The Many Colours of a Rainbow

Monday 19th October, 2020

It is relaxing to feel at times that things are as they should be. Today it is raining in Scotland. The rain here next to the Tay is as I have always known it. The morning broke late and the evening has come early. The Tay looks grey with a sheet of haar like water hanging over it. I can just see across. I also see tree trunk floating by with a few seagulls perched on them. A cormorant or two look in their element. A bedraggled heron shudders and shakes and preens itself unsuccessfully. A very fat pigeon sits on the wall and its mood seems to match its colours of grey, darker grey and silver grey. A grey day indeed yet comforting.

I managed one short walk between showers as I thought. I went to deliver back books to the library and there was my old friend. She has sciatica and is under heavy pain control. Yet she is cheery and knowledgeable of books. We chat as to the NHS and she is ever understanding and sympathetic to them. Indeed she is the sort of person who knows the silver lining of every cloud. She engenders enthusiasm. A little boy comes in with his Grand Mother and she enthuses him as to the various children's books. He goes away proud and excited at the books he holds. An elderly lady comes in also and there is a lengthy discussion as to various authors. Later she tells me that the lady's husband had died recently and she is lonely. She is also an academic and needs to talk of great ideas, writings and thoughts.

My walk home gets me very damp and I head to have a hot bath. I have finished a few letters today and read much and looked meditatively at the weather. As a teenager I had a private art teacher at home. Our first session together endeared me to her for life. We spent three hours looking at the colour of our 'white' drawing room wall. Never again was I too see white as white. Each session started with a 15 minute concentration on whatever ( furniture, a carpet, a book cover, a vase of flowers ) to see its reality and to try to capture its texture and colours/hues. Looking across the Tay I see a multitude of shifting tones of silver, blue, yellows, reds and pinks yet it can be truly described as grey. Beauty is worth watching.

It could be described as a dull day as I have hunkered down. Yet it was not. After the library and bath I opened an email from a friend and she had sent a quotation of Rilke. So I googled 'Letters to a young poet'. It is a wonderful seam of insight, wisdom and ideas.

" Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue ".

Strange as I had written recently to the ex pupil who is writing to me as to the existence of God. I quoted an old monk friend, Dom Sebastian Moore, who had said asking the right questions is more important than finding the answers. The questions themselves are, I believe, the tools of seeking the truth, love and all the great virtues of being human. So Rilke helps hit the nail on the head. Many colours in a rainbow.

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