· stillpoint ·

  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...

  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 w...

  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...

  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...

  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 ...

  I was walking along the canal a few days ago in the light rain when suddenly beside me flew a swan, her white iridescent wings sweeping effortlessly (and silently) over the dark waters.  Into the damp and cold greyness of an early Scottish January swooped a creature of light.  Changeless as the seasons change around her, she was a harbinger of that deep down freshness of things that is ever old and ever new. In a canine explosion next to me Bella set off alongside as fast as her Labrador legs, heart and lungs could carry her.  Two more languid sweeps of the majestic wings and the swan was already out of reach with Bella stubbornly carrying on until even she could see she was outmatched by the great bird.  We both looked at each other and agreed it had been a moment. On the way home we passed the heron again remaining in the exact same place except this time he was taking his time swallowing a fish.   The question of how herons, in their eternal, pret...

 Early winter in Scotland is a season with few bright and spectacular colours.  Shades of grey frame the ubiquitous brown bracken under which the land sleeps.  Early snows haven't yet developed the vivid sparkle that comes with greater depth and cold mornings and the lochs reflect the white and the greys in stillness or movement.  Patches of green are also to be found along the path,  and of course on the conifers scattered around and the black of the bark wet after the rain.  Leached yellow grasses(that display no recollection of sunlight)  on the upper slopes, awaiting the new life of spring.  Greys, browns, faded greens and yellows and the scattered whites of early snow provide a pallet befitting this season of  rest and loss.    Living with the seasons of our life and owning whichever season we are in can be tricky.  If you are a sunny and relentlessly positive like me it can be difficult to admit it is winter.  Not fa...