'In Church'

Thursday 19th November, 2020

I have been rather selfish today. First I got myself to Mass in our local Church. A new priest has taken over. He seems young, welcoming and full of smiles and fervour. He is from Nigeria and I had a little difficulty deciphering his accent which may have both an African and a Scottish lilt and I am hard of hearing anyway. Yet it was so good to have him. At the end of the service we all introduced ourselves....and I learned the Christian names of three people I have been talking to for years but always forgetting their names. I hope I remember them now!

Then off with a friend from the service to a picnic breakfast. She drove via the garage where the kindly owner had reinflated and checked my tyre pressures. He had refused to charge yesterday so I promised a cake. I delivered it, a special chocolate one from the local grocer store. I arrived just as the six mechanics were sitting to their coffee break. They looked pleased.

Then to a bay overlooking the Tay. The tide was out and there was a half mile mud flat. On that flat were many wading birds....it was so glorious to watch them hunting and searching for their food. We had hot coffee from a thermos flask and warm sausages and egg sandwiches. I just love the cosiness of it and I feel so relaxed. We talk much of spiritual things. I have been reading R.S. Thomas's poems and quoted his 'In Church':

" Often I try

To analyse the quality

Of its silences. Is it where God hides

From my searching? I have stopped to listen,"

We sat in silence and sighed. " Do you hear it?" she asked.

I returned home to find that I had the house to myself for some six hours. I settled to Thomas and tried to listen to the silence. There is something so utterly enthralling in silence. I remember someone calling the silence of the Kalahari desert a silence that allowed one to hear ' the music of the spheres'. There really is a quality and substance to silence. It is pregnant with the meaning of nothingness. I so need it.

I came back to reality with a thump and an exclamation when I realised I had three letters to post. I dashed the half mile to the post box and caught the postman as he was emptying the box. The box is just by the wall which protects the road from the sloping hill down to the rocky beaches of the Tay. " Lovely is it not?" the postman asked. " You can hear the silence of the wild here". I thought to myself that yes, we can all share this earth, this creation. I recalled the bench plaque I have mentioned before which sits near a park and proclaims 'Everywhere and Inaudible'. We really are one somehow. Yet silence is not inaudible but can hide cacophonies.