Flower of Scotland

One's friends do lead interesting lives. An impending wedding in a Scottish castle for a friend's sister is awaited with childish clapping of hands, the thought of skirted-beclad, champagne-swilling English disporting themselves on rain-sodden hillsides, nostalgically recalling 'prima nocte' has a certain colonial feel about it. It should, of course, be remembered that while the toffs on horses were murmuring 'tally ho' on the sidelines; in front of the guns it was the bampots in bagpipes and kilts in there doing the bayoneting and spilling foreign guts on alien fields for the glory of the Empire. Additionally, the Scottish preoccupation with engineering of real gravitas rewarded the world with properly surfaced roads, battleships of behemoth proportions and the steam engine. Oh, yes, and they inventit the tellie..

Blarney, or what you will

It's alarming to reflect on the fact that the veneer of urbane sophistication is frequently tissue-thin to the point of transparency. Had a phone call from a friend who probably knew me better than anyone else in the world with an offer to visit southwest Ireland over the summer, which caused a metaphorically gleeful clapping of the hands. In my precarious condition, such offers are not just rare but their serendipitous value is priceless.
Mark Twain once wrote: 'I have seen all the foreign countries I want to except heaven and hell and I have only a vague curiosity about one of those.'
Ireland clearly wasn't on his list. The sheer joie de vivre of its citizenry, together with some of the greatest authors and poets this part of the planet has ever seen, also the strong possibility of myself having Irish antecedents, have persuaded me to overlook an unwholesomely damp climate. I imagine my ancestors, gritty Celts all, bestriding the hills with the braggadocio of a proud, unconquered race. Well, not since 1690, at any rate. This homespun image of a Bantry village dwelling gives little indication that the Atlantic water lapping its borders is probably freezing. Never mind. I must take care not to fall in.

Book Review

And, for this week's special intellectual treat, at a bargain price from a bookshop in Gosport......'Revelations'.
Imagine thirty three essays on individual books of the Bible, written by secular, big-name authors, from A N Wilson to Nick Cave. The illustrious pour their offerings into its pages. Bright-eyed skepticism shines through their craft. Is this such a bad thing, I wonder? At first reading , a god who orders the genocide of the Amalekites, the slaying of Isaac and much else besides would seem to be despotic at best and psychotic at worst. Yet, it depends how the narrative speaks to us. The KJV is deliberately flowery and ambiguous since it attempts to convey myth and grandeur in a form which will be remembered when more modern and prosaic translations have disappeared. Evangelicals assert often noisy ownership of perceived facts when perhaps the message of myth (Gk muthoi: [Homer] meaning 'powerful and authoritative stories') isn't to propagate an untruth or a fairytale, it's simply there to shed a different light on things. Simply put, I think we're supposed to read between the lines a bit.
John's gospel speaks of the time when the apostle Thomas re-enters the post-resurrection story and still refuses to believe that Jesus truly has risen. Thomas had to feel for himself Jesus' wounds or else he could not believe. Even though Jesus apparently had miraculously entered into the room while the door was locked, Jesus still saw fit to allow Thomas to examine his body, providing Thomas with the proof he needed. Jesus' response was, "do not doubt, but believe." I think Thomas is an archetype of humanity, us, in other words. We all have the capacity to doubt. In many ways, doubting and investigation are survival mechanisms, and if we did not doubt, our species wouldn't have lasted very long. If we didn't base our sense of reality on empirical evidence, we would believe just about everything we were told. We might believe that trolls inhabit Antarctica, or that cats talk outside No 4 Privet Drive. Thomas's doubt is ours, too, our nemesis and companion, our secret haunting. I think that doubt is not necessarily a lack of faith but rather an expression of it. Sometimes to doubt is merely to insist that God be taken seriously, not frivolously—to insist that our faith is placed in and upheld by something other than apparent conjuring tricks.
Image:Caravaggio. Doubting Thomas. 1602-1603. Oil on canvas. Sanssouci, Potsdam, Germany.

Sunday meanderings.

It seems a characteristic of some Anglo-Catholic priests that they feel the need to flay their congregations alive, perhaps for 'sins of omission' concerning the use of appropriate prayers and meditations for the day, or their disinclination to turn up for Mass. You can't really blame them, can you. The priesthood might do well to remember that every time "hamartia" (= "sin") is used in Luke's gospel, it is with "apheimi" (= "forgiveness").
My own views on such silly nonsense are well known to those who are misguided enough to allow me room to express them . I don't think I could have gone as far as John Bunyan, born an itinerant tinker, whose statue stands proudly in Bedford and who spent twelve years in Bedford jail for his outspokenness. Apart from early propensities to command puddles to 'be ye dry', subsequently he wrote in scathing terms against the liturgy of the Church of England. No two things, according to him, had less affinity than the form of prayer and the spirit of prayer. Those who have most of the spirit of prayer are all to be found in jail, and those who have most zeal for the form of prayer are all to be found at the alehouse. H'm.

Leonardo again

Floor van Lamoen, mentioned this on the Geometry Puzzles newsgroup
I think it's fascinating. The grid shows a red 8x3 triangle a smaller green one and two purple and yellow shapes of area 8 and 7. Rearranging the pattern seeems to leave one square missing. I wonder why...? Clever, innit.. The same trick can be applied with other Fibonacci configurations sometimes with one square too many, at other times one square too few.

There's no place like home....

Home. Mi casa, su casa. I am a little tired of living out of a suitcase, and feel rather like the tortoises in next door's garden, home being where the legs give way.
The inscription to Psalm 84 is "according to The Gittith" which is thought to be an eight-stringed instrument very much like a guitar. Talented chap, King David. Might have been fun to pick along with, particularly since he seemed so in touch with God. When he talked about the 'dwelling place' of God, he meant the Temple, the building in Jerusalem where Shekinah was. The word is feminine..interesting, that. In the holy of holies within the Temple was a strange and mysterious light which marked the presence of God. Back to Holy Fire again. I was with a friend the other day, playing a few riffs on my old guitar, and got quite caught up in a song I hadn't heard for a long time; 'Outrageous Grace'.. my small Holy of Holies for that moment, finding the 'dwelling place'...

Here's the lyrics, in case you've forgotten them. Thanks to Godfrey Birtill

THERE'S A LOT OF PAIN, but a lot more healing
There’s a lot of trouble but a lot more peace
There’s a lot of hate but a lot more loving
There’s a lot of sin but a lot more grace

Oh outrageous grace
oh outrageous grace
Love unfurled by heaven’s hand
Oh outrageous grace
oh outrageous grace
Through my Jesus I can stand

There’s a lot of fear but a lot more freedom
There’s a lot of darkness but a lot more light
There’s a lot of cloud but a lot more vision
There’s a lot of perishing but a lot more life
There’s an enemy
That seeks to kill what it can’t control
It twists and turns
Making mountains out of molehills
But I will call on my Lord
Who is worthy of praise
I run to Him and I am saved

Ah, well. Ramblings over for another night.

The Solent at night.

First spring day of the year, and a gentle eventide amble along the beach, the lights of the Isle of Wight over the water and few pedestrians. Fishermen optimistically set out their tackle on unforgiving shingle and boy racers with low profile tyres and underfloor neon lights practise handbrake turns in the car park, to the annoyance of the local citizenry. Ran across three children of indeterminate preadolescent age wanting to bum cigarettes in exchange for a swig of cider. At the risk of stifling latent entrepreneurial talent, I declined. Passing a totally empty amusement arcade, the weeping buboe on every British seafront, I was glad I wasn't paying the electricity bill. Loud, presumably inviting music was piped to a waiting multitude of about half a dozen pipistrelles who swooped and wheeled, obviously trying to outfly the noise. It's sunny in the picture, which is rare.