Time away from my time away


The view from my window in the Retreat House

I've been quiet lately because I was on a retreat at the Community of the Resurrection in Mirfield. I left my work back in Edinburgh and spent a week largely in silence, tending to my spiritual life, reading, playing the piano, walking through the extensive grounds, and soaking in the daily round of office and mass.

I wasn't expecting any great revelations, and I didn't have any. But I left with something like the feeling you have when you've let your glasses get dirty and then give them a thorough cleaning. Everything is crisper, brighter, clearer. My meeting for spiritual direction was both illuminating and encouraging. ("There's nothing wrong with your prayer life," the brother said with a mixture of affection and exasperation. "Just get on with it.") And the Franck violin sonata is coming along pretty nicely.

Now that I'm back in Edinburgh, I'm catching up on the surprisingly long list of tasks that accumulated during my week down south. I feel an even greater sense of urgency about my work, because I've realized that I can only stay through the last week in November. Originally I had planned to stay through January 5 -- I've never experienced Christmas and Hogmanay in Edinburgh, so I was really looking forward to that. But I knew I'd have to be back in Tampa briefly for a dilation on December 3. With the fourteen-day self-isolation requirement almost certain still to be in place then, it makes no sense for me to return to Scotland for just four weeks, so I'm cutting my stay in Edinburgh short and returning to Tampa for Thanksgiving.

(And I just looked, and it turns out the Christmas and Hogmanay celebrations have been canceled anyway.)

I'll do my best to make the most of my last month, both in getting research done and in taking a few days to do some more walking, this time in Oban and the Isle of Mull. Expect pictures.

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