August.
‘The cloakroom pegs are empty now and locked the classroom door’;
so begins Philip Larkins’ poem The School in August.
When school stops, it really stops. Yet when church activities stop (as they do in August in the UK), the greater purpose that they serve continues - it just continues in a different way. Look at this section from a wonderful old Celtic prayer-poem, attributed (possibly correctly in this case) to Columba;
At times kneeling to beloved Heaven
At times psalm singing;
At times contemplating the King of Heaven
Holy the chief;
At times at work without compulsion
This would be delightful.
At times plucking duilisc from the rocks
At times at fishing;
At times giving food to the poor;
At times in a carcair:
The poem pictures a life devoted to God in which formal worship is offered at times to the Chief of Heaven. But there are also times to pluck duilisc. Columba, in common with all Celtic saints, knew that God would not be neglected by taking time to enjoy his handiwork. Thus we imagine the breezy summer Atlantic shoreline and a man in a habit plucking juicy seaweed (duilisc) from the rocks just because he can, and it’s free, and God is there.
Duilisc washes in on the tides from June to September; you won’t get to pluck any in January even if you can stand upright on the windswept, gloomy, wave-lashed shore. Get plucking because there are also times in a carcair. We don’t know exactly what carcair meant in Columba's mind. A carcair was a prison - it may have meant the enclosed hermitage or imprisonment by hostile communities. But either way it was a loss of freedom that the seaweed-plucker enjoys!
We are wise to remember how, a little further inland, the Lord said in his greatest discourse, ‘Consider the lilies of the field how they grow’. He credited us with the intelligence to realise that such consideration would only happen by taking the opportunity while it blooms and the carcair, or in his case the cross, belongs to a time yet to be.
