Four wheels on my wagon...

I'm always joking that if I decide to give up ministry I'd like to work as a bus driver. Well, that boast was well and truly tested today as I took our newly-arrived Korean guests (they came last night) on a wide-ranging tour of our Presbytery. Actually since the Presbytery covers over 500 square miles the trip wasn't as wide-ranging as it might have been. And, guess what? I haven't changed my mind. I had a great time, even though the bus I was driving looked like it had been shipped out of a war zone. (Maybe I'll take a picture of it later.)

The minibus belongs to a local Scout group and has obviously seen one or two jamborees in its lifetime. But it is a Mercedes and well built and, in spite of its length, it is actually pretty easy to drive and even to park - although I haven't been too challenged on that score as yet. Wait till I take it into Glasgow tomorrow.

But today, it was a chance to underline the vast difference between the home Presbytery of our visitors (East Seoul) and our Presbytery. Seoul, of course, is a vast conurbation with a population of about 20 million all crammed into a space probably about the size of Lanark Presbytery. Maybe even less. Here, on the other hand, there are more sheep than people. So it's a bit of a contrast.

In the background of the picture above is one of our older churches, St. Mary's in Biggar. This particular building dates from 1565, I think, and replaced an earlier one built in 1164. Apparently, however, there has been some sort of church on this site since the very earliest days of Christianity in Scotland, perhaps as far back as AD500 or 600. Amazing to think that Christian worship has been going on in that spot for so many hundreds of years.

History and memory are precious gifts but they can never be more important than an appreciation of the present moment, or even the anticipation of the future. Having a past is good (usually) but living in it is not. I'm happy to believe that as we establish this international relationship between a small part of rural Scotland and a small part of urban South Korea we are building something useful for the future.

In the immediate future, however, what I have to concern myself about is getting the bus through our driveway gates. There is only about one inch to spare on either side! ... now maybe I should think about a change of career...

N.E.

I think I have just about recovered from the "Nexus Experience." I'm not sure what that phrase might mean to those who attended the exhibition, the seminars, the children's 'praise party' or the evening worship, but for those of us on the organising side, it meant being on your feet for a very long time, over several days (which is not something that my dodgy back enjoys too much.) And, of course, by the end of the week "the Nexus Experience" = Near Exhaustion.

First prize for endurance has to go to Bryan Kerr, the Project Manager, but I reckon all the team deserve a rest, although I know none of us will get much.

My particular responsibility was for the closing Worship Event on Saturday evening. I think it went pretty well on the whole, even though the first time that the band got to play together was at the soundcheck. (I hope that wasn't too obvious.) Extra thanks to Dave the Trumpet (as opposed to Dave the Drummer, or Dave the Singer... bit short on variety of names I'm afraid. Same goes for Mo the Sax) for stepping in at very short notice and playing so well.

We were especially pleased and privileged to have Pete Greig as our speaker. If you haven't yet read his book "God on Mute" then you ought to do so. It raises many of the questions that most people of faith end up wrestling with at some point in our lives. Thankfully, though, Pete doesn't give any facile or superficial answers. He shows, nevertheless, that it is possible to realistic without being cynical and positive without being superficial.

On the question of the silence of God, it was interesting to read in Time magazine this week about the letters which Mother Teresa wrote over a period of 50 years in which she privately confessed her spiritual struggles and, in particular, how, for very long periods, she never sensed the presence of God in her life. It makes her faithfulness in service all the more remarkable. Most of the truly special (holy) people in Christian history have gone through what the mystics called "the dark night of the soul" but for Mother Teresa it seems to have been a very long night indeed. I had known before of Mother Teresa's private doubts, but the Time article provided many quotes I had not previously seen.

It confirms for me what I have often suspected - that those who constantly express absolute dogmatic certainty on matters of faith are either very superficial or simply dishonest. Life on this earth is never that simple.

By yon bonnie banks

Once again, not much time to blog recently. The last three days have been taken up with Nexus Scotland, a Christian-Muslim wedding, and preparing for our nine Korean visitors who will arrive tomorrow afternoon for a 2-week exchange visit.

However, I just thought I would share with you one of the nearly 400 pictures I took during Nexus.

No - I haven't uploaded the wrong picture!

It was decided to invite exhibitors to come and enjoy a short visit to Loch Lomond, which included a meal on the Maid of the Loch (a paddle-steamer no longer in active service but used as a very excellent eating place) a brief sail up part of the loch, and then some entertainment back on the Maid before returning back to their hotels. This was the view as we returned from the sail just after sunset. Magnificent!

After a long and tiring day in an exhibition hall there is something truly refreshing and restful about the sight of the sun setting across a loch. But what was just as refreshing was the opportunity the exhibitors and organisers had of just getting to spend time with each other chatting and getting to know each other around a table.

It's no wonder Jesus spent so much time just eating and drinking with his followers. He knew the importance of relationships and how they are formed, established and deepened. Shared meals can be a very important element in that process, no matter what kind of relationship is involved.

Look... a picture!

So we're back in business uploading photos.

There was a pretty gruesome story in the newspapers here a few days ago about a swan that had been discovered with a crossbow bolt embedded in its wing. Clearly someone with a warped mind had been using it for target practice.

I am happy to say, however, that the swan above was shot with nothing more than a camera. What attracted me to the scene wasn't just the swan itself, although invariably they are such majestic and graceful creatures, at least when fully grown (cygnets can look a bit comical.) No, what caught my eye was the water and the brightly coloured reflections. (Make sure you click on the picture to see it full size)

I could make this another "guess what it is a picture of..." competition, but instead I'll just tell you- it was a multi-coloured canal barge. An interesting subject in its own right, perhaps, but to me even more interesting 'on reflection.'

I can't remember who it was who first said "the camera always lies" but it is true. Photographs are only ever one way of looking at something: they are never 'the whole truth and nothing but the truth', and that is the case even before you use Photoshop to 'doctor' them. (Incidentally, the above photograph has not been 'doctored' at all.)

By the way, if you follow the link to the Evening Times newspaper article, have a look at the author of the piece. I did a bit of a mental double-take at first, because I thought her name was Sarah Swan!

Look no picture...

When I first started writing this blog I was determined never to upload a post that did not have a picture with it. After all, it was my enjoyment of photography and of words that first led me to experiment with this medium.
Last night, however, "Blogger" had a fault and wouldn't upload any images. The problem still hadn't been resolved this morning. So what I was going to write about will have to wait. And then... as I started to write this picture-less piece the electricity suddenly went off and the PC died instantly. (The handiwork of the plumber who is currently installing a new shower - a fault in his extension lead triggering an RCD circuit breaker. You just needed to know this, didn't you?)
Anyway, these last few days have reminded me just how much I rely on electricity and various forms of technology and how, most of the time, I just take them for granted.
Of course, my wake-up calls have been pretty benign. Spare a thought, and a prayer, for all those who have been caught in the path of Hurricane Dean and other powerful and destructive natural events in recent months.
It is all too easy for us in the developed world to imagine that we are always in control, but the reality is that this world is still sometimes a pretty hostile place. And we inhabit just one small, fragile planet suspended in an unimaginably vast universe.
Strangely enough, the knowledge of just how small and puny we really are can inspire either faith or atheism. Some look at the vastness of the cosmos and laugh at the idea of a deity who might be in the slightest bit interested in one small speck of a planet, far less individual human lives: others look at the vastness of the cosmos and are filled with awe and worship and, an admittedly illogical, sense of the nearness of the Creator of it all. I can't explain the difference.
But neither can I explain the INdifference of those who take no account at all of the world in which we live and whose 'god' turns out to be like one of the old Roman household gods - small enough to put on the mantelpiece and under our own control.
Someone once asked "Is your god too small?" and I suppose that is the question I am asking too.
It was the question that was asked in a very stark and brutal way of the Old Testament character Job. the only answer he got was in the whirlwind, but somehow that seems to me to be much more authentic than the platitudes of Job's 'comforters'.

Then the LORD answered Job out of the storm.
He said: "Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge?
Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me.
"Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation? Tell me, if you understand.
Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!
Who stretched a measuring line across it?
On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy? ....

You should read the rest ... amazing stuff.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, it means I ought to do a whole lot of writing here to catch up... but, don't worry, I won't. The poetry of the Book of Job more than makes up for the lack of pictures.

Here today.. gone in an instant

Where have I been these last few weeks?

I wish I could say that I have been visiting exotic locations, soaking up the sun, enjoying extended leisure time etc. etc. but unfortunately that is not the case. My absence from the 'blogosphere' is the result of a number of much less enjoyable experiences conspiring together. First of all there was the back injury while on holiday which meant sitting at a computer was not an attractive proposition for me. Then on returning to work I became extremely busy with a couple of 'out of the ordinary' ventures being planned - Nexus (which you can read about here) and the forthcoming visit of nine people from South Korea to Scotland to establish a 'Presbytery partnership' (and I am responsible for organising the 10-day visit.) And, just in case these events proved too stress-free... last week my computer network had a catastrophic failure. And I mean catastrophic. :-(

(I'd rather not talk about it too much , if you don't mind, except to say that - although I thought my system had been routinely making automatic backups I am now minus just about every bit of data that I created in the last 18 months!! ouch! )

The picture above is of an extremely well-preserved Roman mosaic in the museum at Verulamium (St. Alban's) in Hertfordshire, a place we visited while on holiday. It's a neat irony, though also a slightly painful one for me, to realise that this mosaic is nearly as fresh and complete now as it was when it was made in 150AD while my computer data (i.e. a lot of my work) managed to evaporate in a fraction of a second never to be seen again. Oh, I know you can go in for all sorts of expensive data recovery procedures (I've done it in the past) but the simple truth of the matter is that, however inconvenient to me, nothing that I have lost will really be missed by anyone other than me. Ah well. C'est la vie.

But enough complaining. I thought that I'd better get round to 'blogging' something before my most loyal readers (both of you) stopped visiting the blog altogether.

Actually, it amazes me that since I started this series of assorted ramblings and musings nearly a year ago, I've had (apparently) something like 11,800 'visits' - not exactly massive by internet standards, but surprising to me.

I'm only sorry that a lot of the time I haven't had anything interesting to say. (Of course, being a preacher...that has never got in the way of me saying it anyway.)

Keep visiting, though... one of these days it may be worth it.

There was a crooked man...

A little postscript to my last post...

(And for a few excruciating moments I thought it was the last post...)

I spoke about this beautiful 17th century house with its low ceilings, but a few days ago it wouldn't have mattered had the ceiling only been 3 feet above the floor. That's because I was on my hands and knees, in considerable agony, unable to straighten out my back.

I had "slipped a disk."

It has happened to me once before and I can say it is not my idea of fun.

For the first couple of days I could only shuffle slowly, hunch-backed, a few yards at a time looking like a man of 85 and feeling like a man of 90. (Well, I have to imagine that since I've no idea yet what it might feel like to be 90, and, of course, I may never know.)

Thankfully I have been improving steadily and once again look more like a specimen of homo sapiens than neanderthal man. (i.e. my knuckles are no longer dragging along the floor.)

But, hey! Every cloud has a silver lining.

It has meant that I have been able to indulge in a binge.

NOT binge drinking (the dubious 'pleasures' of which I've never really understood and which would not have mixed well with the painkillers) but binge reading.

I read five books in four days, including two books introduced to me by Emma- 'Blue Like Jazz' and 'Searching for God Knows What' - both by Don Miller. I hadn't read any of his stuff before but I'm glad now that I have.

Can't say I agreed with everything. Come to think of it when I look back I don't agree with everything I've ever said myself! But both of these books are definitely worth reading. I especially like Miller's emphasis on the importance of story.

The way I see it words create worlds.

It's no surprise to me that the Biblical creation story begins with God speaking and bringing things into being with His word.

Sadly we human beings are probably more skilled at using words to tear down and destroy than we are at using them to create. But it remains true that in the hands of a skillful writer words create worlds.

I'm on my sixth book at the moment. (Each has created its own new and unique world for me.)

I have to say that the latest Harry Potter book is not featured in my binge, but I know that one of the reasons for the success of that particular series has been the ability of J.K. Rowling to create a world of characters and places and events that many children (and many adults) have been able to enter into.

Yep, words create worlds...

but I'll not say what word, if any, passed my lips as my back went out of joint and I slumped to the floor... :-)

There was a crooked house...

Right now I am somewhere in England. (You don't need to know where.) All I'm going to say is that I am in a thatched house, a house that was built around 1630.

Can you imagine that? The oak beams that form the skeleton of this amazing dwelling were first put into place nearly 400 years ago. And who knows how old were the trees from which they were formed? These wooden beams above my head could well be 1000 years old!

I love this house. I love the fact that no two rooms on this house are on the same level. I love the fact that actually nothing in this house is level... or upright. There are no perpendiculars; no horizontals. Everything sits at a weird and jaunty angle. As you make your way from one room to the other you almost feel as if you are seasick, or at least on a rolling ship. It is hard to move in a straight line. It is made all the harder by the fact that some of the ceilings are very low. I guess people in Shakespearean times were smaller than they are now.

I've stayed in this house before and know exactly what it is like when you crack your head off an oak beam... several times. That's why now I walk around in a semi-foetal position... just in case.

Sometimes I feel like a hobbit.

What I like most about this house is that it has no straight lines. I have a good eye for the perpendicular. I hate to see a picture hung squint on a wall. But here it wouldn't matter because the walls are not straight. The whole house is a sort of living, moving thing. It feels organic and natural, not mechanical, nor clinical, nor man-made.

Of course, when you think about it, there are very few straight lines in the nature. Even the horizon is a curve. So this house feels like a part of the natural world, rather than a construction of human beings, although, in fact, that is precisely what it is. I marvel also at that. We have our wonderful new technologies and feats of civil engineering but how many 'ordinary' houses built now will still be standing in 400 years time?

I've commented before on our need to work in harmony with nature rather than always trying to shape it to our ends. This is something that is becoming ever more vital as we see the effects of some of our previous misadventures and exploitations of the natural world. (I happen to believe that climate change is a reality and that recent floods, not too far from here, are part of the pattern.)

I also think that life itself rarely happens in straight lines. Even the paths that God may lead us on are often long and winding roads rather than straight and wide motorways. It's what makes life interesting and challenging.

We are sailing

On Friday evening I did something I haven't done for about 30 years....
I went "doon the watter in the Waverley."
This is a colloquial Glasgow expression referring to a previously popular activity enjoyed by Glaswegians. It meant sailing 'down the water' (i.e. down the River Clyde) usually in a paddle steamer.
When I was a young boy in the 1950s, living in Port Glasgow (about 30 miles downstream from the centre of the city) I used to watch these steamers regularly from the window of our house and at that time I knew each of their names and could identify them all- The Queen Mary II, The Jeanie Deans (her chief engineer was a neighbour of ours) the King George V, and The Waverley, among others. They sailed to such exotic locations as Campbeltown, Tighnabruich, the Kyles of Bute, Rothesay, Millport etc.
Sadly, there is now only one survivor of these more leisurely days - The Waverley- now the last sea-going paddle steamer in the world.
The original Waverley was in fact sunk at Dunkirk, but a replacement was built in 1947 and it was the last of the Clyde steamers to go out of service when "going doon the watter" went out of fashion and holidays to Majorca and Ibitha became the preferred option. A group of enthusiasts have managed to keep the Waverley going, however, and sailing down the Clyde has become something of a novelty again.
It is, of course, a very different river now. Once it was a noisy, bustling waterway on whose banks were being built some of the world's largest and best ships, like the great Cunard liners. Now the only ships built on the Clyde are warships.
It was a beautiful evening and I really enjoyed the sail, especially as we glided past the place where I was born and I was able to see it from a completely different angle.
I always enjoying seeing familiar places from an unfamiliar perspective, whether that is from the air as you come in to land or from the sea or a river, or just from the other side of the street.


I think too often in life we imagine that we know a place, or a person, or a truth, (or even God) when in actual fact we have only seen them from one particular angle, and in one particular light. It's the job of poets and artists and musicians, and maybe occasionally preachers, to shake us out of that complacency and waken us up to the fact that there is always more, so much more, than we saw before.

Eviction order

I suppose I could begin this post by asking for suggestions as to what the mystery object in the photograph might be, but I won't this time. I'm sure it is would be much too easy for you to work out.
What would be much harder, though, would be for you to guess where it is now, where it was before, how it got to where it was, and how it got to where it is. Confused? You will be.
But let me begin by recounting a tale of 'The Clearances.'
Actually, I'm not talking about the Highland Clearances though there are a couple of tenuous and superficial similarities.
A couple of summers ago, we had to have one of the large trees in our garden cut down because it had become dangerous. The only problem was that the tree in question also served as a residence for a number of creatures, including a family of squirrels. Needless to say the squirrels evacuated of their own accord as soon as the chain-saw gang set about their work.
Obviously they were quite happy with the neighbourhood and looked to relocate nearby. They quickly found a very suitable location in the roof of the adjacent church hall. In fact this particular large hall has more than one roof. The original roof, still intact, had, some years ago, been covered over with a secondary metal roof. The squirrels had managed to create an entrance for themselves through the wooden fascia of this secondary roof and had made themselves quite at home in the gap between the two roofs. A very spacious and no doubt very sheltered spot.
Of course, they were never happy with the small front door, and soon decided to create a back door, two sets of french windows and an emergency exit. To be honest it was sheer wanton vandalism! Some creatures just have no respect for property.
Anyway, the time had come for another eviction order to be served. Not a chain-saw gang this time, but a roofing company. As soon as the scaffolding went up and even before the work began, the squirrels packed their bags, ordered the removal vans and 'flitted'.
But they didn't take everything with them. (No one ever does.)
What you see in the photograph is something they left behind... between the two roofs.
What is it?
You must have guessed by now.
It is a school tie; one which no doubt belonged to our youngest daughter and which at some time or other probably hung on a washing line until an enterprising squirrel identified it as a potential duvet and removed it to the nest. That is where it was, and how it got to where it was. Where it is now is lying on the grass beneath the newly restored fascia, after having been cleared out of the roof space by the builders.
I wonder, do squirrels sometimes wear a tie in the evening?
Actually, although I do have to wear a tie quite often, especially on formal occasions, it is one of those items of clothing that seems to me to be totally pointless. What are ties really for?
Now that is a question you might consider giving an answer to.
And while you're thinking about it, spare a thought also for the suggestion recently made in Italy that removing your tie could help a little with tackling the problems of global warming.
Hmmm...

Long live the King

It seems no one has told the Post Office on Islay that we have a 'new' monarch.
Only since 1952, of course.
So it might be considered a little rash and hasty to have replaced all of the post boxes so soon. Oh, in case, any of my non-British readers haven't a clue what I'm talking about, have a look at the photo above of a post box on the wall of Laphraoig Distillery on Islay.
Above the opening for "Letters Only" you will see GVIR which refers to the late (some might say very late) King George 6th.

I suppose one generous way of looking at this is to see it as a refreshing alternative to what normally happens when Government Departments are restructured leading to a complete and costly corporate-image makeover.
I guess the philosophy is that if it is still working - why replace it?
Perhaps we need a little bit more of this sort of thinking. It might mean that we produce much less waste and pollution. Sadly, I fear the concept of 'planned obsolescence' is too deeply ingrained into our psyche in the Western world.

However, on the subject of post boxes, and UNplanned obsolescence...
I have recently chuckled my way through Bill Bryson's "Notes from a Big Country"
In one of the sections he lists various examples of stupidity and the seemingly inane advice that is often printed on American products (such as instructions on an electric iron not to use it in conjunction with explosive materials.)
But I'll let him tell you the rest in his own inimitably humorous style:

"Until a few days ago my instinct would have been to chortle richly at people who need this sort of elemental guidance, but then three things happened that made me modify my views.
First, I read in the paper how John Smoltz, a pitcher for the Atlanta Braves baseball team, showed up at a training session one day with a painful-looking red welt across his chest and, when pressed for an explanation, sheepishly admitted that he had tried to iron the shirt while he was wearing it.
Second, it occurred to me that although I have never done anything quite so foolish as that, it was only because I had not thought of it.
Third, and perhaps most conclusively, two nights ago I went out to run two small errands - specifically, to buy some pipe tobacco and post some letters. I bought the tobacco, carried it straight across the street to a Post Office letter box, opened the lid, and deposited it. I won't tell you how far I walked before it dawned on me that this was not a 100 per cent correct execution of my original plans.
You see my problem. People who need labels on pillarboxes saying 'Not for Deposit of Tobacco or Other Personal items' can't very well smirk at others, even those who iron their chests or have to seek lathering guidance from a shampoo hotline."

[Bill Bryson: Notes from a Big Country, 1999]

So here's a challenge to you, and your willingness to confess your own stupidity...what's the most bizarre thing you have ever accidentally dropped into a post box?

PS. Looks like the Islay post box may not have been cleaned much since the days of King George either.

Signs and wondering

Most of the distilleries in Islay have their names very prominently displayed, usually in huge black letters against the whitewashed walls.
However, Bruichladdich (pronounced broo-ich-laddie) is different. It's name is spelled out on the ends of old whisky vats.

But as we drove past it for the first time on our way from the airport to our B & B, I realised that even allowing for Gaelic's inexplicably irrational forms of spelling (designed perhaps to discourage most non-Gaels from trying to learn the language) there was something not quite right. But since it was raining very heavily at the time and we were more concerned to find the place we would be staying, we didn't stop.
I was determined, however, that we should go back at the first opportunity and take a closer look. I began wondering if some local youths had decided to play a prank and move some of the barrels so that those who were leaving, having just been on the distillery tour, might turn around to take a last look, and wonder: "Did I have too much of a good thing in there?"

It was when we approached it for the second time that my wife very cleverly realised that the name was simply spelled backwards.
Gaelic spelled backwards!! I mean, what is that all about?
It's enough to drive you to drink...

Ah, so it's a marketing ploy then!!

Of course, the puzzle is very easily solved once you recognise the pattern.
Life itself is like that. As human beings we are always looking for patterns to try and make sense of the world we live in: but often these patterns just do not seem to be there and nothing fits.

Had I looked at the Bruichladdich sign in a mirror, of course, the pattern would have been immediately obvious.
Trouble for us is that much of what we experience in the world seems already to be like mirror-writing, and we need it to be put the right way round before we can make sense of it.
As St. Paul wrote: "What we see now is like a dim image in a mirror, then we shall see face to face." [1 Corinthians 13:12]

And I promise you, I didn't just reverse the photograph in Photoshop!

Too much of a good thing?

On the basis that you can never have too much of a good thing (though sometimes that may be a questionable assumption - see below*) here is another little dose of Islay serenity. This is Port Charlotte with the evening sun dropping down behind.

The food at the Port Charlotte Hotel was pretty good, even the bar meals. I had a delicious sea bream one night, cooked to perfection. However, getting a table is difficult on evenings when there is live music and you really ought to make a reservation in advance, but if the staff can squeeze you in they will.



*The bar offers 143 very fine malt whiskies at prices ranging from under £5 to over £70 a shot. Needless to say I was not able to assess the full range on offer. This may be one instance when you could easily get too much of a good thing!

Most important of all the staff are very friendly, especially the owners, Grahame and Isabelle.
I had a good chat with one of the barmen, Alan, a Yorkshire man who had come to love Islay and its people so much that he decided to go and live there permanently. (not the man in the picture by the way)


Don't worry: I'm not going to post all of my 'holiday snaps.' (I took about 500 in 4 days.) But I'll probably share a couple more over the next few days.

Hebridean Jewel

Just to let you appreciate how even four days on Islay is a real holiday here is a picture I took of the view from our B & B on Tuesday morning.
Admittedly there were other moments when the view was only of the inside of a cloud, but those times make the moments of serene beauty and majestic simplicity such as you see above all the more breath-taking.
Life is like that.
Sadly, I think too many people spend too much time remembering and complaining about yesterday's clouds, or fearing tomorrow's rainy forecast, to savour today's glimpse of heaven.

Water of Life

You haven't heard from me for a few days because we've been on holiday (vacation) for a few days on the beautiful Hebridean island of Islay (pronounced Ai-la, for those who may not already know.)
It really is a spectacular place whatever the weather - and, believe me, we had every kind of weather, usually within the space of 15 minutes. Never mind "four seasons in one day," in the Hebrides you get four seasons in one hour!
The picture above was taken at Machir Bay- a long wide stretch of empty sand onto which pound the Atlantic breakers. At one point it became busy... two other people and a dog joined us!
Of course, Islay is famous most of all for its whisky. Although a small island there are nine distilleries producing some of the world's most famous malt whiskies. Clearly, these were places that had to be explored.... purely for the purposes of research, you appreciate.
I must confess, however, that after the first distillery tour visit which we undertook, I emerged legless.

Lest anyone misunderstand me, though, I should quickly point out that I am referring to the state of my spectacles- one leg of which somehow got bent after I had placed them down somewhere. Foolishly I tried to restore them to their former shape only to find the leg snapping off completely.This was, to say the least, inconvenient. (Actually, that's not exactly how it put it at the time but we'll leave that to your imagination.) The problem is, I need to wear my glasses for driving and although my wife did much of the driving (especially after visits to distilleries...) I still had to do my share. I discovered that one spectacle leg was usually sufficient, as long as I didn't shake my head about, which, fortunately is not something I tend to do when I am driving anyway.
Out among the public however it was a different story. For even though there are not usually very many members of the public around on Islay to bump into, I did feel a bit foolish wearing my monopod spectacles. It's not a fashion that I expect will catch on soon.
Another problem emerged which I had not anticipated. I wear vari-focals which means that different parts of the lenses are shaped for different distances. Not usually a problem - you simply point your nose towards whatever you are looking at and, normally, this results in you looking through the correct part of the lens, whether it is viewing something in the distance, something close-up, or something in between.
It works very well as long as the spectacles are horizontal. And for that to be assured at all times, you really need two legs. (So do the spectacles.)
Sometimes the glasses (because of their decreased quantity of legs) were not always exactly horizontal but what I didn't realise was that my eyes were actually working hard to compensate. I only realised it when I took the spectacles off on on occasion while I was walking. Suddenly nothing was in focus, and it was as though I were wearing someone else's glasses. The ground in front of me swirled and rippled and buckled. It felt as if someone had turned on special visual effects. I nearly fell over. [By the way, I had not been visiting any distilleries at this point!!]
It was a very weird sensation. Reminded me of that song lyric "I feel the earth move under my feet" though it was more like "I see the earth move in front of my eyes."
Weird sensation.

When you visit a place as wild and beautiful as Islay the very last thing you want is to be unable to see, so I was very relieved that it was only the leg of the spectacles that had broken and not the lenses.
I was reminded also of the profound words of the blind Helen Keller who once said:
"The worst calamity: 'To have eyes and fail to see.'"
Sadly, there are many who enact such tragedies daily.

Sadly, too, there are many whose vision is horribly distorted. We flew over to Islay from Glasgow Airport a few hours before it became the target of a terrorist attack. On our return we saw the damage that had been inflicted and could only imagine how much more awful it would have been had the plan of the perpetrators actually succeeded.
How can anyone, in the name of their God, ever think that blowing up innocent bystanders (or even guilty ones) is a righteous act? And, if it turns out that those so far arrested are guilty... how can it be that people who have trained to save life can treat life so casually?
Thank God no one was hurt, apart from one of the alleged bombers.
Members of the public made sure they didn't get away. On a lighter note, one of my favourite quotes from the incident was this: "Only in Glasgow do suicide bombers need rescued from the locals by the police."

More water everywhere

People in many parts of England, especially Yorkshire, have been having a really dreadful time lately with unprecedented amounts of rain and the inevitable flooding afterwards. My heart goes out to them all. Apparently we are due to get some pretty heavy rainfall tomorrow too but it is unlikely to be quite so devastating here.
On a much smaller scale, though, I had my own little inundation incident this morning.
My study sits directly below our upstairs bathroom...
you can probably guess more or less where this is going...
After I'd had my shower this morning I went back into my study and noticed that the computer monitor appeared to have shut down. A closer inspection revealed a spot of moisture on the screen. An even closer inspection revealed that the spot of moisture was behind the screen - inside! A quick glanced upwards confirmed my fear... the top of the monitor looked like it had also (like myself) just had a shower. Which in fact it had. Indeed, it was more or less the same shower. After I'd experienced it, it had clearly made its way (via a leak in the shower cabinet) through the bathroom floor and the study ceiling right on to my desk, and in particular on to my pc monitor.
Sad to say... the monitor now appears to be completely defunct!
I'm glad the shower did not have that effect on me.

Chilled but not frozen

What about the concert then?
Well, the band we went to see was the Norwegian jazz trio known as Tord Gustavsen Trio, comprising Tord Gustavsen on piano, Harald Johnsen on double-bass and Jarle Vespestad on drums.
I've been listening to their CD "The Ground" for the last three years but this was my first opportunity to hear them live, as part of the Glasgow Jazz Festival.

As is often the case with those you only hear on the phone or the radio or on a recording, Tord Gustavsen himself looked different from what I'd imagined - even though I'd seen his photograph in the sleeve-liner for the CD. A slight, almost fragile, and slightly crumpled-looking figure, he had a very peculiar hushed but high-pitched voice as he almost whispered into the microphone that he held tight to his lips... but that is to leap ahead a bit because before he, or anyone else spoke, he shuffled across the stage to the piano and in a strange curled-up posture leaned over the keyboard. He stretched out his left arm to press down one key in the bass, then reaching in the opposite direction with his right gently tapped out a single high note. From these two widely-separated but repeated notes, and with a lot of 'loud' silences in between, he began to bring the notes together. [It was the child Mozart who once said that all he did to write tunes was to "bring together little notes that like each other"]

It was like listening to the dawn of creation as a musical theme gradually came into being.

Eventually, he was joined by Vespestad on the drums. He virtually caressed the cymbals and snare (and even the bass drum) with various parts of his sticks and brushes. I don't think I've ever heard a drummer play so quietly, or in such an understated way. He went on during the evening to squeeze all sorts of strange noises from his drum kit, using a variety of techniques, including dragging the point of a stick along the surface of a cymbal to make a sound like a rusty gate-hinge, or a 'keening' sound like whale-song and even dolphin-clicks.... and all with immaculate timing. A bit weird, but in this context it worked...most of the time.

The trio was completed by Johnsen "playing on a hired bass thanks to British Midland."

The thing about the live performance, apart from the fresh jazz improvisations on tracks I'd heard many times before, was the musical chemistry between the three players. It was a real trio, not just a star pianist with two others filling in an accompaniment, even though in a sense Gustavsen is the 'star' being the composer.

All the best music (whatever the style) is about togetherness - even when it is a soloist, as Gustavsen demonstrated with just two notes at the very beginning of the concert.

I don't know how the trio would define their music themselves but I think of it as 'late night jazz' - the kind to just chill out to. It was also for me very spiritual music. Not in a theological sense, perhaps, just in the sense that it touched parts of me deep down that I can only call 'spiritual' - certainly beyond rationality and deeper than emotion.

One of the things that the best music and the best musicians teach us is that the silences, the spaces between the notes, are just as important as the notes themselves. (This applies even to loud, fast and energetic music, but it is much more obvious when the music is 'chilled.')

It's true of life too - getting all the different bits of our lives to work together and not be fragmented, but also making those spaces just to be rather than to do - it's not easy.

Some folk have a talent for it - most of us just struggle like beginners banging out chopsticks on the piano.

If you've never heard Tord Gustavsen before have a listen to some of the samples on Amazon.

The Alternative Viewpoint

Whenever I have a camera with me I try to find more unusual angles from which to view things. It's not always possible and often the results just don't work. They just turn out weird.
But I was pleased with this one, taken a couple of years ago in Hong Kong.
We were at a concert hall, about to go in to hear a rather brilliant American clarinet player, whose name I've completely forgotten. In the foyer of the theatre was a cafe/bar, so we decided to have a drink while waiting to go in.
I noticed that the ceiling was a little bit unusual - being covered in mirror tiles. So I discreetly placed my compact camera on the table and snapped to produce this picture of ourselves as if seen from above. I suppose you could say that was weird too, but I think it works.
It was our great Scottish poet, Robert Burns who once wrote:
"oh wud some power the giftie gie us tae see ourselves as ithers see us"
[which, for those who don't quite understand Scots means something like 'wouldn't it be good if some higher power gave us the ability to see ourselves the way other people see us' - though I think the way Burns put it was much more succinct and much more memorable :-) not to mention quite a bit more poetic! ]
Perhaps even more useful than the ability to see ourselves as others see us might be the ability to see ourselves as God sees us. I reckon we'd all get a bit of a surprise seeing things from that angle!

By the way, talking of concerts... I have just come back from an amazing gig which was part of the Glasgow Jazz Festival. I'll write about it later, once I've let the experience seep in to my soul a bit more.

Rain or shine

Apparently over the last couple of days there has been a huge amount of rain falling on certain parts of England - no doubt designed to coincide with the start of Wimbledon. (Incidentally, I am really disappointed, though not surprised, that Andy Murray has pulled out of the tournament this year.)
Fortunately, in contrast, although our weather here has hardly been "summery" we have managed to escape any really severe rainstorms.
I was travelling to a meeting last week through the Upper Clyde Valley. As we approached the fairly prominent landmark known as Tinto (an extinct volcano) my passenger remarked that he had never seen Tinto except when it was surrounded in cloud and rain. (That night was no exception.) However, I had to tell him that I had often passed it in bright sunshine. The photograph above is proof of the fact.
After my last post, I've been reflecting on what it is that makes a place seem 'beautiful.' Certainly sunshine can help, but it isn't always necessary.
Memories can be just as important - though perhaps that just makes a place seem special, rather than beautiful.
As I've said before in this blog, for me some of the most beautiful places are where nature and human creativity combine in harmony. There's very little of that human activity evident in the picture above but I hope that doesn't contradict my 'thesis' (though, come to think of it, the presence of the neatly mown lines made by the tractor do add something to the photograph and do draw attention to the beauty of Tinto itself.)
All too often in the Western world (at least since the Industrial Revolution) we have focused on dominating the environment, shaping the landscape to suit our own ends, and sometimes in the process destroying its beauty and even at times its life. We need to learn from the East how to live in greater harmony with the world in which we are placed and in some ways let it shape us.
Having said that... I'm glad Tinto is extinct!

A place of beauty

I suppose I should let you see the castle where I conducted the wedding earlier this week. Since the local press photographer was there I guess the wedding was not a secret. The present castle (known as Lee Castle, by the way) is not all that old by Scottish standards. It was built in Victorian times, no doubt as some kind of hunting lodge/stately home, though the chapel is apparently much older.
I was told the rather gruesome story that the chapel was for a long time used as an abattoir until the time of the previous Baron of Lee who arranged for it to be reconsecrated by an Episcopalian minister as a place of worship. I was also told that there is at least one regularly haunted bedroom. Well, it wouldn't be much of a castle otherwise, would it?
It is set in a beautiful valley. There was talk about 20 years ago when we first moved into the area that an exclusive golf course was going to be created with the castle as the clubhouse. That particular plan was thwarted, probably by the local planners, but it would have been a spectacular setting for a golf course and it would almost certainly have rivaled, and even outshone, Loch Lomond.
Actually the valley in which it is situated was once part of the original course of the River Clyde. Just when, or why,the river changed its course I do not know, but it left behind a valley of exceptional beauty. I'm sure it took millions of years for that valley to be formed and it has also been further shaped by human beings over the centuries. Unlike some places, the natural beauty has been enhanced rather than destroyed by this human interaction with the countryside, and like the very best of Buddhist temples, Lee Castle sits in harmony with its surroundings.
In many areas of life it is hard to get that balance right between shaping the world around us and living in harmony with it. But when you get it right, it makes your heart sing.
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