Ross Foreword



Foreword


''Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which
contemplates them; each mind perceives a different beauty.''
David Hume (1711-1776),
"Of the Standard of Taste"
part I, essay XXIII, p. 229

Thomas Ralph Taylor – my father - was born and brought up in Fife in the years immediately following the Second World War.  It was a difficult childhood.  His father ‘s working life was exhausted by labouring at the local dockyard.  He died before I was born.  But I know he was a thinking man.  My father – Ralph – has narrated many stories of times wandering through the countryside with his father, learning about nature; learning about life.

Those thoughts are my grandfather’s legacy.  Though not material, they are a rich legacy.  From the earliest of age, I have observed my father take those teachings to grow in wisdom.  Being wise is not a talent, though Ralph is very talented.  It is the considered collection of distilled knowledge and experience.  

Now retired, my father’s eclectic career has been a fabulous journey through many walks of life, his own and those of the people he has helped.  He started his working life as a butcher.  He found his way to Edinburgh, where he lived in a commune (it was the Sixties by that time) and studied privately to gain entry into Divinity School at the University.  In doing so, he spent time on Iona, rebuilding the Abbey.  On qualification, he took charges at Motherwell (where I was born), Shotts and Clackmannan.  In the mid-1980’s he delivered weekly Meditations on national radio.

My father always has been spiritual.  Christian: perhaps not?  In his early forties, he moved away from a single faith, now developing his own perceptions faith.  He became a Teacher of Religious Education.  It that role, he continued to teach about spirituality, in a holistic context.

Into retirement, Ralph has returned to painting and writing (he dabbled whilst in the ministry), sagely developing the earlier concepts, his working life inhibited him from fully expressing.

So here it is, in this and the preceding volume: Works that he has now set into text, having spent decades learning, contemplating and confirming their messages.

As Hume said, beauty is a thing of the mind.  I am sure that each time you read the chapters of this book, individually or in series, you will find greater beauty in the world and lives around you.  As you do, you will give happiness to at least two people: my dear father, and yourself, of course.; and I hope many more…

A. Ross Taylor

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