To Troon

The summer returned today. Not immediately - I was up at 5.30am and it felt cool under a pale grey sky, but the clouds cleared away northwards and by mid-afternoon our world looked as it is in the photo above, taken on our journey back across the Clyde on a mirror-flat sea with Arran framed in the blue distance so that it felt like a Mediterranean cruise. 

The reason for the early rising was to go to the funeral of a friend, in the Episcopal church in Troon. Alison, a friend I first met through Cursillo when her husband was my Spiritual Director, was a clever, compassionate woman whom I remember every time I see the wee pot-hole she made in our back lane while reversing out of our drive-in; we used to visit each other for lunch in our mutual retirements and go for walks either in Cowal or in the hills behind Largs. Today our quartet - with a borrowed soprano as our regular one is the generation below us and is still working - was singing at her funeral. We sang the Kontakion of the Departed, a wonderful Russian piece which brings together human mourning and heavenly hope and which featured greatly in my becoming the person I am now.

Afterwards I became aware of just how many people I knew in the congregation, including Blipper Sally (I knew she was going) and other Cursillistas as well as clergy and bishops present and past. There was a great deal of hugging and conversation and sudden recognition as well as faces I previously knew only from social media, and afterwards, when we came out into the spacious grounds we realised it had become summer. The collage in the extra shows the interior of the church (St Ninian's) and their amazing church hall with its intricate wall hanging, as well as some of the conversations taking place. And in the quiet moments of the service, I thought of the friend we had lost and her presence still on another stage of the journey; the majesty and the mystery of death.

Himself managed to stay awake to drive the three of us back to the ferry and that calm crossing, but when we'd changed and taken some tea out into the garden we both fell asleep in the sun. I woke up in time to remember to make bread for breakfast, and then it was time for dinner. And tomorrow, because there are no huvtaes that I'm aware of, I'm going to have a leisurely start and then tackle the front grass that I cannot dignify with the name "lawn". 

And there's the washing ...