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  25 August 2024 When I visited the National Gallery for Scotland on Friday, I made a new friend. It was a small painting by the Italian artist, Bernardo Butinone. He was painting in the latter half of the fifteenth century, probably in Milan, Italy. My eye was immediately drawn to the painting because it centres on a stone spiral with the Christchild seated   on top. He looks like a dwarf dancing mischievously on   this mathematical platform. ‘I’m the King of the castle, you’re the dirty wee rascal!’ Well, not quite but you get the point. The legend beside the painting told us two things. Firstly, the painting was one of sixteen scenes from the life of Christ which formed part of an altarpiece. The paintings had been removed from their original location and distributed all over the world. Secondly, the painting was given this interpretation. ‘The unusual spiral throne on which Christ is seated may be an allusion to the Tower of
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  24 August 2024 I was meeting a friend for lunch in Edinburgh and had an hour to spare. I popped into the National Gallery to visit some of my friends. It is a beautiful building – spacious, gracious and full of priceless treasure. It is remarkable that it is all free for our enjoyment and inspiration. I began with Constable’s ‘The Vale of Dedham’ – the river Stour, leading us along the valley to the village of Dedham. And there, in the distance but right in the centre of the painting is the church tower, unmistakable symbol of our indelible Christian heritage. My next port of call was David Wilkie’s historical painting about the May Fair at Pitlessie which is just down the road. His father was parish minister. During worship, the son would secretly make sketches of the congregation. These were eventually incorporated into this painting. It is literally living history! ‘The Skating Minister’ followed. I never tire of it and marvel that Scotland’s most popular and most recognis
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  23 August 2024 A very old woman died this week. She was 117 - and at the point of departure was the oldest person in the world. Her name – Maria Branyas Morera. She was born in San Francisco on 4 March 1907 but lived mostly in Spain, surviving two World Wars, the Spanish Civil War, the flu epidemic and Covid!   Remarkably, her family wrote, ‘She died as she wished in her sleep, peacefully and without pain.’ Apparently, she had never been to hospital. She had never broken a bone. She had no cardiovascular disease. She had a very lucid mind. The only inhibiting factors were mobility and hearing. In 1931, she married a doctor who died aged 72. They had three children, one of whom predeceased her. There were eleven grandchildren and many great-grandchildren. ‘The time is near.’ she said to her family. ‘Don’t cry, I don’t like tears. And, above all, don’t suffer for me. Wherever I go, I will be happy.’ In an interview with the Guinness Book of Records, Branyas answered questions a
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  22 August 2024 Another communication from Erella and the Villages Group. She is a Jew and has spent years visiting the Palestinian villages on the West Bank supporting families and especially young people during the conflict there. Let Erella speak for me today. The truth is horrifying but the faith of Ehud, a fellow Jew, is remarkable. The Hebrew name Ehud means ‘love’ or ‘united’. On June 26, 2024, five houses in Umm al-Khair were demolished. This week, Wednesday August 14th, the village was demolished again. Now tents were destroyed - erected instead of the demolished houses, tents that had been erected so people would have a place to spend the night and find some shade during the searing day. We were in the South Hebron Hills that day, planning to visit Eid and Ne’me whose home was demolished on June 26th. In the morning before we drove out, I called to finalize our visiting hours with Ne’me. She said there were bulldozers near the village and it was as yet unclear where th
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  21 August 2024 We engaged a roofer to look at our roof. There wasn’t much wrong with it, certainly not anything to do with the slates and timbers. He had been in the trade for thirty years and talked openly about the difficulty in engaging young apprentices. ‘They don’t want to work!’ was his summary judgement. ‘Why is that?’ I asked. ‘They’re on their phones all the time,’ he said. ‘They won’t climb the ladders because they’re scared. See that butterfly over there, they would be frightened if it came too close!’ This was accompanied with a lack of commitment. ‘Why do you want to work on roofs?’ he asked in despair. ‘Dunno!’ came the disinterested reply.   He shook his head. The mobile phone is a distraction. It opens up the possibility of something more interesting happening elsewhere! Mindfulness is all about living in the present moment. That isn’t the same as searching for some immediate gratification in the present.   Living in the present moment demands commitment now,
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  20 August 2024 Preaching most Sundays of the year has allowed me to discover several different congregations in the Presbytery. The lack of children and young people has been a great discouragement and part of the aging demographic of the Church of Scotland. More recently, I have begun to be concerned about the lack of opportunity to celebrate the Sacrament of Holy Communion. Within the last year, for example, I have not been invited to celebrate it. I have made enquiries. The simplest answer has been to put the blame on Covid. Although Calvin and our Scottish Reformers desired to reinstate the Sacrament to a weekly celebration at which the people would partake in both kinds (unlike the medieval church where the people hardly received the bread never mind the wine) it did not happen because of the shortage of ministers. In addition, the Reformers were very keen that the celebration of both sacraments should not be separated from the preaching of the Word. It is not that the
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19 August 2024 The Sunday Times is celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of their first weekly   ‘Best Sellers’ list. In this week’s ‘Culture’ magazine, the top one hundred are listed with miniature summaries of their contents. There were no books on mathematics nor theology. There were a number on scientific subjects including Dava Sobel’s ‘Longitude’ which I enjoyed. But her book about the relationship between Galileo and his daughter was more immediately engaging. The latter didn’t appear in the top hundred. ‘The Ascent of Man’ by   Jacob Bronowski and ‘Alistair Cooke’s America’ were popular books from the seventies. I succumbed to purchasing both. The one came in at number 26, the other at 36. I learned a lot from Alistair Cooke’s ‘Letter from America’. His conclusions were superb. He, more than any other, taught me how to end a sermon. I gave   my mother number 12, ‘The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady’ which she loved. And my brother gave me number 68, Alan Bennett’s ‘Wr
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