familiar friend. And as yet they haven't sent me the promised recycling bag, so it will sit reproaching me as I set up its successor.

Maybe, after all, I am a dinosaur.

Master Byrd and holy smoke

To Sung Eucharist at Southwark Cathedral. And an excellent eperience it was too; not least because Mr B and I, freed from the constraints of being part of the machinery at Holy T, could sit peacefully together in the middle of the congregation and enjoy the seriously good choir (the setting was Byrd's Mass for five voices), a crisp and simple sermon and wonderful incense. Actually it was the combination of this particular incense and this particular music that took me back to when the Anglican church was a new and wonderful mystery for me; when something magical happened to me every time I was in church. Then, of course, I would have been singing the Byrd, but I was interested to note that it didn't matter to me that today I wasn't: the magic was there, in the other-worldly distance, and I was content to listen.

I've become so involved in doing church these days that I sometimes think I've forgotten what it's all about. I hold forth about not having to sit and listen to a choir sing the setting, that I'd rather we all joined in - but I'm talking poor choirs, not wonderful ones. I maintain that we can continue with our worship in the interregnum without the weekly presence of a priest - but I find myself sighing with relief at a beautifully conducted Eucharist, where there are no worries that someone will do something wrong, or forget what to do next. I can let go - and that, of course, leads to other barriers falling, and that is A Good Thing.

There were many good things to observe today - the sunlight streaming through the smoke halfway through the service, the lusty congregational singing (even if the man behind us had a very penetrating voice but a lamentable tendency to drag), the wonderful organ (especially when it let rip at the end of the closing voluntary), the very mixed, very large congregation. I felt safe, I felt part of it, I felt welcome - and at the end, we were welcomed by the celebrant, who admitted to favouring this particular incense because it was less likely than other varieties to make her cough.

And a few random insider observations: we all shook hands at the Peace - there was no grinning and bowing as has become the norm in the Diocese of Argyll in these pestilential times - but received in one kind only. And I was pleased to see that no-one, not a single server, be they never so sylphlike, wore a rope round his or her middle. Clergy and servers alike were decently and becomingly clad in albs which fell unimpeded to their ankles. (From this you may deduce that I abhor the alb as frock mode, hitched up with as much as 10 inches of leg/trouser/long skirt showing beneath it.)

And the notices were given decently and in order before the service began. This works. Oh dear. I fear my holiday may be coming to an end ...

Shakespearian evening

To The Globe last evening, to see Shakespeare's Love's Labours Lost. Quite an experience! Our already excellent seats were upgraded even before we could sit in them because there was a dirty big camera in front of them, and so we found ourselves in the best seats, in the very middle of the lowest seated area, behind the groundlings. They in turn were not just in front of the stage, as I expected, but were actually enclosed by two ramps which angled round in front of the main apron and were used by the the actors for sudden appearances - and by the deer which wandered in and out and died under the arrows of the Queen and her ladies.

I have to admit that I didn't know this play, and I was fascinated to experience it for the first time as Shakespeare's audienced did. How hard they must have listened! Or were some of them like Polonius (I do know Hamlet!) - remember, he's for a jig or a tale of bawdry or he sleeps? L'sLL is a torrent of verbal humour, in this production combined with a great deal of slapstick that had the audience guffawing. It all felt very Elizabethan, right down to the rigours of sitting on a wooden bench, even if we had been supplied with hassock-like cushions. And people did drink beer, though I didn't see any sellers of sausages (I believe they replaced the ice-cream lady in Will's day). And at the end we all applauded in time to the final dance-music while the cast jigged wildly on the stage, overcoming the gloom produced by the message of the death of the queen's father.

A fascinating experience, then, culminating in a headlong dash over the cobbles of Will's Bankside as we headed for the speedy train home.

Christie in a country house?

Having gone on about the storm brewing last night, I had to use this pic to demonstrate the hazards of life in these parts at this season - for are we not just out of the octave of the equinoctial gales? It was taken through the car windscreen as we sat on the Western Ferries coming home this morning, having forgone breakfast in our lovely hotel on Arran to catch the first ferry to run, just in case it was also the last.

But it is really of last night that I wish to tell. For after dinner, as we sat deep in squashy leather sofas beside a log fire, we were joined first by three jolly golfers and then by a couple from The South - all of us due to catch the ferry on the morn. I suppose it was the laptop that brought us together, as we could all see for ourselves the expected wind speeds on the met office site and the Cal Mac status reports. Mr B and I were modestly sipping espresso and nibbling the wonderful sweetmeats thoughtfully provided with it (just in case we perhaps had a tiny corner left), but the malt was flowing and the banter becoming more hilarious when we heard that the last boat of the day had been cancelled, and the first of Saturday, and the boat was lying overnight in Brodick. No-one knew if it would sail in the morning, and remarks like "It depends on who the captain is" did nothing to reassure.

It was, of course, typical Agatha Christie fare: the country house; the sense of isolation, of being cut off from the outside world; the contrast between the soft lighting and warmth and the howling darkness outside; the occasional interruption as some windswept traveller, gleaming with water, burst in at the door. One of our number would surely be dead by morning, in mysterious circumstances. Questions about occupation revealed a surgical instrument maker in our midst ... a banker ... an accountant ... surely there were sinister implications here?

Actually, no. At least four of us caught the first ferry together, having survived the night and the anxiety. But I caught no further glimpse of the Jolly Golfers. Perhaps they decided to stay and have that last game in the gale. I do hope so ...

Ancient Mariners again

Sometimes they get the weather forecast just right. And so it is today: they promised us gales overnight and into Saturday, and as I sit by the log fire in the hotel, after a wonderful meal, the wind is howling in the chimney and the talk is all of the cancelled Cal Mac sailings tonight and in the morning. And we're supposed to be leaving tomorrow afternoon. My attention keeps being drawn to the mutterings at the desk, where I can hear anxious conversations about trying to leave by earlier ferries, checking out at the usual time whatever, and I'm trying to concentrate on not fretting.

It feels strange being on such a large island and still depending so completely on Cal Mac ferries. I read in the Arran Banner today that Western Ferries are interested in starting a link here - what a Good Thing that would be. But we'll have to see what the morning brings. A guy in the bar has just opined that it's going to be a rammy in the morning.

Interesting, huh?

Still climbing after all these years ...

As I write, my legs moan quietly: were you wise? My feet feel ... stressed, and my knees, especially the right one, feel as if someone has put cotton-wool in where the cartilage was. And I don't care. Today - this morning especially - the sun shone, and from first light I could see Goat Fell above the woods round our hotel. I swear it was calling me. We had intended to walk the length of Glen Rosa, climb to the Saddle, come down again. Safer, really, in the light of the fact that we'd forgotten to pack the map I'd carefully looked out. Don't want to get caught mapless on the tops if the mist comes down ...

But the bright blue of this morning killed off these cautions, sensible notions, replacing them with the urge to be up there, among the grey rocks and the spase brown grass, the granite gravel and the peaty pools. And so it came to pass that we drove to Corrie, left the car on the shore road, and started up the relentless slope which leads you onto the hill at the White Water, on into the corrie, and up the last, lung-busting slope to the wonderful ridge that joins Goatfell to North Goatfell. By the time we got up - it took us a very respectable 21/4 hours - the wind was biting, bringing the temperature (11ºC at sea level) down to a level which had us piling on every stitch of clothing, right down to my Obama for President woolly hat.

But I cared about that as little as I cared about the sense or otherwise of this day. What I cared about were the deer that walked elegantly by as we ate our lunch - five lesser ones and a magnificent stag who stopped as I bleeped my camera open, posed haughtily, and trotted effortlessly off up the summit slope of N. Goatfell. What I cared about was the wonderful roaring of the stags, still obivously at it far below in Glen Sannox. What I cared about was the rough granite beneath my boots and the great view of the Arran peaks - Cir Mhor, the Castles - all slightly below me where I braced myself against the wind to take photos.

We took the downward path carefully, out of deference to the aging knees (balance the thought of the years knocked off them with the encouragement to "keep going" handed out by every medic we ever talk to). We were shocked by a sudden shot as we crossed the corrie, and I thought of another stag I had spotted as we climbed it earlier in the day and hoped whoever it was had been a good shot. We also hoped they wouldn't think we were anything other than tired walkers.

The whole day took us just over 5 hours - so close to the timings of our past that I felt ... well, smug, actually. A good late birthday present, to get up there where I first climbed 58 years ago and live to tell the tale. Life in the old legs yet, I'd say!

Note: Here be photos

All this, and Heaven too ....

There are some things we have to do in life which almost no-one else understands. My have-to is to return ever so often to the island of Arran, and once there, to walk up Glen Sannox - one of the most perfect glaciated valleys I have ever seen. Today, to mark my birthday, I did these things. And it didn't actually matter that every now and again the cliffs of The Saddle were hidden by drifting curtains of rain, nor that I wasn't actually going to climb these cliffs through the secret key - an eroded whin stone dyke through which my younger self has clambered to emerge triumphant on the broad slabs of the col between the glens Sannox and Rosa.

Right now I am enjoying the free Wi-fi in the bar of the fairly luxurious hotel where I'm staying, as the log fire glows and murmers beside me and the wonderful dinner I ate an hour or so ago begins to sink slightly. But as we walked down the glen this aftenoon, the bellowing and belching sounds of rutting stags dying in the purple and brown hillside on the far side of the burn, I reflected on how the natural ending to such a day would have been, perhaps, a boiled egg and a floury muffin with strawberry jam - or, more recently, spag bol and a slug of red from a winebox followed by the sleep of the just as the sun set and the telly muttered unnoticed in a holiday cottage. For I have been visiting this island for the past 63 years, and in all that time this will be the first night I have spent in a hotel, the first time I have not had to find the food at the end of a day in the hills.

And yes, as I mark the passing of another year (with champagne, and foi gras, and partridge, and free wifi, and Arran Aromatics in the shower) I think that I could go back to the days of boiled eggs and muffins - and being seven, and having all life to look forward to. But that would be incredibly sentimental, wouldn't it?

PS: Photos will follow on Flickr, but right now I'm too comatose to find my phone, and I don't have my camera lead with me ...

Silver linings - or simply wet?

This post is for the people of the future. The people who have run out of water, if tonight's news on climate change is to be believed, or who find the temperature has risen by an absurd number of degrees. If they still surf old blogs, if someone has the perverse energy to research how people reacted when the acceleration towards global catastrophe began - this, my friend, is for you.

Because where I live, in this miserable corner of western Scotland, we've barely seen the sun for a week. Every morning we waken to grey skies, and on days like today we have rain drifting in curtains for hours on end. Sometimes it blows on a randomly gusting wind, sometimes it just falls. It's not cold, and it's not warm. It's just grey. And it grows dark absurdly early and when we waken to yet another grey dawn we feel there's no point in looking. We phone relatives - in the South, even in Edinburgh - and hear of long sunny days, BBQs in the garden, walks in the park. And from a recent trip to London I know that the sun shines there and that they actually could do with a bit of rain to clean the streets up and sort the garden out. And from flying home I know that up there above the grey there is brightness and blueness and ... and ...

Today I had to go to the shops in the afternoon. I put on my long mac and trailed about in deserted Argyll Street till I found stuff to take the smell of spilled diesel out of my washing machine (don't even think of asking. Read my tweets) The rain drifted the way it does on a misty mountain top, and there was no-one there. They were all in the comforting brightness of the supermarket, and they were all - all - moaning about the weather, about depression, about SAD coming early, about leaving town, about migrating, about holidays in the sun.

So, dear researcher, that's how we feel, we cloud-dwellers. We feel sad. Sad and damp and irritable. I have one bright spot to report, however:

I saw the moon tonight. It's gone again, but I saw it. Every cloud ....

Thought for the day

Now here's a thing. Take a small pisky church, inconveniently if picturesquely sited on a small hill at the very back of a seaside town (you've had this description before, but I need to re-emphasise certain features of the situation). Take a small but stable/growing slightly congregation which is in the limbo (known as interregnum by the optimistic and vacancy by the rest) caused by the translation of the former incumbent (not dead, merely departed). Take the gradual metamorphosis of some members of that congregation from pew-fodder to worship leader ...

So far so good. We like to see thoughtful and committed church folk taking responsibility for their patch, growing where they're planted and all that. But when the robed ones who on any one day are planted firmly in the holy end (Larkin's phrase, not mine) turn out to be two thirds of the people who actually (a) know the hymns and (b) can be heard behind the proverbial bus ticket ...

You get the picture. Today I felt I was a lone voice, singing away - and was, in actual fact, a lone voice in the post-communion hymn, despite the twenty or so folk behind me. But I enjoyed preaching about angels - maybe some of them had a wee song too.

Captions and socks

I feel it only proper to direct readers of this blog to Mad Priest's place, where he has been running a caption competition on my pic of +Martin and Tigger. Do mosey over there if you want to have some fun with it; there are comments from everywhere, it seems, except Scotland.

I shall perhaps appropriate some of the comments for further consumption among the technophobes of Argyll - except, maybe, the one about the socks. I think the originator of it must be an American. Think suspenders - British ones.

Ubi caritas et amor, ibi Deus est ...

It was my turn this week to write up the service at Holy T for the local paper. Thirty-one years ago in the same paper (oh dear - I must be getting old) I wrote of the institution of our new Rector, a young priest called Martin Shaw. There is a photo in the yellowing clipping of a grinning, bearded cleric as he prepared to embark on his first solo job after curacies in Scotland and England, and I well remember the excitement generated by his arrival. Today that same priest, sans beard, came to celebrate the Eucharist for the last time as Bishop of Argyll and The Isles. I've tried in my piece for the paper to give a flavour of the occasion, to put down some of the salient points of the sermon and so on, but this is what I'm writing for me.

+Martin has the power to light up a room, to stir even the most torpid of congregations to life. His preaching is as vigorous as it ever was, and has a tendency to get under the skins of his hearers even as they laugh at his preposterous jokes. He can switch from humorous to holy in a turn, and his singing (the solo bits in Ubi Caritas, if you're interested) makes the hair stand on end (and no - I don't just mean mine). When he left, after one of these bring-and-share lunches that make the feeding of the five thousand seem probable, there was the kind of flatness you feel when the bride and groom leave a wedding. It seemed too early for him to go, either from our lunch or his job as Bishop, and yet I was glad to see this day.

Why so? Because I thought that today there was a real feeling that "it is accomplished" - that a job had been done and it was in fact time to go. Far better to retire while you're still crazy enough to hug a stuffed Tigger (see left) and laugh at life, far better to enjoy a life where you don't - theoretically anyway - have to do anything. Martin's will be a hard act to follow, and I have no idea who will be his successor. But it would be good if it were someone who knew that there were never any excuses for his or her actions; someone who could laugh at him or herself; someone who knew his or her own failings. And it'd be really, really good if they could sing too.

Roman excesses in the Dome

See the things you can do in London? This is one of them: a night at what I still think of as the Millennium Dome but which is now called The O2 to see Ben Hur Live - and yes, it was the story, much condensed, and yes, there was a real chariot race which hadn't actually started when I took the picture here: this was the parade before the race as the crowd cheered as wildly as any Roman mob.

Having checked out the website and read a preview, I knew it was going to be a spectacular event - I was thinking Cirque du Soleil in Vegas, maybe - but I was unprepared for the sheer scariness of it. To be honest, it was the horses: it took only the first prancing and slightly unruly beast to appear in an early sequence to bring the circus unpredictability into play, and it was immediately obvious how much power four horses have when hitched to a flimsy racing chariot. And all the right things were there - the wheel coming off one of them; the luckless driver being left in the path of the oncoming beasts; Messala being dragged round the arena when his team parted company with his chariot. All except the knife blades on his wheels - I suppose that might have gone a tad far in these chicken-hearted times.

And the noise was immense. I am a sucker for the kind of music where the bass makes the seats vibrate, and some of the music the other night was on the point of deafening. My ears were ringing and I loved it. And talking of ears: the main characters spoke in Latin and whatever appropriate language Ben Hur and co would speak - was it Aramaic? - and the narration, in English, filled in the synopsis. Clever, I thought - the authentic touch, easily exported to any arena by switching the language of the narration. And the joy was that I could understand the Latin, so sat smugly while the woman behind me went on and on about not understanding a word.

A truly Roman sort of night, really - over the top, loud, violent, scary, totally ridiculous, in a huge arena in front of a huge crowd. Caligula would have loved it.

Singing to God

Read this the other day and couldn't resist sharing it. It's from a commentary on the psalms by Augustine.

'Sing to God a new song, sing to him with joyful melody.' Each of us tries to discover how best to sing to God. We must sing to God, but we must sing well. God does not want his ears assaulted by our discordant voices. So sing well, my brothers and sisters, sing well!

If you were asked: 'Sing to please this musician,' you would not dare to do so without first having had some music lessons, because you would not want to offend such an expert in the art. An undiscerning listener does not notice the faults that an accomplished musician would point out to you. Who, then, offer to sing well for God, the great artist whose discrimination is faultless, whose attention notices the minutest detail, whose ear nothing escapes? When will you be able to offer him a perfect performance so that you will in no way displease such a supremely discerning listener?

Augustine goes on to tell us that in fact we should be bursting out with joyful song like harvesters in the fields, and I can't help feeling that this is a somewhat naive picture - can't help thinking of all these sore backs and aching muscles and the harvesters too exhausted to sing. But there are days when I think of poor God with his fingers in his ears.

Cosmically speaking, of course.

Cut flowers - for Ruby

And when they laid that rough-cut board
across your grave and on it flowers,
flowers on flowers against the grass,
lilies, roses and unnumbered blooms,
their sweetness on the solemn air
was like your presence in a room
and that was when the knowledge grew
that we had lost that smile to God
and tears came, and the rueful look:
The Gardener of our souls had passed
that way, had found you on his path -
and we who wait remembered there
another blossom picked to make
the company of Heaven glad.

© C.M.M. 9/09/09

Recollected in tranquillity

I've spent the last two hours singing the most beautiful music, practising for a gig on Sunday when the St Maura Singers celebrate their 40th year of singing together. The concert is part of the Music for a Summer Afternoon (summer!) series in the Cathedral of The Isles on Cumbrae, where we first sang together, and we shall be revisiting some of the music we sang then as well as two new pieces - new to us, and fairly recently composed for Cappella Nova - by John McIntosh. These last, in 5 parts, are possible because our current quartet will be joined by our original soprano, as well as an extra bass who goes back to our University Chapel Choir days, so it should be quite a reunion.

But all that is by way of introducing what actually drove me to post this, for two of the pieces brought home to me how much I have changed in my reaction, not to the music, but to the words. I could barely get through Tomkins' When David Heard - these repeated "Oh my son, my son" lines can never be the same, I think, to anyone who has a son. It took all my willpower to focus on purity of line and phrasing, the need to express the abandonment of grief by the greatest of control - that paradox of the performer, really. And Lassus' Justorum Animae made me think of Ruby, a lovely lady, a Cursillista who died last week and whose funeral is tomorrow. I wish we could be singing these words over her, for although the Latin uses the masculine form throughout, surely if anyone's soul is in the hand of God Ruby's is.

Iustorum animae in manu Dei sunt, et non tanget illos tormentum mortis. Visi sunt oculis insipientium mori: illi autem sunt in pace.

Casting off

Laying down the staff
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

Yesterday the Bishop of Argyll ceremonially signalled the end of his episcopate by laying his staff and mitre on the altar of the Cathedral of St John the Divine in Oban. And with that sentence I lay aside any obligation to write sensibly about the event and free myself to blog as usual.

It poured, of course. It would seem unnatural this summer not to be scurrying through the puddles of Oban, not to be sitting in one's mac all through the service for warmth - or even, in the case of the unfortunate Dean, for protection from the rain which dripped on his head and his notes during the sermon. (And you wonder why they wear these big copes? Wonder no more). People had that windswept look - for there was also quite a gale blowing - that defies any attempt at glamour; there were two exceptions to this, whose photos appear on my flickr stream, but the rest of us had given up. Fleeces, trousers, cagoules - and these strange Masai warrior shoes which seem to have been taken up by the Argyll piskies, who will surely all be slim of thigh by the end of this dreadful summer.

The service was not without its hilarious moments. The ringer of the bell at communion may have broken his stays with his vigour (the obvious result was a coil of rope descending around him in an apocalyptic fashion) and the public address system had developed its own variety of flu and burbled alarmingly and at random. The Dean's sermon seems to have hijacked the Synod Clerk's farewell speech, so the latter improvised a variety of sermon which had us all - including the Bishop - on the edge of our various seats. The congregational singing was somewhat tentative - maybe in anticipation of a future without +Martin's wonderful voice - and we received communion in bread only, because we still, apparently, fear contamination from the flu.

That said, there was a great deal of illicit embracing at the end of the service, and a palpable sadness at the imminent departure of Martin and Elspeth. And yes, I too will be sad to see them go - but delighted to see another of my friends reach the sunny uplands of retirement and canter off into freedom. Thanks to +Martin's efforts, he is not, as Richard Holloway predicted five years ago, the last Bishop of Argyll, and we shall soon begin the process of looking for his successor. But take him for all in all, we shall not look upon his like again. Quote, anyone?

Dark skies over Dunoon

Dark skies over Dunoon
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

Another gloomy morning, the kind of day when getting on with it seems pointless and the book you're nearly finished (Pat Barker's Life Class) calls you to the red chair under the light. I would say I was depressed, but it wouldn't be true, for in depression books have no charm. But I am reminded of wet days in Arran, scene of my summer holidays from the age of 9 months until fairly recently (and I'll be there at the end of this month).

The house we rented every year had a cupboard at the top of the spiral staircase, watched over by two wally dugs - these china spaniels of unsurpassed hideousness. In the cupboard were two shelves of the most strangely-assorted books, among which I burrowed. By the time I was fourteen or so I must have read Dreadnoughts of the Dogger eight times, although there were also paperback Westerns and a hardback copy of The Flight of the Heron. (Does my younger son ever wonder where his Christian name comes from?)

And I used to welcome days like today, days when it seemed unlikely that we would be out for more than a few hours, days when I wouldn't be summoned by holidaying friends -"Is Christine coming out to play?" I would curl up on the step under the dormer window of the front bedroom and lose myself in the lost cause of the Jacobites or the adventures of Sea Scouts caught up in the naval activities of World War 1. I would be so far from the present moment that I would find it truly hard to join others in play, or even the family for food.

And that, of course, is the magic of fiction. Television, DVD, film - none of these has the same hold, the same secret lure to another world. I feel keenly the fact that as an adult I am no longer free to do this withdrawing from the world, and that as an online addict I have distractions which can prevent the immersion which is the true secret of enjoyment. And I shall never forget the time when I realised that being depressed - in my case post-operatively - stops the magic in its tracks.

The photo, by the way, somewhat contradicts the opening message of this post: this is the kind of sudden brightness that would signal the end of an afternoon's reading. I can almost hear my father's voice: drag yourself downstairs - the rain's off!