When we were young, our father used to lead family worship at bedtime. I can’t recall much about those sessions now, except that he often closed prayer with these words quoted from a hymn by James Montgomery: ‘…as we nightly pitch our moving tent a day’s march nearer home’. I still can’t hear those words without a delicious shiver down my spine. I thrilled to the sense that life was a travelling adventure; that we were restless spirits[1], always moving on, exploring, discovering, never settling down. Our father embodied that outlook on life and to his very last breath he was keen to be packing up and moving on to the next place, the next task.
We lived on an island until I was eight years old and by then I had read all the books in our schoolroom and most of those at home; books as diverse as The Far Away Tree and Pilgrim's Progress (with the horrifying original illustrations). As soon as we moved to the city, Dad took me to the public library. I was drawn towards the fiction section, but he steered me to the shelves with accounts of travelling. Soon I was absorbed in texts such as The Voyage of the Kon–Tiki, With Burke and Wills Across Australia and The Life and African Exploration of David Livingston.
In my early twenties I shared with Dad the restlessness I felt after four years in my first career as a primary teacher. It was a job I enjoyed, but I felt the urge to do something different, more challenging. ‘Quite right’, he replied, ‘Never settle on your lees’. He had to explain to me the analogy from wine making. Wine is poured into to a new vat to avoid the taste being spoiled by the lees - the yeasty sediment that settles at the base. A teetotaller, my Dad hadn’t learnt this from wine making, but from a blood curdling passages in Jeremiah, where the prophet delivers God's curse on the Moabites for being too settled in their ways - comparing them to wine that had settled too long on the lees.
Maybe it was those early influences that have led to me regarding the meaning of life and how I should live it as one big, exploratory adventure - one that will take a lifetime.
It is only recently that I learned that some wine makers deliberately allow the wine to settle on the lees, a process the French call sur lie. This is where Muscadet, Chardonnay and Champagne get their distinctive and much sought after flavours. I’m not much of a drinker but I imagine that it is the rich variety that provides much of the pleasure to the serious wine connoisseur.
So whether someone is settled in their view of the meaning of life or keen to go on exploring other possibilities, I like to think there is room in my cellar for both types of wine. I just know I need to follow Mark Twain's advice: 'Throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.'
[1] Restless Spirit is the title of my big brother’s blog at http://crawfordmackenzie.wordpress.com
We lived on an island until I was eight years old and by then I had read all the books in our schoolroom and most of those at home; books as diverse as The Far Away Tree and Pilgrim's Progress (with the horrifying original illustrations). As soon as we moved to the city, Dad took me to the public library. I was drawn towards the fiction section, but he steered me to the shelves with accounts of travelling. Soon I was absorbed in texts such as The Voyage of the Kon–Tiki, With Burke and Wills Across Australia and The Life and African Exploration of David Livingston.
In my early twenties I shared with Dad the restlessness I felt after four years in my first career as a primary teacher. It was a job I enjoyed, but I felt the urge to do something different, more challenging. ‘Quite right’, he replied, ‘Never settle on your lees’. He had to explain to me the analogy from wine making. Wine is poured into to a new vat to avoid the taste being spoiled by the lees - the yeasty sediment that settles at the base. A teetotaller, my Dad hadn’t learnt this from wine making, but from a blood curdling passages in Jeremiah, where the prophet delivers God's curse on the Moabites for being too settled in their ways - comparing them to wine that had settled too long on the lees.
Maybe it was those early influences that have led to me regarding the meaning of life and how I should live it as one big, exploratory adventure - one that will take a lifetime.
It is only recently that I learned that some wine makers deliberately allow the wine to settle on the lees, a process the French call sur lie. This is where Muscadet, Chardonnay and Champagne get their distinctive and much sought after flavours. I’m not much of a drinker but I imagine that it is the rich variety that provides much of the pleasure to the serious wine connoisseur.
So whether someone is settled in their view of the meaning of life or keen to go on exploring other possibilities, I like to think there is room in my cellar for both types of wine. I just know I need to follow Mark Twain's advice: 'Throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.'
[1] Restless Spirit is the title of my big brother’s blog at http://crawfordmackenzie.wordpress.com