Revd. Canon Leonard Doolan, St Paul’s Athens
‘Walk carefully as you come here for God is here before you
Walk humbly as you come here for two or three are gathered
Walk softly as you come here for the spirit may speak in the silence of this place’
(A Celtic prayer)
The Scottish poet Robert Burns was a great observer of everyday life and many of his poems concentrate of a fine detail or small item.
While sitting in his church in Alloway, Ayrshire, one Sunday morning, no doubt bored from listening to some great long-winded sermon, his roving eye suddenly spots Jenny.
I wonder how many of us have allowed our minds to wander during a sermon and looked around to see who else is present. ‘She was wearing that dress last week’, ‘what has she done to her hair’ he’s showing his age’ did his wife not tell him that colours don’t go together’ ‘who does she think she is, coming to church when last week she was so unchristian to me’ ‘his words don’t match his actions’ and so the list will go on and on.
He spots on Jenny’s rather flamboyant hat, no doubt her Sunday best, an insect, a louse, crawling over the netting of her bonnet.
‘Oh Jenny, dinnae toss your heid,
An’ set your beauties a’ a breed
Ye little ken what dreadfu’ speed the blastie’s makin,
They winks and finger ends I dread,
Are notice takin’.
I suspect that any Greeks here this morning will struggle a bit with the poet’s regional dialect. In fact even English speakers struggle with it.
The point is that it is not just the poet who has spotted the insect. Others in the church have seen it too and are beginning to wink at each other and point, no doubt in a judgemental fashion. ‘You see, she comes in that big fancy hat to show off in church, but look at that thing crawling all over it’.
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