A sunset touch

Just when we are safest there's a sunset touch, 
A fancy from a flower-bell, someone's death, 
A chorus-ending from Euripides, 
And that's enough for fifty hopes and fears,
As old and new at once as nature's self,
To rap and knock and enter in our soul.

Browning wrote these words; I learned them when John V Taylor quoted them in his marvellous book "The Go-Between God"; they returned to me this afternoon when I photographed this delicate sunset over Bute. I was out at sunset because in the early afternoon I'd gone to the movies - unheard of, really - to see the new film Mary Magdalene. I'm glad to have seen it - a thoughtful, adult take with none of the banal evangelism of some Biblical movies, or the spectacular dwelling on gore and Roman brutality of the Mel Gibson film. Not that the Crucifixion wasn't just that - brutal and gory - but the ideas behind this film were different. I was particularly moved by the treatment of women - Mary herself, but also the women who were inspired by Jesus to realise their own personal spirituality in the midst of their male-dominated lives.

But sitting in a cinema (sloping seats and all) for two hours in a sunny afternoon isn't really me, so here we were, bashing along at Toward when the rest of the world had gone home for their tea. It was peaceful and lovely - and left space for these hopes and fears!