Into the hands of every unborn soul is put a lump of the original clay, for him to mould vessels – a bowl and a lamp – the one to sustain him, the other to lighten him through the twilight between two darknesses, birth and death.  He refreshes himself, this Everyman, with mortal bread;  he holds his lamp over rut and furrow and snow and stone, an uncertain flame.  Now and then the honey of a hidden significance is infused into his being.  By the vessels that he has moulded to his wants he calls this mystery of longing The–Immortal–Bread, The–Unquenchable–Light . . . At death he leaves behind the worn lamp and bowl, and (a peregrine spirit) seeks the table of the great Harvester, where all is radiance and laughter and feasting.

And some there are – God take pity on every soul born – that love their lamps and their bowls more than the source from which clay, corn and oil issue for ever;  and, their vessels failing at last by reason of age or chance, they set out dark into the last Darkness, a drift of deathless waiting hungers . . .

 
© George Mackay Brown 1969