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Lambing Snows and Holy Week

  (photo courtesy of Abi Bull, Isle of Skye) Lambing snow is the name given to an early spring snowfall that can catch some of the wee lambs out who are born at the start of the season.   Farmers have to watch out for this and, given care and shelter, the lambs are usually able to survive.   It coincides too with the images of daffodils emerging through a covering of late snow,   a similar sign of hope and new life in a forbidding and even hostile environment. Nevertheless there is something beautiful of this setting of fragile life against the rawness of nature, something that speaks to the heart of the human condition and the poignancy of it all.   I write this on a Good Friday which is set in a global context of much uncertainty and even fear and desperation.    The centuries old story that we are taken back to again and again by the turning of the season, of a God who died for a suffering and broken world, seems to have more resonance than ever.    Like a lambing snow , the cold
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Re-enchantment

  The magical wonder of snow can be lost by a couple of degrees warming turning the white falling flakes into dismal rain.    It is precisely the same elements of moisture and air, humidity and wind, yet the shifting of the one variant of temperature creates a totally different outcome.  I have only managed three snow days in the mountains this winter, due to a combination of mostly busy diaries and a very unpredictable weather which meant days set aside for a climb would sometimes be literally a washout.  Ina and I did have a good summitting of the Cobbler with the spikes on our boots giving us the grip we needed in the the last snow of the season, and I felt again the sheer wonder of walking in crisp, hard snow as the world fell away around us. It looks like it's gone for the year now though and we have to wait 9 months probably to get out onto the white stuff again.  The hills just look wet and sodden now and most uninspiring... and yet...they are exactly the same slopes and  vi
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Love in Lent

  Now and again (actually very occasionally)Valentines Day falls on Ash Wednesday     This is one of those years and it got me thinking that, although at first glance the two may seem totally unrelated, actually Valentines Day can help us observe Lent in the right spirit.   Valentine's Day celebrates the love one person has for another and although this can range from a schoolboy crush to the mature love of a long married couple there is a common theme.   The 'secret' identity of the giver of the Valentine Card not only adds an air of mystery and excitement, but it also, if properly observed, means that it is offered expecting nothing in return.   At heart it is altruistic.  We usually approach Lent as a season when we give things up, a time of sacrifice and penance as we walk with Jesus on the road to Jerusalem and his death for us.  It is in foregoing some of our normal habits and luxuries that we become more conscious of what he gave up for us and are reminded that b
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Curiosity in Lent

  Lent starts on Wednesday and I've decided this year to cultivate  curiosity. I'm not sure where this will lead me but it came off the back of a school assembly I led yesterday for 200 17 year olds.  I was referencing Jesus' famous saying ' you will know the truth and the truth will set you free'. ( John 8:32). Amidst all the revising for exams and the importance of learning facts and answers I was hoping to inspire them with the sense of wonder they had as children and the curiosity that led them to ask questions.   Good questions sometimes are even more important than good answers. After a day today walking with Ina in the Trossachs and hanging out in our van afterwards reading and chatting and snoozing  I  felt the challenge of my own words the previous morning.    Lent is so often seen as a period of contraction, a narrowing of appetites, restricting of habits, scrutiny of motivations etc.  It is hard to get excited about Lent the way we may feel during Advent
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A deep breath and a covenant prayer.

  It’s 9pm on the 31 st of December and rarely have I felt so uncertain about the coming year.    There seem way more instability than usual in our national and international systems and given the record of early 2020 and 2021 all bets are off that there’s not something else coming down the track.   Or perhaps October 7 th was that and it just came early.   Or maybe it is the metastatic fall out from that day which will dominate early 2024.    Tonight I’m at the top of a big wave,   hovering there waiting, feeling rarely more alive just as the pre-reptilian bit of my brain flashes all the danger signals.   A deep   breath. And yet I am reminded of the prayer I led my church in this morning, written in the mid eighteenth century by John Wesley and since become an integral part of the Methodist Community’s life. I am no longer my own but yours. Put me to what you will, rank me with whom you will; put me to doing, put me to suffering; let me be employed for you, or laid asid
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A Solstice Nudge

  A Solstice Nudge At 3.47am this morning the solstice took place and the earth started its' long journey back towards summer (in the northern hemisphere at least!).   I always feel my heart lighten a little when this happens. It’s all about the direction of travel as I have so often said to people struggling with circumstances or a seeming lack of progress.    And the fact that I know we are heading towards warmth and light makes all the difference in the dark and the cold.   It reminds me that my current situation, however stalled it may feel, will one day pass. Such a change though rarely takes place in a dramatic and obvious ‘before and after’ kind of way.   Rather it feels like a nudge.   You would have to be looking very closely to notice that little tilt of the earth that starts the process.   I’ve just been looking at my weather app and over the next few days the sunset time moves by a minute each day: today:15.44;   23 rd : 15.45; 24 th :15:46 and 25 th 15:47.    (yes
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The Lady in the tartan coat.

  Why didn't I say something???  She was waiting in the Chemist like I was, and walked past me on her way out.   She would have been in her late seventies, maybe more, in a wonderful long bright tartan coat and a large stylish winter hat.  She walked carefully out and as she was passing I so wanted to say 'love your coat', but bottled it and she was gone into the cold dark. Her coat spoke of younger, vibrant times when she would have walked briskly, surrounded by friends laughing and talking together.  To buy and wear a coat like that would have taken confidence as she would always stand out wherever she went, especially in our  darkly clothed wintery Glasgow.   I am sure she had other coats she could have worn when she came out shopping.   I wonder whether she pulled that one from the back of the wardrobe because she wanted to feel a little different today, make an ordinary shopping trip more of an event.  Wearing a coat like that would transform even a visit to Costa. And
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