By Peter Finlay.
Featured image shows Goatfell, or Gaoitbheinn, and to the right the start of slope up towards Am Binnein. Photo credits P Finlay.
The harsh grey slopes swell high in the low hanging late afternoon cloud – the grey cloud of January. The tinge of apricot red on a trailing wisp in a hazily blue patch of sky only slightly cheers t.he scene. The clouds slowly rise and sink down the iron clad hills above. Those great hills: Goatfell or Gaoitbheinn, then further north Am Binnein, Mullach Buidhe and Cioch na h-Oighe. The Windy Mountain, The Little Mountain, The Yellow Summit, The Maiden’s Breast. Windy Mountain indeed on many a day and sometimes the wind can really roar up there. ’Little’ mountain maybe in clear weather but not so little seen through this magnifying mist. ‘Yellow’ – if you can have yellow of a dark iron shade. And a Maiden’s Breast that one would imagine no man would wish to snuggle into on a cold night. No fear, not with that sharp, sinister blackness thrusting into the murk!
As with William Blake and his Tyger burning bright in the forests of the night, something surely demands the question ‘What immortal hand or eye’ could frame its fearful symmetry? In the atmosphere of this lowering cloud covered day a question of this nature seems to call out. Yet where is the symmetry in this? Mountains rarely have clearly defined shapes. The famous geology of the island may explain much, but maybe that is only a context so that we can fit everything into what the human mind can grasp with a certain amount of ease; something within the framework of the rational, something not endangering our human self confidence to any real extent. Why should these mountains speak of anything other than themselves and the ordinary processes of our planet – if there are any truly ordinary processes when everything about our planet might well suggest something other?
The immortal hand has been dismissed by many in our day. The fearful symmetry – if that is there in any sense it might seem to be half hidden by the dark mists. What is symmetry in our everyday experience in any case? It is not going to be the perfect symmetry of a geometrical diagram. Yet symmetry there might be none the less. The symmetry of something mysteriously designed and yet not designed as we humans might design. The design of a chaotic process that still has the suggestion of something far other than mere chaos. A more truly creative way of designing than the cleverest human could ever devise. Design that results in a world or a Universe full of unending variety, surprise, mystery – and fun! Yes fun! Why not! Have you never seen the extraordinary tumblings of a big winged bird buffeted in a fierce wind – either it is having fun or someone is having fun with it! Can we even begin to imagine what we might all be designed for? Do we know what our place might be in such a design? How would we ever know?
Might something not be revealed in the strange world that is all about us? Do we not just have to open our eyes without any kind of prejudice or preconceptions? The power and the glory – is it not all there? Can we simply pass it by? Who would not wish to know, or even to come into such a Truth? Especially if that Truth were in fact a Person – some Immortal Hand or Eye?
And there is another question. What is the meaning of this word ‘person’? This fact of our own experience so near to every one of us – and yet also so far. Perhaps more distant to our understanding than even the most distant galaxy?
