Like many people born during the first half of the last century, the bible and by the bible I mean the King James Version was compulsory.
You got selected verses in school assembly, wandered over the biblical stories in RE and picked up the odd sermon at a christening, wedding or funeral.
The vast majority of it slid away only occasionally coming out into the daylight.
But as I turned sixteen those biblical stories bounced back, which was nothing to do with any religious moment but because I had become properly introduced to Mr Shakespeare, quickly followed by John Donne and Andrew Marvel.
The language and style of those three walk hand in hand with that of the King James Version, and I found myself going back to first the Psalms and then the stories and reading them just for the sheer pleasure of the way the words tumble off the page, full of imagery and rhythm.
And for me Psalm 23 has it all with lines like, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death” equalled by those opening lines of the Book of Genesis, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.”
But bits of the stories remain lost to me like the moment in both Luke and Matthew where much is made of the woman washing the feet of Jesus.
I get the significance of it being a “sinner” who does the business but it wasn’t until I began travelling regularly through Greece in the summer that I got just what it meant to have your sandals removed and your feet washed.
After a long day in the heat and the dust, the simple act of bathing your tired feet is a wonderful pleasure.
And in the same way it wasn’t till we returned to running open fires that I fully appreciated that lament in much old literature of the hearth gone cold.
For centuries the fireplace was the centre of all things, providing heat, light and of course a means to cook.
You sat beside it, derived comfort from its dancing flames and above all kept warm.
So every morning when I come to clear and lay the fire that cold hearth takes me back to the stories of abandoned cottages and great halls which once bustled with life but are dead and empty.
None of which may be a surprise to many but always makes me look for more of those lost connections
Pictures; Greece, 2007 and 2014, and fireplaces, 2017 & 2012 from the collection of Andrew Simpson
The vast majority of it slid away only occasionally coming out into the daylight.
But as I turned sixteen those biblical stories bounced back, which was nothing to do with any religious moment but because I had become properly introduced to Mr Shakespeare, quickly followed by John Donne and Andrew Marvel.
And for me Psalm 23 has it all with lines like, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death” equalled by those opening lines of the Book of Genesis, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.”
But bits of the stories remain lost to me like the moment in both Luke and Matthew where much is made of the woman washing the feet of Jesus.
After a long day in the heat and the dust, the simple act of bathing your tired feet is a wonderful pleasure.
And in the same way it wasn’t till we returned to running open fires that I fully appreciated that lament in much old literature of the hearth gone cold.
For centuries the fireplace was the centre of all things, providing heat, light and of course a means to cook.
You sat beside it, derived comfort from its dancing flames and above all kept warm.
So every morning when I come to clear and lay the fire that cold hearth takes me back to the stories of abandoned cottages and great halls which once bustled with life but are dead and empty.
Pictures; Greece, 2007 and 2014, and fireplaces, 2017 & 2012 from the collection of Andrew Simpson
No comments:
Post a Comment