A slight departure

To be read with Elgar's Cello Concerto in E Minor, Op. 85: I. Adagio - Moderato playing in the background. If you can't find a proper recording, here's one from YouTube.

When I was flying back to California for Christmas, the flight route took us over northern Scotland. I like to think that the islands that so enthralled me were the Outer Hebrides, although it's possible they were the Inner Hebrides, or some others altogether. The flight attendant didn't know and I had only the rather unhelpful flight map to guide me.

I think some sights stir something in your blood and leave new desires and lasting impressions; certainly, in this case, a thirst for exploration and a new, wild landscape for the imagination to work upon - the memory of a kind of bare-bones beauty that makes you ache.



Over islands NW of Scotland                                                                              22 December 2015

Warm and cold: warmth of setting sun on clouds that rise like table-top mountains - gold and peach, and cold of barren islands besieged by breakers and white-capped seas with shards of ice. But the islands and islets are a warm mahogany and other clouds pile up like snowdrifts and the sea goes on and on towards the top of the world and the moon hovers, phantom-like, over all.

I wish I could fly over all of this in a helicopter with just one other person and we could feel like the only people on an alien planet. 

Photo cred: The Western Isles
http://www.thewesternisles.co.uk/

Ode to a fresh-faced year

 Don't worry, there's really no ode. I believe I'm doing the world a service by limiting my poetry output.

Any cleverness aside, if you're like me, you feel a little thrill of anticipation at the start of this new year, even though January can seem a bit bleak - Christmas past and lots of grey skies and chill and early-falling nights before spring.

Still, the 'what ifs' and 'just maybes' are enticing. You have to remind yourself that last year was no walk in the park/picnic/bed of roses [choose your own metaphor]. This year, too, the good will come with the bad, and sometimes good new things bring bad things along with them - like the joy of love that is punctuated by goodbyes (cf. Romeo and Juliet II. ii.184).

Sorry, verging on poetical again. Back to the point. I believe I've alluded to this before, possibly at the start of another year, but I think it bears repeating. A history teacher at my university back in the States, at the start of more than one term, I think, read to us from Philippians 3:

Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. 

- Philippians 3:12-14 - 

Our teacher would then go on to tell us to forget both past successes and past failures. These verses are, in effect, a call both to humility and to freedom; we're not to be weighed down by our past. Not that we're to forget lessons learned or the important people in our lives, but those things we think we're pretty great at, or those things we think we've made a complete mess of . . .  all of that is behind.

So this year, I'm reminding myself to leave all that behind me, trusting that my mistakes are covered by Christ's blood and that my successes are not worth remembering apart from the ways they demonstrate God's grace. 

And I want to press on to what lies ahead, for "He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it" (I Thessalonians 5:24).

 

San Luis Obispo, CA | Christmas 2015