HEART OF THINGS: An Anthology of Memory and Lament

Richard Holloway has accumulated a store of wisdom in his life and ministry as the outspoken bishop of Edinburgh, and here he has created an anthology of reflections that have helped him through life's difficult times. With chapters entitled "Passing", "Mourning", "Warring", "Ruining", "Regretting" and "Forgiving", he takes the reader on a journey through the darker moments in our lives and offers both consolation and healing. He starts with melancholy at the passing of things that are precious, and the irony of appreciating them too late. In the words of the poet W. S. Graham, on revisiting Loch Thom, "It is a colder stretch of water/ Than I remember". Mourning is poignantly expressed by Betjeman with "What a host of stars in a wideness still and deep" and "Can they see the moonlit pools where ribbonweed drifts?". The WWI poet Laurence Binyon captures the very particular aftermath of war: "I touch the world of pain / That is so silent". Binyon was also the author of the much-anthologised "Now is the time for the burning of the leaves", with its evocative third stanza: "Now is the time for stripping the spirit bare". The section entitled "Ruining" starts with the ruins of empire described in Shelley's "Ozymandias", and goes on to Shakespeare's "insubstantial pageant faded" from The Tempest, as Prospero renounces his kingdom. "Regretting" focuses paradoxically on Louis MacNeice and his moments of joy, as in "Snow": "World is crazier and more of it than we think". "Forgiveness" takes us to the Bible, and to Nietzsche. "There have always been some who looked with compassion on their fellow-voyagers." A very restorative read. 162pp, photos.