Edinburgh for Inklings

Dear Inklings,

I thought this would be a good venue through which to share about my and David's recent celebratory trip to Scotland.  I'll just choose two highlights - reason for celebration - and bell ringing (since that ties in with our recent reading of Sayers' Nine Tailors).

REASON FOR CELEBRATION:

On November 2, 2017 we celebrated 10 years of stroke recovery for David.  Among other reasons for our trips, climbing Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh seemed a particularly good way to celebrate that recovery:

St. Margaret's Loch, ruins of St. Anthony's Chapel, and Arthur's Seat

Arthur's Seat

Ten years ago David suffered a massive stroke and spent a month in rehab relearning how to walk (as well as relearning a lot of other things).  Last month he climbed to the top of Arthur's Seat, which towers over the city of Edinburgh.  I consider this a picture of triumph!

BELL RINGING AT ST. CUTHBERT'S:

I had worshiped in St. Cuthbert's last spring during my sabbatical.  It is Presbyterian, which is closely related to my faith tradition - and it is also where John Napier, a mathematician I'd been there to study the previous year, had served as elder in the 1500s.  

While looking into worship times for this fall, I noticed that bell-ringing practice would be taking place on Tuesday night while we were there.  I looked into attending practice and was told by one of the clergy that I might be allowed to sit in - certainly if I were a bell-ringer from elsewhere I would be - but that it wouldn't be a sure thing since I was not myself a bell-ringer.  Because David and I had only three days and so much we wanted to see, I decided not to plan around that possibility but rather to hope to at least show up in the surrounding kirkyard to hear the practice from outside.

After a long day of walking, while David saved me a seat at Shandwick's for dinner a couple of blocks away, I (foolishly?) headed back down into the kirkyard.  I ADORE creepy cemeteries and make a point of seeking them out.  And in the daytime this is one of the creepiest I've ever seen.  At night  .  .  .  in the dark  .  .  .  quite far below the level of the street  .  .  .  alone  .  .  .  umm  .  .  .  let's just say I REALLY wanted to hear those bells!

First a video of practice and then some pictures of the kirk:

My camera picked up a lot of light and made it look brighter down there than it actually was  .  .  .  just sayin'  .  .  .

Tombstone in St. Cuthbert's kirkyard taken earlier in the day

St. Cuthbert's as seen from Edinburgh Castle

Edinburgh Castle as seen from the south side of St. Cuthbert's

St. Cuthbert's viewed from the south

Though our "related" mystery reading was by Sayers, I thought it worth noting that mystery writer Agatha Christie was married in the small WWI Memorial Chapel of this kirk, which is where the evening service David and I attended was held.  I don't have pictures of the inside, but I snapped one of the entrance to this chapel.

For bell-ringing comparison, here is a video I took during my sabbatical on my way to worship Sunday morning.  Sadly, you can barely hear this wonderful artistry above the street noise!

Our Trees: In Memorium

Learning By Doing

They're taking down a tree at the front door,
The power saw is snarling at some nerves,
Whining at others. Now and then it grunts,
And sawdust falls like snow or a drift of seeds.
Rotten, they tell us, at the fork, and one
Big wind would bring it down. So what they do
They do, as usual, to do us good.
Whatever cannot carry its own weight
Has got to go, and so on; you expect
To hear them talking next about survival
And the values of a free society.
For in the explanations people give
On these occasions there is generally some
Mean-spirited moral point, and everyone
Privately wonders if his neighbors plan
To saw him up before he falls on them.

Maybe a hundred years in sun and shower
Dismantled in a morning and let down
Out of itself a finger at a time
And then an arm, and so down to the trunk,
Until there's nothing left to hold on to
Or snub the splintery holding rope around,
And where those big green divagations were
So loftily with shadows interleaved
The absent-minded blue rains in on us.
Now that they've got it sectioned on the ground

It looks as though somebody made a plain
Error in diagnosis, for the wood
Looks sweet and sound throughout. You couldn't know,
Of course, until you took it down. That's what
Experts are for, and these experts stand round
The giant pieces of tree as though expecting
An instruction booklet from the factory
Before they try to put it back together.

Anyhow, there it isn't, on the ground.
Next come the tractor and the crowbar crew
To extirpate what's left and fill the grave.
Maybe tomorrow grass seed will be sown.
There's some mean-spirited moral point in that
As well: you learn to bury your mistakes,
Though for a while at dusk the darkening air
Will be with many shadows interleaved,
And pierced with a bewilderment of birds.

~by Howard Nemerov