Strange Meeting?

The photo above shows one of the compensations of having meetings in this part of the world - the sun setting in a sudden blaze of glory above Loch Fyne took us by surprise after a fairly grey day, making me regret that I didn't have the Leica with me. Not bad for a phone pic all the same. But it was after two days of meetings, of sitting round a table struggling to come to agreement over what should happen at an event, or shuffling through piles of papers and balance sheets while the seat grew harder and the room stuffier, that I realised what a great job teaching is. Actually it was when I saw on the news a feature about a firm of receivers, and saw them sitting shuffling papers and talking about balance sheets that it burst upon me that no matter how frustrating or exhausting life in the classroom was it was infinitely more suited to my temperament, and I knew that life in an office environment would have driven me mad.

And there was a pleasing moment before the meetings began, when the wife of one of my Twitter followers turned up at the Diocesan Centre in Oban announcing that she was here to pay for some olive oil. She didn't know who I was, and she didn't seem to know her man's online name, nor the fact that the oil was actually for a third party, also one of my Twitterites, also a complete stranger. And so I have introduced Zaytoun Palestinian olive oil to Oban, recouped some of my outlay, and been confirmed in the knowledge that I chose the right job after all. Can't all be bad, huh?

Evensong

The gloom has descended again. The rain has returned, and the wind is already driving the sea over the prom in great white flourishes. According to the excellent Met Office site the weekend is going to be fiercely windy, though apparently not unremittingly wet. And just at this time of day, just as darkness (as distinct from grey miserableness) falls, I'm aware of the power of dusk to evoke memories, emotions.

Larkin knew all about that - the sun's
Faint friendliness on the wall some lonely
Rain-ceased midsummer evening -
in his poem The Old Fools; I used to enjoy awakening that realisation in the minds of Higher English students and seeing the lights come on as they made it their own. And I think of the bleakness of the time just before the evening meal in hospital, and how I wept when my no. 1 son left at the end of hospital visiting time the day before no. 2 son was born and I stood looking at the dark road as the car disappeared and felt completely bereft. There's something about the dying of the day which speaks to us of the final dying of the light, and the telly's not yet assumed its cheerful dominance of the evening and the book has been set aside to save some of it for later (oh, the horror of having nothing to read!) ... enough.

Usually these moments are combatted in my life by physical activity - the walk regardless of the weather, the tea with a friend at the end of a hike. But today I have swum vigorously before spending the morning in mental activity. Surely enough to keep me going? I shall think instead about a question which came up as we discussed the sermons latent in a set of lectionary readings. (Not a current set - Year C, if you're wondering). For it's a fact that as often as not the gospel rakes up a current issue, and for an amateur preacher (for want of a better expression) that's dangerous territory. If you follow this blog, you'll understand when I say that Jesus' refusal to let his followers call down fire on a Samaritan village that wouldn't receive them made me think of the the current situation in Palestine. So I'm looking forward to the session where we discuss how we deal with the bee in the bonnet that starts to buzz in response to the Gospel.

It's almost dark now, and I can forget the weather for 15 hours. And in the dark, there will be no bombers, no flares, no sirens, no death from the skies. What's a spot of rain?

Oil for life

I'm halfway through the last bottle - I had six - of some of the best olive oil I've ever used. Last night I transformed mashed potato with a good slug of it; I use it in cooking , salad dressing and on bread just because I love it. Best of all at this time, though, is the thought that in indulging my tastebuds I'm helping Palestinian farmers - and the reflection that when I'm enjoying a civilised dinner party while Palestinians are being bombed and shelled I'm at least identifying in a tiny way with their need to own their own land, their own lives.

So now I'm thinking of the next step. My six bottles of Zaytoun olive oil came through the initiative of a Cursillo member, who placed a bulk order in the hope that people would buy it. She may do this again - but the event at which it is sold isn't till May and I'm about to run out. So I may do the same - buy a case or two and see if people want a share. In the meantime, though, this is my recommendation to any blethers-reading foodies: the site is here and you can download an order form. And if you buy it, you'll feel good in all sorts of ways.

Plug over. Go and take a look.

Encouraging - and plain stupid

A good moment - and a frustrating few days. The good moment came yesterday, in Glasgow, chatting with a cheerful bunch of pro-Palestine activists in Buchanan Street. They were selling small artefacts - bracelets, pins and so on - and sending the money they collected to a hospital in Gaza. One of them proudly showed me the receipt for their last donation - thousands of pounds - and the stuffed collecting tin with the day's takings. "Glasgow's been great" she told me. Some of them had been to Palestine as volunteers, and one of them, a woman in her 60s, looked familiar from way back in my CND days. I left them feeling slightly better about the world.

And the frustration? I've lost my music folder. Laid aside before the Advent Carol concert, so that I didn't inadvertently take out Fields of Gold when I had to sing In the deep midwinter, it has vanished. Neither myself nor Mr B (who took out the Advent music and put it together for me) has the slightest recollection of where it might be. We've searched bookcases, peered down the back of bookcases (thank goodness it wasn't there), clambered to the loft about ten times. I even spent a chilly fifteen minutes this evening in the church, putting on all the lights to peer under choir stalls and in dank recesses below the organ. I've phoned Mrs Heathbank as her music bag is identical to mine: no joy. We've found the toys we had mislaid in the holidays when they were needed (they were stupidly in the chest on which the Christmas tree was standing and emerged when we took it down) and realised that it really is time to do something about the loft. But there is no sign of my music.

It's in a red plastic folder. It's full of music, all carefully annotated. I am bereft. If it reads this ...stop. I'm being silly. But that's what happens when you fear for your marbles.

Now - who is it you pray to when you've lost something?

Update: ten minutes after I wrote the above, I found it. It was in my filing drawer, quite sensibly, but had slid down because of the weight of music in it. Prayer answered?

Palestine, Israel and the Just War theory

How do we cope with the images coming from Gaza? I've just been looking at the guardian's photo gallery, where there is a striking photo of a woman weeping for 10 relatives killed in the Israeli air strike on the UN school yesterday. I cannot imagine how it must feel, such desolation. What is the reaction after the storm of grief? How are we to react?

The arithmetic is totally skewed: hundreds of dead compared to a handful of Israelis. The Palestinians have already lost so much at the hands of Israel, including a country where they were already living. Now they are herded into the margins, in a grim parody of Jewish ghettos and South African apartheid, cut off from the land their fathers farmed by walls and barbed wire. Does that weeping woman curse Hamas for firing the rockets that provoked this response? Or does she feel - if she has any feeling left - that this is the only possible thing to do in protest? But how do the relatives of the handful of dead Israelis feel? Obviously it's no better knowing that you're one of only half a dozen if it's your brother who is dead - so do they cheer on the troops who so outnmber the "insurgents" they are determined to crush? I am reminded of the days when, in my role as a CND activist, I spoke at the RCC in Edinburgh. In these days, much was made of the "Just War" theory. We were talking nukes then, but surely this is not a just war by any standards - let alone that of proportionate response.

And why do the rest of us seem to be letting this happen? We look at these dead children and wailing mourners, we see the abject poverty of the environment which is now being pounded to rubble, we watch doctors working in squalor to save lives as the drugs run out. A westernised power which we helped to plank in the middle of Palestine seems to have learned the worst possible lessons from its people's history and looks as if it is trying to eliminate the original inhabitants. What failure of imagination drives their leaders? These articulate and terrifying Israelis with American accents - what business have they there?

Daniel Barenboim, writing in the guardian last week, said this:

Palestinian violence torments Israelis and does not serve the Palestinian cause; Israeli retaliation is inhuman, immoral, and does not guarantee security. The destinies of the two peoples are inextricably linked, obliging them to live side by side. They have to decide if they want to make of this a blessing or a curse.

But until there is real justice for the wretched people of Palestine, it is hard to see how they can see any blessing in the proximity of their neighbours.