Archives

 We have piles of old magazines at the Meeting House. Quaker Studies. Quaker this and that. The Friend. The ones I glanced at were from the 90s and Noughties- getting on for a quarter of a century old. They take up space in cupboards that could be used for other things. Yes, they constitute an archive, but who will ever consult it? We're not a community of scholars. Is there anything in them of lasting value?

Who will give them a home if we don't? 

And then I think of places I've seen in film documentaries- Christian monasteries in Ethiopia, Buddhist monasteries in the Himalaya- where they have so called libraries that are simply storerooms piled high with ancient texts- centuries old- that no-one reads , that are slowly mouldering away...

And then I think of the Dead Sea scrolls in their jars in their caves...

And then I think of the Library of Alexandria...

And then, lastly, I think of the Hall of Records that is supposedly located- guarded by technologies beyond our comprehension- under the paws of the Sphinx...

East Is East And West Is West

 Our friend Terry (aged 84), who spent much of his working life out East, has finally, abruptly, done what he has been talking about doing and flown himself out to Thailand. The flight was long, the plane unheated, but now he's bedded down in a Thai care home and the sun is shining. He has sent home pictures of himself seated at a table with a decorative Thai meal laid out in front of him and members of the care home staff standing behind. He looks in better fettle than he has for months.

Meanwhile we're enjoying the kind of weather Terry has fled East to avoid. The wind roars and intermittent rain storms batter the windows. I use the word "enjoying" without irony because I rather like to feel myself besieged by the elements. I'm English. I've never spent a winter anywhere else. It's what I'm used to...

I have been inspired by this wintry onset to open a bottle of port that has been sitting around unloved for at least a year.

 "Cheers, Terry!"