Doors and Gates

Posted on by
4


Gate at Scone Castle


Gateway to Scone Castle


also at Scone Castle


gate to Bowling Green in Stirling Castle


door from Stirling Castle


Entry to Stirling Castle Chapel built by
King James VI of Scotland, I of England


Parish Church, Iona


Open doorway into the Abbey on Iona


Gate to cemetery on Iona


Doorway from abbey cloisters in Iona


And, lastly, the doorway in the rock wall outside our bedroom window.

Enter into His gates with thanksgiving and into His courts with praise.

Loving each day,

St. Giles in Edinburgh

Posted on by
6

We were surprised at how dirty St. Giles is.  Of course it has occupying this part of the city for centuries.  It will cost 2.5 million pounds to clean it.

This statue of John Knox is close to the entrance of the cathedral.
However his grave is here:

Rick Steves calls the organ at St. Giles, built in 1992, “one of Europe’s finest.”

The organ recital was magnificent.  This was our view while we listened:

The cathedral is overwhelming.
It makes you feel small. 
It is massive, layered, a visual overload.

Blessings,

Surplus Churches

Posted on by
2

One of the sad parts of this trip has been seeing church buildings converted to restaurants, hair salons, homes, and even tourist information centers.  The Church of Scotland has a category for these properties: surplus church buildings. 

One of the issues involves the cost of maintaining very old buildings by diminished congregations.  The church in Aberfeldy has been condemned; it is unsafe to meet in and will need either a huge infusion of money for repairs or to be sold.  Certainly demographic shifts have contributed to the problem. 

At one time the church used to be central to the community it served — its pulse and circulatory system.  Now, tourism seems to be the pump that keeps the community humming.  A rich tapestry of soul connections has been exchanged for economic threads.

The issue is complex and cannot be reduced to three paragraphs with a concluding solution. 

I long to see our churches full of vibrant Christians with a robust faith, churches that faithfully preach the Word of God, churches that effectively serve their communities.  Lord, have mercy.

Conversations

Posted on by
3

Vowels, consonants, inflection and idiom: these
four qualities influence the Scottish brogue we all love to listen to.  Vowels
seem to work differently here; come consonants work overtime — the r’s for
example – and some, like the t at the end of a word, are on permanent vacation;
our speech lifts at the end of a question we ask, but the Scots lilt almost
every sentence; and idiom — I have a story for you! 
 
When the Scots speak of time it helps to remember
the rules of Roman numerals: if a number comes before the hour, subtract.  “Five
eleven” means 10:55.  “Eight half” means 8:30.  I have no idea what “ten ten”
would mean because I have never heard it.  I think they prefer to use quarter
and half units.
 
Idiom is the choice of words within an area or
group of people.  Instead of counter-clockwise the Scots say
“anti-clockwise”.  And when you get a round trip ticket they call it
“return”.  I was at the desk at the Cal-Mac ferry asking about the connection we
needed to make with the bus on the island of Mull.  The genial agent gave me a
time schedule and marked the times I needed.  I asked about the price and what I
heard was “Ten pound per ton.”  My jaw unhinged and I asked with incredulity,
“Tney charge by the ton?”  His eyes danced as he said, “Oh my, no.  Ten pounds
return.”   That sent both of us into
fits of giggles which caught the eyes of everyone in the terminal.
 
We’ve had several conversations where as we
have walked away Curt has said, “Did you understand a word of what he said?”
and I had to admit that I had no idea.  Getting directions is particularly
difficult because we are so unfamiliar with the place names and the place names
all have Gaelic flavors.  The few names we know are pronounced in such a
different way that we would never recognize them in speech. 
 
With one notable exception, the Scottish people
have been kind and engaging.  A few times people have mistaken us for native
Scots – that was before we spoke.  People have heard us speak and have initiated
a conversation asking us where we are from.  “Toby” the gregarious man on the
plane told us all about his travels in Billings, Montanta, and Cheyenne,
Wyoming.  The man in the gift shop in Iona cracked me up.  “Are you Americans? 
I love America.  I love Las Vegas.  I love south Florida.”  Hello?  What is a
man who loves Las Vegas doing on the island of Iona? 
 
We saw one couple in the ferry terminal, on the
ferry, on the bus, on the second ferry, and at various points on Iona.  We
always nodded to one another, but in the shop they approached us.  Are you from
the states?  We are too.  Are you in ministry?  As I began to shake my head in
the negative, my husband smiled and said, “Yes!  My ministry is to love my
wife.”  That just may be my favorite moment of the trip.
 

Our favorite Scot is Annabelle.  What a character! 
She was our B & B host on Iona.  We asked her to join us for breakfast but
that seems to be against protocol.  However, after breakfast, we went into her
living quarters and soon we were seated at her table talking for over an hour. 
Her brogue has the thickest burr we’ve heard.  Lively and opinionated, she had
us laughing.  Annabelle and her husband John are two of the six remaining
native islanders on Iona.  They both have lived there all their lives.  She was a
teacher, he was an engineer, but they farm sheep and help their son with his
farm.  Her house was warm and comfortable, an extension of her personality. 
When it came time to pay her, she said, “Ach, I am so poo-er at this.  I just
want to have you here as my friends.  I hate the money part.”   
 

Our 1% guy, the one who was not friendly, was
painstakingly painting a boat surrounded by six boats near the
dock.  We watched him a minute and when he stepped back to examine his work,
Curt asked, “Do you own all these boats?”  He stared for a good thirty seconds
— or was that a glare? — before saying “New.” (No)  We kept on walking.  Under
his breath, Curt said, “He only responds to questions in Gaelic.”

The Full Scottish

Posted on by
7

The Full Scottish:  Our first
night in Oban was delightful.  Once we got our (carry-on) luggage in our room,
we roamed the streets and walked the waterfront; even though it was after 9:00
p.m. it felt good to stretch, to walk, to take cleansing breaths, to take in all
the sights in this charming tourist town.  In the morning we arrived in the
dining room for breakfast, the only guests.  There was cold cereal, juice,
yogurt and toast, and the ubiquitous pot of steaming tea.  This seemed more like
the Continental breakfasts at Super 8 than the famous full breakfasts I’d read
about.  No problem.  I ate toast (they cool the toast vertically on racks, ‘cuz
they like it crunchy cold) and Curt had a large bowl of cereal.  In walks Moyra
with hot plates (heating the plates before serving food on them is common here) full of food. 
 
Hello the Full Scottish Breakfast!  An egg, two pieces of bacon (more like Canadian bacon) and two
sausages (something is different about them but we haven’t figured out what
yet), a small tomato cut in half and broiled and a mystery food.  Now we’re
talking Curt’s language.  He started chowing down!  The mystery food was black,
round, the texture of bread and the size of a rice cake.  There were
little specks of white in it.  At first glance I thought of Bilbo’s seed cakes. 
I was raised in the “Eat What Is Set Before You” school so I took a nibble.  It
had a dough flavor and a meat flavor, approximately like the combination of
pancakes fried in bacon grease.  It didn’t taste bad, just different.  I ate it
all.

 
After dinner that night on Iona, we were talking
about the mystery food.  The black color stumped me, because it had no smell or
flavor of molasses, the most common explanation for black breadish food I know. 
Our waitress was lovely and I decided to ask if she would know what it was. 
“You mean black pudding?”  Pudding?  There was nothing gelatinous about this
food. It was distinctly bready.  What’s in it?  I couldn’t identify the
flavors.  “Yes, well, it has oats in it and blood.”  Blood?  Blood? 
(gagging reflex working overtime) Where do you buy blood for
cooking?  “I’m from New Zealand, but those guys over there are from
Scotland. Let’s ask them.”   The young Scot grinned and confirmed her
declaration.  “It’s oats mixed with blood.”   
 
My fillet (pronounced FILL-it) of cod was knocking
on my throat.  In the interest of hygiene and personal dignity, I knew I should
cut this conversation short.  But I was intrigued.  Where
does the blood come from?  “Oh, people don’t make Black
Pudding at home. They buy it pre-made, like the sausage.”  He went on to say
that the blood came from cows or sheep, that he loved Black Pudding –it tastes
great! –, that it probably originated from the days of poverty when people used
every edible part of the animal possible when it was slaughtered. “Now we eat it
because we like it.”  As we walked up the lane to our B & B on Iona, I
wondered how I would deal with Black Pudding the next day.  I decided it was
good missionary training to eat something gross, even when I knew how
gross it was.  I was going to be brave. Brave, as in Scotland the Brave.
Hallelujah!!  Our dear Annabelle served the same exact Full Scottish Breakfast
except there was a different mystery food in place of Black Pudding.  It was
light and square: I’m guessing a bannock cake.

It’s past midnight and we want to get to church in Edinburgh tomorrow.  I don’t have time for Iona but it was incredible.  I’m not sure I can take this much wonder: Iona on Saturday and St. Giles on Sunday.  I’ll try to check in with you on Monday.

Getting There

Posted on by
4

The flight:  was delayed leaving
Seattle and was an hour late coming into London’s Heathrow airport.  We felt
certain we would miss our connection to Glasgow at Terminal 5 which seemed like a
three mile bus ride away from our arrival at Terminal 4.  However, they held the
connecting flight to Glasgow (not just for us, but because of delays) and we made the plane.  Yay!!  Unfortunately, our
checked luggage did not make it.  We carried on important
things like books to read and journals to write in,
computers, ipods and headphones.  We did not carry on extra
underwear, toothbrush or a change of clothing.  Thus, a lesson
learned.

**Addendum** I failed to add that we picked up our luggage which was delivered to our first B & B on Saturday night.  What a relief it was to wear clean clothes!  We’d been wearing the same clothes since Wednesday morning. Yikes!

 
The car:  a Kia cee’d
(that is what it’s called, I kid you not) is our rental car.  It
gets 48 mpg, drives wonderfully, and is compact outside and roomy inside.  Curt
was nervous about the right hand, left lane MO in Scotland.  The first problem,
however, was figuring out how to get it in reverse.  He yanked, tugged, pulled,
pushed, cranked, yelled, and we kept creeping forward out of our car park
space.  I tend not to worry about trivial things like how to go backwards and
urged him to just drive away and figure it out later.  Curt refused to go
anywhere until he could back up.  The car kept moving forward and other cars
kept swerving around us in this dense car park.  Aha!  There was a sleeve you
had to push up and then the happy little gearshift knob moved into reverse. 
 
In praise of shoulders:  Curt has
wonderful shoulders.  He handled the initial (and continuing) stress of driving
wonderfully well.  He copes well in the traffic.  The roads in Scotland, alas,
have no shoulders.  None.  Nyet.  Nada.  It is a rock wall, narrow lanes and
another rock wall or forest or store.  The driveways in America are wider than
the roads in Scotland.  Once you get off the M roads (dual carriage, which means
divided highway) the smaller roads often narrow to one lane and one of the
drivers has to pullout and let the other pass.  Also, passing in Scotland is
forbidden most of the time.  Instead, the slow-mo driver needs to pull out when
another driver is on your tail.  A large sign with the letter P signifies a
pullout.  Curt would say, “I need a P” meaning he had a car wanting to go faster
behind him and we needed to move over the next turnout.  It took a while for me
to catch on: I kept looking for bathroom facilities!  A few bounces on the left
curb were the only bumps in our road.
 
Scotland scenery:  This country
feels like home in some ways.  The scenery is very similar to Oregon.  As we
drove we would say, “Look, there’s Wallowa Lake.”  “That looks just like the
sides of the Columbia Gorge.”  “Oh my, that’s the Snake River.”  The
dun-colored, treeless hills are just getting ready to green up.  The mountains
surprised us.  The country feels very, very large.  There is water (lochs,
rivers, firths) everywhere.

More soon,

Godspeed

Posted on by
11

The day has arrived.

I always experience a pang of buyer’s remorse the remaining hours before a trip.

Any trip.

I want to cancel.

I’m leaving home!

I’ll miss my people.

Why are we gone so long?

…

I’ll be fine, though.

In about 14 hours when we are in the air.

Godspeed.

A Few of My Favorite Sounds

Posted on by
7

~ a crackling fire

~  the smooth series of shutter clicks on a good camera

~  the steady scratch of pencil on paper, evidence of a mind at work

~ wooden wind chimes

~ the small sounds of fine china at a table scene in a British movie

~  the expectant cacophony of an orchestra tuning

~  the plunk of wooden chess pieces on a wooden chess board

~  the pop of a canning jar full of peaches (salsa, applesauce, grape juice) sealing as it cools

~  the click of the master bedroom door shutting

~  a baby’s burp after ten minutes of back-patting

~ a baby’s first cry

I couldn’t sleep at some point last night and decided to make of list of my favorite everyday sounds (outside the realm of musical sounds). 

Here’s the difference gender makes.
My husband’s list:

~ water running in a creek or river

~ the fllllttt of an arrow zinging in the air

~  elks bugling

~ ducks quacking

~ a quiet wife (just kidding!)

What about you?  What are your favorite sounds?