Thought for the Day
Good Morning Scotland
BBC Radio Scotland
Friday, October 8th, 2010

My daughter Hannah announced her engagement yesterday. This immediately provoked a whole series of emails and comments from friends in Montreal who said – no, this can’t be – only last week she was “little”.

Hannah and I live in different parts of the world. I had met her previous two boyfriends but not this latest fellow.

It feels odd that somebody who you used to dress for school and make a packed lunch for - is now proposing to make a life with somebody you’ve never met. But it sometimes escapes your attention: the world goes on without you. You’re not indispensible. There are horizons you will never trudge over yourself. Power will continue to pass from one government to another. The value of property will continue to rise and fall. What we regard as essential today is re-evaluated by others. As Kurt Vonnegut used to say “…so it goes”.

So I promise not to moan about my age or the passage of time but I will remind myself that every time I’ve said the Lord’s Prayer and used the words “thy Kingdom come” I’ve made reference to a dawning power in the Universe which brings into being things that I cannot imagine – around me, without me - even in spite of me. I’d always thought of myself as a friend of that process.

We don’t always believe it. When we’re young we want to be in the centre of things and to pull everything towards us. There must come a time, though, when we learn to follow and become satisfied to see things take their own shape.

It’s not always the case. Some of us clutch on to things and people too tightly and for too long.

Every time my daughter toddled off to the school bus in Montreal there were risks. I needed to tell myself, at the time, that at the heart of the Universe she was walking into, with all its grandeur and its dangers – there was a God of Love who sustains and inspires the creatures He has made – with or without my help.