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Saturday, June 5, 2010

In the West of Scotland.......


"Tommy" is a great name to be mourned.
I know that sounds like a horrible thing to say....especially for my friends who are, indeed, named Tommy, but it just sounds so fabulously sad.
See, the vowel is voiced in a very "AW" fashion, and it rumbles somewhere between the throat and the chest. When said with sadness, or whispered...."Och, Taaaawwwwwwmy! Ah shooower will miss Taaaawwwwwwmy." It just sounds so sad... And sad is lovely at a funeral. Happy to have known him....but sad that he's gone...Sad to have to face the rest of your days without him. As names go, it's a great one for mourning. Any name with a vowel you can sing or a consonant you can hum maybe. Anyhow. It's hard not to tear up when a mourner softly growls "Tommy".....that's all I'm saying.

Eileen does a powerful funeral....and a powerful number of them!
This is the second one for a "Tommy" since I've been here, but this is the 4th in a fortnight, and the first week we were at the General Assembly! That's a lot of funerals.

Tomorrow I preach. I'm going with the Luke text from the lectionary about the faithful centurion with the sick slave. Ugh.....still thinking about it....flipping it round in my head and waiting for it to gel into something worth speaking. I sort of wander about doing aimless tasks saying the words of the text over and over.....I'm not cut out for this kind of ministry! As naturally hammy as I am, the whole preaching thing is just scary.

So....I think I shall knit! It's like the hottest day of the year....which, naturally, makes me think what it was like on the coldest day of the year.....which, naturally, makes me want to knit! I have a fab pattern for slippers that look like horses! You knit them really big and then felt them in the washer. Since I can't waste my time with the Eurovision Song Contest, I'm as well wasting my time knitting slippers for the winter....and thinking of a sermon, of course.....because....well.....tomorrow is Sunday, and I can't just stand up and sing "Loik a sattelite, Awm in owbit aww the waiy arwowd you!" Much as it is a catchy tune and all!

Do you like the "Andy Goldsworthy-esque" rock pile photo up at the top there? The boys and I are trying to create some sort of ephemeral art everywhere we go.....to have a point in that pointless kind of way... To create something beautiful that doesn't need to last very long....as you do....."Awwww.....Taaawwwwmy."

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