Of Rivers

I realise that title has echoes of Bacon about it - I love the concise openings of Bacon's essays, which I studied at school and once, only once, used them to inspire a very clever class to think out of their usual boxes when writing their own essays ... but I digress.

This torrent is the River Massan, one of the crashing waterfalls in the steep gorge between the upper and lower glen, hung about with the catkins that seem to dangle from every tree at the moment.  As I photographed it, I was thinking of the first reading at church (online) service this morning. The story of how Moses' mother placed her baby in the waters of the Nile to save him from Pharaoh is surely one of the most memorable stories in the whole bible of selfless human love. Many years ago I wrote a poem immediately after hearing this story, and it came back to me today:

ONCE…

In the hot silence
while he slept
and only the flies sang
she made the basket
strong with love
to hold this one most precious thing
and gave it, dry-eyed,
to the waiting flood.

C.M.M. 08/08

I cannot think that the Nile in any way resembles the upper Massan ...

On the subject, obliquely, of online church, which in our case happens live on zoom, it was borne in on me this morning what a community we are, this assortment of very different people from two congregations, all chatting away before and after the service, ribbing one another, asking after each other, behaving as if we were actually in a room together - which we're soon going to be again very soon, and that will be good too. A year ago today was our last service before the first lockdown. Did we ever think it would drag on like this?