Self-Isolation

Tags

Duddingston Loch, Edinburgh, National Portrait Gallery, Rev Robert Walker, self-isolation, skating

…can still be fun. 

Think of the Rev Robert Walker Skating on Duddingston Loch

(National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh).

Poem from a Time of Trial

Tags

atheist, blame game, Kipling, natural consequences, Natural Theology, plague, theology

Natural Theology

by Rudyard Kipling

Primitive
I ate my fill of a whale that died
 And stranded after a month at sea.
 .
 .
 .
There is a pain in my inside.
 Why have the Gods afflicted me?
Ow! I am purged till I am a wraith!
 Wow! I am sick till I cannot see!
What is the sense of Religion and Faith :
 Look how the Gods have afflicted me!


 Pagan

How can the skin of rat or mouse hold
 Anything more than a harmless flea?.
 .
 .
The burning plague has taken my household.
 Why have my Gods afflicted me?
All my kith and kin are deceased,
 Though they were as good as good could be,
I will out and batter the family priest,
 Because my Gods have afflicted me!


Medi/Eval

My privy and well drain into each other
 After the custom of Christendie.
 .
 .
 .
Fevers and fluxes are wasting my mother.
 Why has the Lord afflicted me?
The Saints are helpless for all I offer--
 So are the clergy I used to fee.
Henceforward I keep my cash in my coffer,
 Because the Lord has afflicted me.


 Material

I run eight hundred hens to the acre
 They die by dozens mysteriously.
 .
 .
 .
I am more than doubtful concerning my Maker,
 Why has the Lord afflicted me?
What a return for all my endeavour--
 Not to mention the L.
 S.
 D!
I am an atheist now and for ever,
 Because this God has afflicted me!


Progressive

Money spent on an Army or Fleet
 Is homicidal lunacy.
 .
 .
 .
My son has been killed in the Mons retreat,
 Why is the Lord afflicting me?
Why are murder, pillage and arson
 And rape allowed by the Deity?
I will write to the Times, deriding our parson
 Because my God has afflicted me.


 Chorus

We had a kettle: we let it leak:
 Our not repairing it made it worse.
We haven't had any tea for a week.
 .
 .
 The bottom is out of the Universe!

Conclusion

This was none of the good Lord's pleasure,
 For the Spirit He breathed in Man is free;
But what comes after is measure for measure,
 And not a God that afflicteth thee.
As was the sowing so the reaping
 Is now and evermore shall be.
Thou art delivered to thine own keeping.
 Only Thyself hath afflicted thee!

Do You Feel That You Are In A Novel?

Tags

Burford Garden Centre, French text, staircase, wire sculpture

Photo by Candia of a sculpture at Burford Garden Centre.

The Prodigal Son

Tags

Burford Church Hall, Charlie Macke, Cotswolds, Prodigal Son, reconciliation

Painting in Burford Church Hall.

And he came to himself…  The father could only wait and pray until that moment.

Artist- Charlie Mackesy

The Windmills of your Mind

Tags

Alison Moyet, Dusty Springfield, Michel LeGrand, Noel Harrison, Sting, Windmills of Your Mind

like a circle in a spiral

like a wheel within a wheel

never ending or beginning

on an ever spinning reel

as the images unwind

like the circles of your mind…

Noel Harrison, Sting, Dusty Springfield, Alison Moyet etc

Music by Michel LeGrand

Time Marches On

Tags

Graves, Japanese poetry, memento mori

Photo of kanji by Jmettlen on Wikimedia Commons

 

Even our friends’ graves

will one day be ploughed over.

Grief diminishes

through time and we smile once more.

Calligraphy on

headstones will be eroded.

The deceased’s peers die;

his name is then forgotten.

The pines which are deemed to live

for a thousand years

are, in actual fact, chopped down –

disrespectfully,

or just pragmatically,

according to how life’s viewed.

Montaigne’s Tower

Tags

Essays, folk wisdom, Montaigne, Montaigne's Tower, Philosophy

Photos by Candia Dixon-Stuart  All Rights Reserved

He who fears he shall suffer already suffers what he fears: Michel de

Montaigne

or, as my granny used to admonish:  If ye fear a fear, it’ll come

upon you.

I doubt she had read Montaigne, but folk wisdom is

watered-down philosophy and not always diluted!

Blissfully Unaware

Tags

blissfully unaware, lack of empathy, own agenda, self-absorbed, unobservant

Some people just don’t notice what is going on around them.

Photo by Candia Dixon-Stuart

Collage

Tags

archetypes, collage, myths, Poetry, prayer, self, transitional state

Regret

Regret: cud-chewing

when you don’t have the stomach

for endless rumination.

Chew the fat; not the cud.

What’s done is done,

so you would be better placed

to concentrate on

management of the future,

though control is limited.

To realise that

need not be fatalistic.

Take life by the horns

and responsibility

for your deeds – not the whole world’s.