Just a moment

[The clock of Dunblane Cathedral]

There's never enough of it: but there are occasions when you have some to spare.
You can have it on your hands: but occasionally you have to kill it.
Often it drags along: but more often it flashes past - especially as you get older.
TIME.
It's a strange thing.
At least how we perceive it is strange.
I particularly like these two quotations from the Bengali poet and seer, Rabindranath Tagore.

"The butterfly counts not months but moments,

and has time enough."

"Time is a wealth of change,
but the clock in its parody makes it mere change and no wealth."

Some of our Kenyan friends would often say "you have the watches: we have the time."

In the Biblical way of thinking, of course, there are two different kinds of time, chronological time (the kind you can measure with a clock) and 'kairos' time (the "right time" - the opportune moment.)

"There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven" [Ecclesiastes 3]

... but I still think there's not enough of it around!!!

Surprise encounters of the interesting kind

[His Excellency, Kenneth David Kaunda, first President of Zambia at Dunblane]

It has been a very, very busy few weeks - hence the absence of any blogging recently. But there have also been some interesting moments, and some interesting encounters.
Towards the end of May we were invited to lunch at the Palace of Holyroodhouse by the Lord High Commissioner, George Reid. We expected it was going to be one of those Holyroodhouse events where about 150 or more people would attend and we would be lost in a sea of people we didn't know or could only vaguely recognise.
As things turned out, we discovered there were only a couple of dozen people at the lunch. That in itself was something of a surprise and for once it wasn't difficult to get free parking in Edinburgh because we were able to park our car inside the palace gates in the forecourt.
But that was nothing compared to the surprise we got when we went inside to discover that also invited to lunch that day was Archbishop Desmond Tutu and his wife, Leah. [He had just come from addressing the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland - an inspiring address well worth watching and listening to.]
Unfortunately, after the introductions, I didn't get much opportunity to speak to Desmond Tutu himself but, during the very excellent meal, I was sitting between his wife and the wife of the Lord High Commissioner, and we had a great chat together.
I generally don't have much time for the cult of celebrity that fills the media these days, especially when so much nonsense is written and spoken about people who are famous mainly for being famous, but it was a privilege to share a table with someone who is a genuinely significant individual in the history of the world. And like most really great people he is really pretty humble.
But there was more...
I have just returned from Dunblane where, since Tuesday, I have been attending the meeting/conference of The Church of Scotland's World Mission Council to which I was recently appointed. Last night we had another surprise visitor, in the form of Kenneth Kaunda, the first ever President of Zambia. He joined us for our evening meal and then came to speak to us at our evening session. We even got to hear him play the piano, sing for us and do a bit of a dance!! Even without his surprise appearance it would have been a long day. But the additional item - which immediately moved us into Zambian time (and anyone who's been to Africa will know what I mean by that) - meant we didn't finish till after 10pm.
And we had started just after 8am!!
I had taken my camera with me hoping we might have had even half an hour of free time at some point over the two and a half days but it didn't quite work out that way. However, it did mean I could snap "KK" as he is commonly known.

This is my body...

[A worm's eye view of grass?]

The photograph above has absolutely nothing whatever to do with this piece but I share it with you anyway. I took it thinking it might come in useful some time as a powerpoint background.

The other thing I want to share is prompted by recent debates in the Church of Scotland General Assembly. I don't want to say anything about the debates themselves but it reminded me of a short poem I wrote many, many years ago when I was a teenager.

This is my body

This is my body

That you break in two

By ignoring the one

In the neighbouring pew

This is my blood

That you spill down the drain

When you fight with each other

For personal gain

And each point of doctrine

You score here and now

Was a nail in my palm

Or a thorn in my brow

Each argument won

Is a brother lost 

So the principle’s saved

No matter the cost

This is my body

My hands and my feet

If only you’d bend

Perhaps they would meet

© Iain D. Cunningham

Light in the darkness

[Under African Skies - Masai Mara 2002]

I think I am going to have to start carrying my old compact digital camera in my car at all times. Several times in the last couple of weeks I have seen some spectacular photographs- well, they might have become spectacular photographs If I'd had a camera with me to capture what I could see. Now these scenes remain only in my memory, which is about the least secure place in the Universe!
A few evenings ago, for example, I was returning from the Induction service for the new minister of the Douglas Valley Church. Approaching Hyndford Bridge,* which crosses the River Clyde just outside Lanark, I looked over to my left at the rolling landscape which at this time of year is painted in shades of brilliant green.
The sun was getting quite low in the sky and casting interesting shadows, then it disappeared behind a fairly large bank of clouds. Not such an interesting picture. Then suddenly, through a large gap in the clouds, the rays of the lowering sun broke through producing a pool of warm light on just part of the landscape, like some sort of cosmic spotlight. Hills and trees suddenly became translucent with a fragile kind of beauty, like a delicate watercolour.
And I had no camera...!!
We could do with a little bit of light in these dark days of economic recession, the scandal over MPs expenses, and the upcoming General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, which opens today, faced with some very divisive issues.
There are always plenty of reasons, and excuses, for feeling depressed, but I like to remember that Landscape Photography is really about photographing the light and capturing those moments when the light transforms a place. In a similar way, we can never deny or escape the darkness all around us, but rather than focusing exclusively on it, it is often worth waiting for and looking for the transforming light.

*Hyndford Bridge was built in 1766.

The Vine

I haven't had much time to blog of late and certainly no time to take any new photographs, but one thing I did last week was to write a new hymn.
Necessity, as ever, was the motivation. I simply couldn't find a suitable hymn to fit in with the sermon for this morning's worship- based on John 15: 1-17, so I ended up writing one of my own.
We sang it to the tune Garelochside but I suppose any suitable "Short Metre" tune would do.
Here are the words for anyone who might like to use them.
They are in the form of a prayer to Christ:

O Lord, you are the Vine.
In you we live and move.
Your Spirit nourishes our hearts
and fills us with your love.

As we remain in you
the life of grace takes root;
in caring service in your Name
our lives will bear much fruit.

In you our lives belong
as branches of the Vine;
through sharing faith and trust and hope,
Lord Jesus, make us one.

So others then may see
in this and every place
the glory of your Father shown
in reconciling grace.

© Iain D. Cunningham, 2009

Open Doors?

[North Korea - from a border post in South Korea]

Christians in this part of the world may think it is not always easy for them to live out their faith in a society that for the most part doesn't care about what we believe, but we should spare a thought and - a lot of prayer - for our sisters and brothers in North Korea, and other parts of the world, where just to be a Christian is considered as a crime against the state.

Finishing strong

A friend just sent me this video.
A truly encouraging and inspiring message to anybody who might be finding life tough and a great example of someone focusing more on what he can do than on what he can't.