Storms

Sunday 27th December, 2020

Another clear sky today. Storm Bella hardly hit but seemed to have blown herself out over night. Thus sunshine and blue skies with a typical Tay breeze met my late awakening. It was cold but no frost on the ground. A hot coffee and some sourdough bread with home made marmalade set me up for the day. I streamed Mass from Canada, the Holy Family, but was not very inspired by the sermon which rambled!

I needed exercise so set off for a walk at 12.30pm with my litter grabber. It was very cold in the wind but warm if out of it and in the sunshine. I walked for about an hour and met few people. One couple acknowledged my litter collecting and vowed to get a grabber themselves and join in the 'fight against the litter buggers'. If every family had a grabber we would do well but it would be better if no one dropped litter! Only two bags this day and once again cigarette packets topped the list.

Today has really been about reading and chocolate. When I returned home I had some ripe Camembert and bread. Then to my room where I picked up Rilke's " Letters to a young poet" with an introduction by Lewis Hyde. So much to comment on. The introduction is excellent. Headed a " Geography of Solitude" it explains much of Rilke's thinking.

" We are solitary. It is possible to deceive yourself and act as if it were not the case....How much better...to take it as our starting point". He goes on to explain that 'spiritual intelligence' can convert solitude from a curse in to a blessing. It is the trick of reversal turning negatives in to positives. Anxiety, fear, sadness, doubt upgraded and put in to service. Of course it is not easy. To me it is the path of the spirit, the soul led by grace and wisdom, by the examples of sages and saints and Mystics through out the ages and cultures and religions and faiths. Solitude is the necessary enclosure within which we can begin to form an independent identity...we can become our true selves. As has been written " Solitude is the alembic of personhood".

We need to turn towards not away from those fears and shibboleths and monsters.

As well as Rilke I continued to read Ian Sansom on Auden's poem 'September 1, 1939'. I was struck by this look at words. As we have experienced Trump and false or fake news, as we undergo the demagogy of the pro and anti Brexiteers, as we live in the world of cyber trolling and continue to be bombarded by opinion and chatter minute by minute so we need to look at this quotation from Victor Klemperer's 'The language of the Third Reich'. " Words can be like tiny doses of arsenic; they are swallowed unnoticed, appear to have no effect, and then after a little time the toxic reaction sets on after all.."

I was invited to Rome to tour with the virtualtrips guide but declined. I continued to read and devoured a 180g bar of Tony's Chocolonely, the caramel pieces and sea salt bar valued at 537kcal per 100g!! I read the inside of the wrapper ' Right now there is slavery on cocoa farms in West Africa. We exist to change that...'

So a lovely day....with also the warning that first we need to recognise the spiritual and second the temporal. The former needs to be nurtured and engaged within ourselves to free us, the latter needs us to engage and free the slaves of the world.