Edited by Jim McCrory, Thursday 31 July 2025 at 11:53
The Circle That Draws Us Home
There’s a thoughtful passage in A Tale of Two Cities where Sydney Carton, in conversation with Mr Lorry, poses a quiet but profound question:
“Does your childhood seem far off? Do the days when you sat on your mother’s knee seem days of long ago?”
Mr Lorry replies:
“Twenty years back, yes; at this time of my life, no. For as I draw closer and closer to the end, I travel in a circle, nearer and nearer to the beginning. It seems to be of the kind smoothing of the way.”
There’s something in that. A truism, perhaps. or maybe it’s simply that when we sit to write, life begins to flood in.
A passing thought came to me today, significant, I think, in its quiet way, about what it means to be human.
I mentioned in an earlier blog post a journey I made to Sweden. I was on a twenty-three-hour crossing from Newcastle to Göteborg. The ferry was filled with Swedes returning home after holidays in the UK. Many were eager to talk, happy to sit with me and share their affection for Scotland and their thoughts about home. I was younger then and didn’t give it much weight. But something stayed with me.
When I returned after that first trip, I was besotted with this lovely country and its gentle people. Still, I felt a kind of sadness; the low mood that follows a good holiday. I dismissed it at the time as post-vacation blues.
But looking back, I believe it was something more—a deeper yearning.
These moments remind me that we are destined for something greater. As the world I live in is sinking lower into an abyss of greed, corruption, materialism and hate. Something paradisaic is evoked by these moments of joy we experience in travel. The glimpses we get, of beauty, of connection, of peace, are not illusions, but preludes. A flash of the life to come. The deep desire within to share with a universal brotherhood, to wander into pockets of earthly creation of great beauty and awe. To sit with friends on sundown where evil is absent and no one there to make us tremble. Job describes it in the Bible: the Renewal. Not an end, but a return. A circle, as Mr Lorry said, drawing us nearer and nearer to the beginning; a new beginning.
I remember, too, what happened a few weeks after one of those trips. Like always, still in the ache of return, a small parcel came through the letterbox. A friend we’d made in Stockholm had sent me a CD: Kristina från Duvemåla. One track in particular—Guldet Blev Till Sand, stopped me in my tracks. Even now, when I hear it, it reaches that deep place in me, the place where memory and longing meet. The place that believes, despite everything, that this life is not all there is.
The Circle That Draws Us Home
The Circle That Draws Us Home
There’s a thoughtful passage in A Tale of Two Cities where Sydney Carton, in conversation with Mr Lorry, poses a quiet but profound question:
“Does your childhood seem far off? Do the days when you sat on your mother’s knee seem days of long ago?”
Mr Lorry replies:
“Twenty years back, yes; at this time of my life, no. For as I draw closer and closer to the end, I travel in a circle, nearer and nearer to the beginning. It seems to be of the kind smoothing of the way.”
There’s something in that. A truism, perhaps. or maybe it’s simply that when we sit to write, life begins to flood in.
A passing thought came to me today, significant, I think, in its quiet way, about what it means to be human.
I mentioned in an earlier blog post a journey I made to Sweden. I was on a twenty-three-hour crossing from Newcastle to Göteborg. The ferry was filled with Swedes returning home after holidays in the UK. Many were eager to talk, happy to sit with me and share their affection for Scotland and their thoughts about home. I was younger then and didn’t give it much weight. But something stayed with me.
When I returned after that first trip, I was besotted with this lovely country and its gentle people. Still, I felt a kind of sadness; the low mood that follows a good holiday. I dismissed it at the time as post-vacation blues.
But looking back, I believe it was something more—a deeper yearning.
These moments remind me that we are destined for something greater. As the world I live in is sinking lower into an abyss of greed, corruption, materialism and hate. Something paradisaic is evoked by these moments of joy we experience in travel. The glimpses we get, of beauty, of connection, of peace, are not illusions, but preludes. A flash of the life to come. The deep desire within to share with a universal brotherhood, to wander into pockets of earthly creation of great beauty and awe. To sit with friends on sundown where evil is absent and no one there to make us tremble. Job describes it in the Bible: the Renewal. Not an end, but a return. A circle, as Mr Lorry said, drawing us nearer and nearer to the beginning; a new beginning.
I remember, too, what happened a few weeks after one of those trips. Like always, still in the ache of return, a small parcel came through the letterbox. A friend we’d made in Stockholm had sent me a CD: Kristina från Duvemåla. One track in particular—Guldet Blev Till Sand, stopped me in my tracks. Even now, when I hear it, it reaches that deep place in me, the place where memory and longing meet. The place that believes, despite everything, that this life is not all there is.
Listen: Kristina från Duvemåla – Guldet Blev Till Sand