From a recent email:
I am sorry to hear that your plumbing is mournful. Maybe it is suffering from pipe dreams that never came true!
Plumbers! Thankfully the mournful plumbing referred to has cheered up! Retaining a sense of humour is the saving grace in many walks of life it would seem. The religious life is no exception.
I’ve been working all evening on a post for Field of Merit which is really a follow up post to the last one here. About Time is my ponderings on the Caseo watch in the photograph. As it happens About Time is the title of a new film which I’m told is worth watching.
About Time is a British romantic comedy science fiction film revolving around time travel where a young man tries to change his past to have a better future.
I’ve been packing in readiness to travel. At this moment I’m not sure if it will be a three week trip or a two month one. All depends on my getting a visa in time to get to a monastic event at Shasta Abbey. It starts on the 18th September. As the days go by it’s looking more and more like I’ll be taking the short hop across the Pennines rather than the long haul over the Atlantic. But I’ve needed to pack as if I were going to be away for two months in still-warm California while at the same time prepare to be togged up for wet and windy autumnal Northumberland. It has been an odd time.
I’ve taken this opportunity to go through my belongings and sift out items no longer used or needed to then take to the charity shop. A batch of books went a couple of weeks ago. Invariably as the sifting becomes more and more refined certain items repeatedly turn up and resist resolution. Here above are the current items haunting me. The watch works but a new strap costs more than the watch when new. It gave good service and I’m loathed to part with it – a pocket watch perhaps. Those three buttons with Royal Robins inscribed on them? Can’t throw them away, can’t give them away. And so it goes on. It is amazing how much time and energy can go into dealing with small objects. A paper clip, a safety pin, an elastic band, an old staple and a tiny zip lock bag. The staple is bin bound and the rest I’ll take care of.
As with small and seemingly insignificant objects so too with small and seemingly insignificant thoughts. They deserve to be seen, loved and let go of.
I guess everybody knows that Seamus Heaney died about a week ago in late August, at the start of the blackberry season. This photograph is a tribute to him and his poem Blackberry Picking. He was quite the person.
His son Michael revealed at the funeral mass that his father’s final words, “Noli timere” (Latin: “Do not be afraid”), were texted to his wife, Marie, minutes before he died. He was quite the person alright.
Who would have thought canfuls and glutting were actual words and how about ingurgitating! Not that anybody around here eats like that. All in all quite the person – with words and as himself.
Now then, what happened to the book of his poems I was sent?
I came upon this horse the other day and just could not pass by without taking a picture, which I did with some difficulty. Her companion, a robust creature, was pushing and shoving me vigorously with her head knocking me off-balance however I prevailed. There is no knowing why her tongue was permanently protruding though. I love horses. Whatever they look like and whatever crazy things they do. And hopefully this is a reasonable lead in to one last quote before going on to other things…..
Man is disturbed not by things, but by the views he takes of them.