Again I am preparing our Celtic liturgy for Saturday.  I came across this wee gem of a prayer which Sister Barbara used at The Orchard a few months ago.  Just reading it makes me feel stronger.  I hope you like it.  It makes for a great start to the morning!
 
I arise with the light of morning,
Called to journey where I may;
Here as witness to the birthing
Of this new and wondrous day.

 
I arise and face the sunrise
With the wind upon my face;
Know God’s breath divine within me
Grounded in this sacred place.


I arise with the cloak of healing
Tempered by my time of rest;
Called to journey with the Spirit
On this sacred, healing quest.

Rain!!!

We have a very nice garden here at Linne Bheag – thanks to many years of tender loving care by someone else.  We take no credit for it. 

We have also had such a long, dry, beautiful spell of weather. 

And all this time we have been threatening to buy a garden bench to replace the ancient, broken one on our little terrace.  This week I went on-line and ordered a ‘glider’  - not just any old bench, you understand.  It arrived while I was on a baby-sitting mission to Edinburgh and remained in its box till this morning when Peter and I felt strong enough to face the multiplicity of arms, legs, screws, nuts and various bits of plastic all of which needed to be assembled in the correct order.  The sun was shining. 

Everything boded well.  We identified the right number of everything.  And hey presto!  Bad temper took over, fingers became thumbs, screws jumped out of hands and got lost in the grass…… and I phoned Gareth.  God bless Gareth!  Son-in-law number 2, living here in Anstruther, ‘comer-to-the-rescue’ in all things practical.  I heard (or maybe just imagined I heard) him grumping down the line as I explained our predicament to Jane and she agreed to come – or rather to come with Gareth, because Jane herself would have been no use whatsoever.

But it was Saturday.  They were just up.  They would be there eventually.  We went back to our accursed ‘glider’ and …..well, cursed, I suppose.  At least I did.  I did remark to Peter that it was just as well he didn’t know any bad words, or he would have been using them too!

But, in spite of all the trauma, we got there.  And by the time Gareth and Jane appeared with the biggest toolbox I have ever encountered, the last screw was ‘gliding’ into place.  Jane and I drank our morning tea whilst sunbathing and ‘gliding’ in the morning sun.

Then they left,  Peter went off to Glasgow.  I got my book out and another cup of tea.  Great.  A day to myself on the terrace on a beautiful sunny day. 

You know the rest, don’t you????!!!  But I console myself in the knowledge that the fish ponds desperately needed some rain to top them up.  So do the roses.  And our glider will still be there next week when we return to balmy summer days!

We had the pleasure of making new friends this afternoon.  Barry and Sandy live in Atlanta and are on holiday in Scotland and wanted to meet us because we are in the same ‘business’.  It was so lovely to meet kindred spirits.

Barry told us about a course in Spiritual Formation that he is running which includes material from a book called Sacred Pathways by Gary L. Thomas.  It sounded so interesting that the minute Barry and Sandy went out the gate, I was ‘googling’ Sacred Pathways and doing their on-line to test to discover my spiritual temperament.

Try it.  You might be surprised at the result.   Typically, I came out as having four top scores.  (I never could come down on one side of an argument!)  But I seemingly am a mixture of a Sensate, a Naturalist (hope that’s different from a Naturist), a Contemplative and an Ascetic (although that one sounds a bit painful).  Strangely, I did not score highly on the Intellectual! 

I can see that all that is true.  Nothing I didn’t know before, but it does help to explain a few pet hates.  I have never sat comfortably through very long sermons and that had nothing to do with Church of Scotland pews.  I know I learn best by ‘doing’ or ‘seeing’ rather than ‘hearing’.  And I knew that I liked natural, quiet worship on my own.  So it all fits into the categories that the questionnaire explored. 

I will now order the book and try out the ‘intellectual’ thing by reading it.  Watch out.  I will run a course on it in the autumn! 

You know, that was a joke.  But now I think about it, it’s a very good idea!  Any takers?

Today I started preparing for a Celtic Retreat day which we are giving at the end of the month.  In the days of the Celts, Scotland was a densely wooded country and the population tended to live on the fringes, close to the sea.  So, of course, they also were more likely to travel by sea than by land.  So I suppose it’s only natural that the Celtic prayers are so often taking water or the sea as a theme.  I love this modern prayer, in the Celtic style, written by Ray Simpson of Lindisfarne.  I am sure this one will be used on the 28th June.

Lord, you are my island,
your bosom is my nest.
You are the calm of the sea,
in that peace I rest.
You are the waves
on the shore’s glistening stones,
Their sound is my hymn.

You are the sound of the birds,
their tune I sing.
You are the sea breaking on rocks,
I praise you with the swell.
You are the ocean who laps my being,
in you I dwell.

Have you been watching Springwatch on BBC2, I wonder.  I love it so much that I have the web cam open all day and can pop in to watch the nests and activities around the river bank. 

I just loved the Wren’s nest.  That tiny wee bird had nine chicks in her tiny wee nest.  How could a bird the size of a wren actually lay nine eggs!  That is just incredible.  Even more incredible is the fact that all nine of these wee squawking beings fledged successfully at the end if the day.   

What amused me most was the squabbling that went on amongst them all, especially as they grew bigger and space became extremely limited in the miniscule ball of nest.  Frequently one or another was scrabbling back into the safety of the nest from its outer margins where it had landed when it lost a fight.  How none actually landed on the ground to be devoured by a predator was a miracle. 

So if I am praying Ray’s Celtic prayer, I had better hang on in that nest in God’s bosom.  I’m not much of a swimmer!

 




 

Today I thought I would vary the menu a little.  We are both getting tired of the same diet of sandwiches – although our guests who come on a Saturday (or any other day of the week for that matter) don’t know that I have a routine.  Boredom was setting in.  Corned beef, ham and tomato and egg mayonnaise. So today we are having salad with the ham – yummy.  Grated cheddar delicately flavouring the egg.  And, wow, this is exciting!!!, smoked salmon and cream cheese!  The trouble is that I am so naturally boring that I have never even made a smoked salmon and cream cheese sandwich before – never mind taste one! – so I really didn’t know how to do it.  Fingers crossed that will be a success.

On Thursday I attended our local church worship group.  We are preparing for the morning service which we will lead next Sunday and some joker suggested that we take JOY as our theme.  I horrified myself by realising that I don’t ‘do’ joy!  Serious, caring, concerned, these all come naturally to me.  Worried, anxious, bad-tempered, sad sometimes, downright depressed occasionally, content on a rare day………….  But joy?

I spoke to my Spiritual Director about this a few weeks ago.  I confessed that I don’t often get excited and I keep my life on an even keel as far as possible.  She wondered if I was frightened of emotion. 

  So I have kept a mental note.  Each night at bedtime I look back over the day and try to pinpoint the sparks of excitement or emotion of any positive kind that I can remember feeling.  It has been rather sobering (certainly not a joy) to realise that I just doggedly get on with life, visiting neither the highs not the lows, keeping both sorrow and pleasure at arm’s length.  I am thereby depriving myself of all the good things that God provides on a daily basis to sustain and encourage me. 

This has to change! 

So today, we are having smoked salmon and cream cheese sandwiches.  How exciting is that!!!  Well, maybe not VERY exciting – but it’s a start.  Variety is the spice of life.  And if I work on it maybe by the time we take the service next Sunday morning I will have some joy in my life!  Hurrah and halleluiah!