Morningside Think and Drink

Hello!
Please accept our apologies for being so long to get our new term up and away and be in contact, our summers and schedules have been very busy. But we’re very excited to get Think and Drink back up and running again and seeing old faces and new ones too!

For our new term, we’re approaching topics through a different ‘door’; a different ‘way in’. Our term’s themes are inspired by a poetry anthology exploring themes that get right to the core of us as humans- that which speaks most intimately to who we are. From this, we’ve picked a poem and a theme each session to explore. Do have a read of the poem beforehand if you have the time (they’re all short!). We’ll use this as a springboard to get our discussion going!

This week: LONGING
‘To long after, to reach out for, to look back with intense regret. Homesickness for a home we haven’t lived in. To experience beauty but never quite grasp it. Being pulled outward and upward. Yearning for that which is not. To wrestle with incompleteness.’

"Into my heart an air that kills" by A E Housman
'Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows;
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?
That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.'

Come with your thoughts and questions. We'd love to hear your views! Feel free to share or just listen in!

Gathering at 7:30 for drinks and chat and then the main discussion begins at 7:45 and goes till 9 (ish!!).

For our new term, we’re approaching topics through a different ‘door’; a different ‘way in’. Our term’s themes are inspired by a poetry anthology exploring themes that get right to the core of us as humans- that which speaks most intimately to who we are. From this, we’ve picked a poem and a theme each session to explore. Do have a read of the poem beforehand if you have the time (they’re all short!). We’ll use this as a springboard to get our discussion going!

This week: WONDER
A way of seeing the world that lifts us beyond our ordinary experience? Perhaps as a child? Or a poet? Or seeing the world as it truly is? Or innocently without our haze of cycnism? Filled with happiness for all that is, without worry of future or regret of past. Is it an accurate vision or a clouded one? Does it remove the veil of this world to what it should be or will be or was? A feeling of connection of to something beyond ourselves? An enlarging of our own world as we see the true world?

"The Bright Field" by R.S. Thomas
'I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the
pearl of great price, the one field that had
treasure in it. I realise now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying

on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.'

Come with your thoughts and questions. We'd love to hear your views! Feel free to share or just listen in!

Gathering at 7:30 for drinks and chat and then the main discussion begins at 7:45 and goes till 9 (ish!!).

For our new term, we’re approaching topics through a different ‘door’; a different ‘way in’. Our term’s themes are inspired by a poetry anthology exploring themes that get right to the core of us as humans- that which speaks most intimately to who we are. From this, we’ve picked a poem and a theme each session to explore. Do have a read of the poem beforehand if you have the time (they’re all short!). We’ll use this as a springboard to get our discussion going!

This week: HOPE
A vision of a future that propels us to keep living- our motor power. To rise up, keep going and hope again. A feeling; a virtue; a way of living; a craft? A deep intimate thing that may be too vulnerable to express at times, perhaps because we fear it being shut down by others or perhaps we fear it’s too wonderful to express in words- a true secret in us. Or perhaps our secret is we have very little hope?

"The Darkling Thrush" by Thomas Hardy
'I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-grey,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be
The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.'

Come with your thoughts and questions. We'd love to hear your views! Feel free to share or just listen in!

Gathering at 7:30 for drinks and chat and then the main discussion begins at 7:45 and goes till 9 (ish!!).

Christmas Social!

No specific topic or themed discussion for the evening but a chance to chat, relax and enjoy each other's company before Christmas! Nothing seems to stop us from chatting about all things interesting and big though! See you there :)