Lesser Feasts

The clergy and staff at the Cathedral were asked to write short pieces for the parish newsletter about our hopes for the next year. I went all Romans 5:5 ("hope does not disappoint us") and noted that I was glad we weren't asked to write about our expectations, wishes, or resolutions. The kind of hope that does not disappoint us doesn't cover everything we'd express by saying "I hope . . ." There's something between hope and wish, or between hope and daydream, that doesn't come with a nice Scriptural warrant but is still worth musing on at this time of year. So here are some hopes for 2021, or wishes, or daydreams, or just generally things that would be nice and don't seem impossible. I hope I figure out some new way of offering teaching and formation. I'm toying with the idea of a podcast. I hope I find some new activity in 2021 that I enjoy as much as I enjoyed hillwalking in 2020. Kayaking? I hope I get elected to the General Board of ...

I suspect we all have things that are perfectly innocuous in themselves but we postpone as long as we can because they just irritate us for some reason. Getting my car serviced is one of those things. But when the low-tire-pressure light is on, even I feel a certain degree of urgency. So I made my appointment at the dealership and interrupted the pressing business of the day -- which was already urgent enough to displace the more-important-but-less-urgent work I should  have been doing -- to have my car looked after. I am about to sit down at a table in the waiting area when I hear someone call out, "Father!" (I do love to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces. And I wasn't even wearing my phylacteries.) One of my brother priests is also having his car serviced. He invites me over, and I sit down and we talk, first about nothing very much, but gradually more seriously. Parish ministry -- he is a rector -- can be difficult, and he has had a rough time of it lately, t...

   Robert Traill Rose, "Primordium Vitae," 1899  Salvation to all that will is nigh;   That All, which always is all everywhere,   Which cannot sin, and yet all sins must bear,   Which cannot die, yet cannot choose but die,   Lo! faithful Virgin, yields himself to lie   In prison, in the womb; and though he there   Can take no sin, nor thou give, yet He'll wear,   Taken from thence, flesh, which death's force may try.   Ere by the spheres time was created thou   Wast in His mind, who is thy Son, and Brother;   Whom thou conceivest, conceived; yea, thou art now   Thy Maker's maker, and thy Father's mother,   Thou hast light in dark, and shutt'st in little room   Immensity, cloister'd in thy dear womb   --John Donne, "Annunciation"

By the time I remembered I was supposed to sign up for worship at Old St Paul's, I was too late, so this morning I went to the Cathedral. It's my last Sunday in Edinburgh (for now). Tomorrow I take the train down to London; on Tuesday I fly home. So today is about getting ready to leave, taking care of unfinished business, and taking stock. The first bit of unfinished business was a print in the window of one of the galleries in Stockbridge that I had decided to buy. So after the service I walked down to Stockbridge. Ah, the Stockbridge Market is open. There's nothing in the fridge; maybe I'll find something I want for lunch. And behold! a booth selling Scotch eggs. I had just  been thinking that I hadn't had a single Scotch egg the whole time I've been here. That's lunch sorted. And then there was a bakery stall, where I found a piece of cake that surely could not be as delicious as it looked, but the experiment seemed worth conducting. Then on to the galle...

My time in Edinburgh is drawing to a close, so I'm beginning to wrap things up. Yesterday I gave my research talk to the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities -- quite a different experience from the first two times, since it was all disembodied. I was very careful to make the talk accessible to a broad audience of humanities folks, which is not easy for a fairly technical subject that requires a good bit of background to motivate it. Judging by the comments and questions, I think I succeeded, though at the expense of annoying the one other philosopher in the group, who clearly wanted a technical talk on the metaphysics of substances, powers, and dispositions, instead of the general-audience talk on virtues and the good life that I had so carefully prepared. (This particular philosopher practices that version of philosophy-as-blood-sport that I associate in particular with, well, her department, of which I used to be a member.) After my talk I turned in the keys to my of...

I honestly had not known until a few days ago that Edinburgh, like so many other cities, is traditionally said to be built on seven hills. Thanks to this video , I learned that I had already walked up four of them. One walks up Castle Rock in the normal course of touristy things. I've been on Calton Hill any number of times, most memorably after the early-morning Easter Vigil at Old St Paul's a few years ago, when I joined the choir for their traditional singing of the Hallelujah Chorus on the National Monument (albeit in C, because who has those notes at that hour?). I've posted here about my occasional outings to Arthur's Seat. And this past weekend I went up Craiglockhart Hill. Having put in a particularly good day of work yesterday -- though honestly I still don't know whether my brilliant set piece about sins ex certa malitia  in Aquinas and Scotus is actually any good, or just one of those cases of my typing outrunning my thinking -- I decided that this after...

This was a productive week, though of the unspectacular sort of productivity that involves writing replies to referee reports, writings one's own referee reports, correcting copyedited manuscript, and finally acceding to the relentless insistence of the Stanford Encyclopedia   of Philosophy  that one's article be updated every five minutes. Still, productive, so that I dropped my plan to head in to the office today and instead decided to take a proper day off. There must be nice walks somewhere within easy day-trip range, I thought, and a quick visit to my new favorite website  turned up Linlithgow, an easy twenty-minute train ride away, with a ruined palace and a loch and the whole shebang. When I arrived in Linlithgow it was raining pretty hard. Not an auspicious start, but maybe I can wait it out. I need to get lunch anyway. But it's noon, and since the pubs and restaurants are all closed, the few cafés that are open are either booked solid or packed. I end up at ...