In 1983 I moved from the city of Edinburgh to the far north of Scotland, to Golspie a village on the east coast of the county of Sutherland. Sutherland has an east coast, a west coast and a north coast with only the county of Caithness to its north and east on the top righthand corner of Scotland. On the western part of Sutherland can be found the area of Assynt - and on occasions it was all in a day's work to drive to small villages within Assynt for church gatherings! Loch Veyatie pictured above is a much sought after location for flyfishing. The poet Norman MacCaig lived in Edinburgh in Lemington Terrace but spent much of every summer in Assynt and enjoyed the trout fishing on Loch Veyatie. In fact from his poem you can sense that he loved to be in Sutherland. On this the last day of 2023 it is hard to move into 2024 dancing and singing as these past 2 months have been full of destruction and death in Gaza and Israel along with the past 2 years of the Russian attack and war on Ukraine. Perhaps we end the year reflecting on memory - the first of the two poems below - and enter the New Year trusting that memories will fill us with hope and in the months ahead we will make new memories along the way. I thank you for reading my ponderings, prayers and poems, and I wish you well for the New Year.
Memory
Over the turbulence of the world
flies the bird that stands for memory.
No bird flies faster than this one,
dearer to me
than the dove was to Noah – though it brings back
sometimes an olive branch, sometimes
a thorny twig without blossoms.
Two Men at Once
In the Culag Bar a fiddler is playing
Fast-rippling tunes with easy dexterity.
How do I know? I'm in Edinburgh.
On the pier, sun scorched tourists
Hang their bellies over improbable shorts.
How do I know? I'm in Edinburgh.
In the Veyatie burn a man
Hooks a trout. It starts rampaging.
And I'm in Edinburgh.
Or so I say. How easy to be
Two men at once.
One smiling and drinking coffee
In Leamington Terrace, Edinburgh.
The other cutting the pack of memories
And turning up ace after ace after ace.
Prayer:
Holy God,
Creator of the Sun, Moon and Stars,
To You we lift up our praise and our prayers.
We marvel in the mystery of Time,
seconds, hours, days, weeks, months and years.
We busy ourselves attaching numbers to Time
and so often miss its beauty and possibility.
Help us to live in the present.
With proper regard for the past
and expectation for the future, help us
not so much to mark time but to live time
and to live in the fullness of Your grace and mercy
O Holy, and Loving God. Amen.
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