PLENTY TO LEARN FROM SCOTLAND'S GREATEST POET

This is Fr Gregory Murphy's First Person column, published in today's Leicester Mercury:

Plenty to learn from Scotland's greatest poet

Fr Gregory Murphy considers Robert Burns, Devolution and the cause of Christian unity

The season of Christmas, in the calendar of the Church, continues until the feast of the Presentation of the Lord, or Candlemas, on February 2. It provides a useful excuse if, like myself, you've been a bit tardy with the Christmas cards.

There are some secular feasts as well: especially, if you're Scots, or have Scottish connections, Burns night suppers around January 25.

Robert Burns, the ploughman poet from Ayrshire, rose from humble origins to be feted by the literary society of the late Scottish Enlightenment.

Burns was – on the evidence of his writings – a pretty level-headed character, happy to accept the fame (and the money) while keeping his feet on the ground ("A man's a man, for a' that").

As someone who enjoyed wine, women and song ("'Gae bring to me a pint o' wine") he had a certain reputation in Presbyterian Scotland, though this did not inhibit his secular success – his love songs were quickly set to music, and their popularity endured well beyond Burns' lifetime.

Though a Scots patriot he was happy enough to take the King's shilling, working as a customs officer in a time of chancy employment ("The Deil's awa wi' th'Excisemen") so it's likely that, as most Scots from his time onwards, he'd have looked at the question of devolution with an eye to the main chance.

Growing up in a Presbyterian background his roistering would have attracted negative comment, and he in turn was critical of religious hypocrisy ("Holy Willie's Prayer").

One of his works echoed the age-old question of the Delphic Oracle – know yourself – "O would some power the giftie gie us/tae see oursel's as ithers see us!"

That plea takes on a deeper resonance during this week of prayer for Christian unity.

We are all liable to the gospel critique of being hypersensitive to the splinter in our brother's eye while being oblivious to the beam in our own.

The mutual increase in knowledge and tolerance of other Christian traditions is, I would argue, evidence of the working of the Spirit in our own times.

The great Dominican theologian and ecumenist, Yves Congar, whose work bore fruit in the Second Vatican Council, used to say that each of the main divisions of Christianity emphasised a particular aspect of Christianity which it was their privilege to share with the others: from the Orthodox churches, the sense of life in the Spirit; from the Catholic Church, the presence of the Lord in his sacraments; and from the churches of the Reformation the presence of the Lord in his Word.

Let's pray that we can become mutually enriched by drinking from each other's wells.

Fr Gregory Murphy, OP, is a Dominican priest at Holy Cross Priory, in Leicester