I love this photo.
It is not very sharp, as it was taken with a long hand held exposure in low light. Essentially it is Michaela walking through the cloister at the thousand year old Gloucester Cathedral.
Place of a thousand pilgrimmages.
And ours.
We are back after a lovely few days in St Andrews- the sun shone and it was great to spend time together and to visit somewhere new.
Highlights-
Beach cricket (ours and watching a beach fixture played on Elie Beach.)
All those lovely little villages.
Sailing with Em and Will.
Slow days of sunshine and easy laughter.
Too much good food.
The moon pulls me
I am become sea
Moving
Tidal
Spring rises me
But the trough of neap
Will choke me yet
Amid the flotsam
Perhaps the moon will wane
And leave me in slack water
Floating high in thick brine
In the gentle
Darkness
A couple of photos from today’s trip to Bute…
I have been thinking about our Greenbelt worship event- which will be entitled ‘Homesick’. One of the key themes emerges from a discussion about the nature of we humans- made a little lower than the angels, neither fully flesh nor completely spirit. An amalgam of both- or perhaps one on a journey to becoming the other.
It set me thinking about what it might mean for we Christians- how we live in the presence of the immanence- how our present is always lived in the belief that there is another reality- which Jesus described confusingly as ‘The Kingdom of God’.
I wonder if there is something in this life that will always be unfulfilled- always be tinged with nuance and compromise. This is no bad thing- it is the way of the pilgrim- how we learn through surprise encounters and hopeful longing as much as by certainty and knowing.
I came across this passage from the book of Genesis that says it as well as anything-
10 (C)Then the Lord said,
Why have you done this terrible thing? Your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground, like a voice calling for revenge.11 You are placed under a curse and can no longer farm the soil. It has soaked up your brother’s blood as if it had opened its mouth to receive it when you killed him.12 If you try to grow crops, the soil will not produce anything; you will be a homeless wanderer on the earth.13 And Cain said to the Lord,
This punishment is too hard for me to bear.14 You are driving me off the land and away from your presence. I will be a homeless wanderer on the earth, and anyone who finds me will kill me.15 But the Lord answered,
No. If anyone kills you, seven lives will be taken in revenge. So the Lord put a mark on Cain to warn anyone who met him not to kill him.16 And Cain went away from the Lord’s presence and lived in a land called
Wandering, which is east of Eden.
We took a trip over to see the collection of vessels taking part in this years Tall Ships race in the docks at Greenock.
It was rather mad- thousands and thousands of people, loads of fast food stalls and funfair rides- and the ships. Next to nothing about the nautical history of this wonderful part of the country. No engagement with the nature of empire and slavery, and the oppression that all this unleashed. No celebration of the lives of men and women whose communities build ships like this, and sailed from this port into the unknown.
And although it was lovely to see the ships, it felt a bit like a huge opportunity missed.
A few photos, amazingly all without crowds of people in them!
Argyll and Bute hospital is at the end of its useful life. Soon it will be ‘reprovisioned’.
Hanging in the old reception area is a painting of the hospital from what I imagine is about 100 years ago. It shows a rear view of the hospital, at a time when it was a permanent home for hundreds of patients. If they could only tell their stories. I assume the painting was done by a patient at the hospital- it has a naive feel about it that is very affecting.
I took my camera today and took some shots between meetings. I wanted to record something of a visual monument to one of the last of a breed of failed social/medical experiments known as the ‘asylum’. By any measure, it was a desperately failed experiment. In the name of humanitarian treatment of the mentally ill, we removed people from society, and warehoused them in institutions. Even when these were well run (and the stories of abuse that was handed out by some staff are appalling) then the end result was that people were lost. They stopped being brothers, sisters, children, bakers, lovers- and became- patients.
Here are some of the shots (click to enlarge.)
this fragile tent 