On Saturday, we visited Edinburgh. Pastor Quigley drove us to Bathgate, to the train station, but the trains to Edinburgh were canceled for the day, so we had to take the bus. We waited for the bus in a shelter while fine rain spat down from the low, grey sky.
As we drove into Edinburgh, the theme from the old BBC “Chronicles of Narnia” production started to run through my head. The bus trundled down narrow streets with buildings leaning over on every side, four or five stories tall. Brick and stone, with shops on the first floors and flats above. Many of the shops were very fancy, and trendy cafes spilled tables out onto the street. Peering over the buildings, my senses began to thrill: the art museum, the spire of the Walter Scott monument, and the turrets of Edinburgh Castle, standing like a huge ship of stone on the highest point of the hill of the Royal Mile. Flags flew from the battlements. The bus at last drove down into Edinburgh train station, a large underground station by the river, with an expansive open area down below around which shops, restaurants, and terminals crowded. Here we disembarked, then climbed up to the level of the street. We crossed the road, climbing the side of a hill, and dived into the maze of buildings that lines the Royal Mile. We hurried through the small, hidden square of St. Anne’s Close, past the Writers’ Museum, where quotations from famous Scottish authors were engraved on large paving stones. Through a narrow door, and out onto the Royal Mile. Old buildings marched up and down on either side of the Mile. Carla and Brenda led us across the Mile to St. Giles’s Cathedral. The Cathedral is undergoing construction for refurbishment, so the front entrance is blocked, but Carla and Brenda hurried us around to one side of the Cathedral. Cars were parked in a paved area under the shadow of the Cathedral. “Stay here, you guys. We want to show you something,” Brenda said. She and Carla started to scurry around among the cars, peeking under them. Finally, after looking under a sleek silver sports car, Brenda announced, “Here it is. John Knox’s grave.” No marker other than a rather larger stone showed the place where the great soldier of the faith is buried. Standing there by John Knox’s grave, we split into groups, and from there we scattered over Edinburgh.
John and Emily decided that they wanted to go to the castle with me. The three of us climbed the Royal Mile towards the castle.
When we reached the castle, we found that bleachers had been set up in preparation for a military parade. The tall bleachers obstructed the view of the castle and made the whole place rather ugly, but we pressed on. In order to get into the castle, we had to pay for ten pound tickets. So we stood in line for the ticket booth. As we stood in line, it started to rain. John and I unfolded our umbrellas. The three of us pulled out sandwiches and proceeded to eat our lunches standing there in the shadow of Edinburgh Castle in the rain. We bought our tickets, then walked up to the castle. A guard at the gate took our tickets. On either side of the bridge over the moat, in little green guard boxes, stood a soldier. Their faces were straight, but their eyes shifted from side to side, watching the people passing by. The castle was very, very crowded—much more of an attraction than Stirling, it has a commercialized, touristy feel which ruins the meditative, medieval atmosphere that hangs over Stirling. We climbed the bridge over the moat, through the lower square, up the causeway, and through the main gates, up to the second square. Canons peered like single eyes out of the loopholes along the walls. I stared in awe at the masonry, which had been artfully woven into the rock of the cliff so that the castle seemed to have grown out of waves of rock. The second square curved around the side of the cliff. Along the way there was a timeline with dates of occupation of the cliff. My eyes lit up when I saw a plaque for Din Eiddin, King Mynnydog, in 600 A.D., and his Shining Company. In the second square, something was happening—dignitaries spilling out of a luxurious café, and the blare of a military band. We paused on the side of the hill and watched as a band came marching up the square. Drums, brass, and clarinets blared brazenly. Green uniforms with kilts and plaid berets blended with the misty hills behind.
We climbed on up to the third and highest level of the castle. We went into the war memorial. Though a plaque outside the memorial asked for “reverent silence to be preserved”, the memorial was hot and rather noisy with the voices of the crowd circulating through. I walked slowly, lingering over the names engraved on the walls, memorials to soldiers mostly from World War I, and to numerous divisions of the army, navy, and airforce. A beautiful quote from Thucydides on the wall of the airforce monument, and Scripture running around the room where the tomb of the unknown soldier. Stained-glass windows shed patterned light onto the stone floors. After the war monument, we visited the Great Hall. Delicate woodwork, fine as lace, panelled the walls. Above the panelling, the walls were painted deep red. Spears were arranged in a fan above the doors, steel-bright peacock’s tails. Held in sheaths along the walls were all manner of weapons: old guns, rapiers, sabres, scimitars, daggers, knives, swords, pikes, and gigantic claymores with handles at least eighteen inches long and blades at least four feet long. In bays along the walls were windows with the crests of noble houses—names of Covenanter houses, and names of their arch-enemies. After the Great Hall, we visited the Stone of Destiny and the Crown Jewels of Scotland. Quite an elaborate display had been set up in the tower around the Crown Jewels—murals, signboards, movies, and mannequins. The Crown Jewels themselves were in a small, crowded room. I only glimpsed them—flecks of diamond, deep reds and blues, gold and ermine flashing on crown and sceptre.
After the Crown Jewels, we clambered around on the battlements for awhile. Emily and I peered through a loophole, on either side of a canon, to see Arthur’s Seat, which stood out like the rough shoulders of a war-horse from the surrounding country. Then we went up to St. Margaret’s Chapel, the oldest building on the rock, built in 1100 or so. A humble, rough building, with only a few small lancet windows. It should have been a quiet, reverent place—small and sweet, but instead it was crowded with people, noise and laughter and the shuffle of impatient feet. Then we climbed down into the dungeons to see the “Prisons of War” exhibit. The dungeons had been fitted up as they would have been in the 1800s during the Napoleonic Wars. Hammocks slung from rough beams, graffiti of clippers and man o’wars carved into old wooden doors, the reek of mould, and something like stale oatmeal, and something sickly-sweet. A wooden ship was on display, made by a French prisoner from that time, perfect in every detail—painted, even to gilt on the prow, and the rigging neat with every knot and piece of tackle. The exhibit was set up with “dramatic” lighting throwing anthropomorphic shadows on the walls, and recordings of actors sounding like prisoners. We poked around for awhile more over the castle, climbing down the Lang Stairs and looking out over Edinburgh—the harbour, with islands and mountains beyond, the city, and Arthur’s Seat.
After the castle, we strolled down into the city. We spent most of the rest of our time on the Royal Mile, window-shopping. While John and Emily went into one store, I stepped briefly into a shop that sold woollen goods, to see if they had any sweaters. They had a beautiful blue-grey sweater, but I didn’t buy it then, remembering Mrs. Bruce’s promise—if I can, when we come back, I’ll buy it. So I walked down to join John and Emily. They had gone into a knives-and-daggers store. Claymores, swords, sabres, rapiers, knives of all shapes and descriptions, spears, pikes…. Shirts of chainmail, glimmering like the Milky Way, polished helmets from Roman and medieval eras, Celtic-knotted shields…. John asked one of the salesmen to look up his family crest on the computer, and the young man cheerfully did so. MacGill, the Scottish version of John’s Irish name, came up with a phoenix as the crest. After the sword shop, we went into endless Scottish Heritage stores. Tartans, Celtic jewellery, cashmere, scarves, full kilts, claymores, and all variety of small touristy gifts. We fingered the plaids, exclaimed over the delicate filigree of rings and necklaces, and found our family colours. I used the Anderson line, which is Grammy’s heritage—a beautiful grey-blue plaid, just the colours I like. :o) Because John has a liking for strange Scottish foods, we also visited various whisky shops—bottles full of amber liquid gleaming in the dim light. He also wanted to buy a pipe, so we visited a hole-in-the-wall tobacconist’s shop. On either side of the door stood a carved Indian with feather headdress and tomahawk, and inside there were shelves crammed with boxes of fine cigars, the smell of rich tobacco hanging on the air. As we strolled down the street, we passed a variety of attractions: at one place, an artist had hung out watercolors of the area for sale; at another place, a couple of booths sold cheap metal jewellery. A woman perched on a wooden box braided fluorescent thread into a girl’s long hair, and someone else offered tattoos. A bagpiper stood under the lea of a church and droned “Amazing Grace”. Under St. Giles’s Cathedral, a jester with a lute played Bach. Various costumed ragamuffins offered their services as models for pictures. At one place, I stopped in amazement. “Look! Games Workshop! Man, if I’d known this was here, I’d have bought something for Stephen here instead of at the castle. C’mon, sorry guys, I have to go inside.” John and Emily followed me doubtfully into the shop, which was crammed with teenage boys around a long table. The shop reeked of paint, plastic, and lead, and along the walls there were racks full of miniatures. I headed directly to the back wall, where the LOTR miniatures were kept, and looked over the plastic packages of unpainted Elves, Rohirrim, and Gondorian soldiers. “Thanks, guys,” I apologized to the other two when we left. “Like a bunch of fanatics,” John growled, and Emily and I laughed—I had to explain about J.D. and Stephen, and the Elven Standard Bearer.
Further down the street, we came to John Knox’s house. We just stepped onto the first floor and looked around the bookshop. I found a beautiful book with pictures and brief stories of Scottish fairytales. There was another tartan shop just next door, so John and Emily went inside. I sat out on the steps leading up to a second-story flat and peeled open a setsuma. Juice welled over my fingers from the leathery skin, the peel trickling through my hands in orange flakes. I offered slivers to John and Emily when they came out of the tartan shop. Continuing on, we came to a line of less ritzy stores. We stopped to peer into the windows of a map store. Maps of everywhere from Cancun to San Francisco to Cathay, and gorgeously detailed lithographs of Edinburgh and London. Next door there was a hole-in-the-wall used book store, mostly children’s books. John bought a second edition (late 1800s) biography of L.M. Alcott. I fingered a beautiful little copy of The Princess and the Goblins. A British man had just bought a set of books, and I heard him exulting over his find in a cultured Oxford accent. I admired a set of Arthur Ransome prints in the window, Art Noveau fairies and trees branching into slender veins across the pages. We stepped into a fudge store next, just for laughs, and joked about buying a pound of the rich, creamy chocolate. Across the street, we could smell chocolate brownies baking in a tea shop. Returning up the street, we found Missy and Michaela in a small, elegant tea shop, enjoying their second tea of the afternoon. They embraced Emily and me as though we were long-lost relatives, which made John laugh at them. They’d spent the whole day shopping.
For awhile we walked around some more. I was amazed at the number of people moving about everywhere. Listening to the languages being spoken was like returning to Babel: German, Russian, French Canadian, Spanish, Italian, Arabic, Asian. Slender little Japanese girls; Indian women in flaming saris the colour of rhododendron flowers; Eastern Europeans with long necks and elegantly-draped scarves woven with metal thread; Goths in black with heavy eye makeup on men and women alike; Africans with close-cut, curly hair. And the smells of restaurants added to the mix—sweet-n-sour Chinese food, garlic and olive oil from an Italian restaurant, jalapeno and chilli drifting from a Mexican shop, the smell of curry hanging around a kebab store, tea shops leaving their peculiar, rose-sweet taste on the air, and an “authentic American pizza” shop trailing the smells of sausage and baking bread. God certainly does like diversity!
As we returned up the Royal Mile, wandering aimlessly toward the Castle, we met up with Beth and Sarah, who had decided to drive down for the day. They showed Emily and me some silk scarves which they’d bought down at a shop in the Grassmarket. “Ok, we have to go to the Grassmarket,” I exclaimed, and Emily heartily concurred. John, having nothing better to do, and behaving like a gentleman, trailed behind. We left the Royal Mile and walked down the curve of Victoria Street. Tall building leaned over the narrow road. Car tyres rattled on the paving stones. Along the way, we stepped into Bacchus Antiques—like walking into a museum. A set of cavalry rapiers, a grandfather clock, dressers, Victorian jewellery, old books, a battleship model, glass eyes…. As we turned the corner to Grassmarket, we had to step around a person sitting on the ground, bundled in black, holding out a baseball cap and shaking the few coins in it dolefully, endlessly. At last, we came out onto Grassmarket square at last—mostly restaurants and antique shops. I immediately spotted the scarf shop. A booth had been built out from the shop itself and hung with silks—rugs, belts, hangings, and scarves of all shapes and sizes. Emily and I slipped in through the small door. The walls were covered with cloth, and the back of the store was covered with cloth as well, so that it was like walking into a silk flower—silk like petals unfolding on every side. Luxurious swathes of colour. Peacock blue, beetle green, magenta, violet, purple, orange, saffron, crimson, black, grey. Cloths woven with metallic threads, silver and gold. Flowers, vines, diamonds, and strange animals intertwining. On the shelves, nestled among bolts and packets of cloth, were incense sticks, little round stone animals, bone rings, bracelets, loops of beads, necklaces, sparkling pens, hair pins, and a variety of useless but glittery and colourful items. The shop smelled of curry and cinnamon and other spices. I bought an iridescent grey-blue scarf, with long silvery tassels. It shimmered luxuriously. When Emily and I came out, we rejoined John. Briefly, we visited the monument to the Covenanters in Grassmarket—a low stone enclosure, with a round pattern of stones and a cross in the middle. I nearly wept—even this humble place was desecrated and abandoned, the grass scraggly and trodden-down, littered with a greasy pizza box and some crushed Coke cans. The place where so many saints and giants of the faith gave up their lives for the sake of Christ’s Crown and Covenant has become nothing more than a smokers’ hangout. While we stood there in quiet, sad reverence, a mariachi band (yes, really and truly—dark-skinned Hispanics with little black moustaches) strolled up to the tavern across the way. A bunch of drunk college students sitting outside the tavern called for a song, and the guitars immediately broke into a painful rendition of “When the Saints Come Marching In”. We walked down to the foot of Grassmarket and turned up along the other side. We stepped into a shop which sold mostly glass antiques, then continued on. For a moment, we lingered to stare at a shop which sold only fossils. “How much do you want to bet that they’re all fake?” John asked as we looked through the window at a tray of sharks’ teeth, trilobites, sand dollars, and dinosaur bones. We turned up a side street, past a tattoo parlour, a hair salon, and a witchery store, the window of which was full of skulls, black curtains, and strange instruments. (“Let’s be good Covenanters and smash the windows with the hilts of our claymores,” I muttered.) We followed the signs for Greyfriars Kirk, past the statue of Greyfriars Bobby, the little bronze dog standing faithfully on its pillar at a crossroads.
We finally found Greyfriars, and turned in at its narrow gate. Greyfriars is mostly surrounded by tall stone buildings. It is quiet and neglected, just like the Covenanters’ monument, but because it is secreted away, it is reserved and untouched. The green cemetery is quiet, the tall buildings which stand around it blocking out the buzz of the city. Where the backs of the stone houses line the kirkyard, the wall has been turned into a line of monuments, monuments shaped like doors with lintels and carving. We strolled quietly around the kirkyard, drifting away from one another into solitude. Emily and I put our faces up to the metal gates which bar the Covenanters’ Prison. Elm seeds, like downy feathers, drifted over the sidewalk, rustling gently. I strolled alone past endless tombs, where architects, opticians, jewellers, pastors, Covenanters, children, and wives slept serenely. A tomb to a girl named Penelope. Monuments mounted on the wall of the church itself to a woman named Margaret and her daughters. After awhile, the three of us drifted together again and clustered on the roots of an old elm tree. We sat in silence for a long time. The rough, creamy yellow walls of the kirk stood out against the subdued green of trees and grass, and the grey of the tombstones and the walls. Tree trunks were grey as tombstones in the late afternoon dim. We sat still for a long time, and eventually a flock of pigeons sidled up to us and started to poke among the elm leaves on the sidewalk. They flicked the leaves away, nibbling the seeds. John tossed fragments of a pink strawberry wafer at them, which sent them scuttling away. A male pigeon bobbed its head and ruffled up its neck feathers, green and purple rippling iridescently down its breast. We talked reverently, in low voices, about the Covenanters and the sacrifice they made.
Finally, we walked back to St. Giles’s Cathedral, where we met up with the rest of the group. Waiting for Rachel, Virginia, and Aaron to come back, we sat on the stone rail of one of the buildings in front of the Cathedral. A ragged-looking man approached us and begged for money, but Beth, who was with us, shook her head and turned him away.
When the group had assembled, we debated about where to go for supper. Grassmarket has the most restaurants, so Grassmarket was the place we chose. As we walked, everyone shared their experiences and adventures of the day. People admired the kilt that Aaron had bought, and Toby’s set of miniature bagpipes. Michaela showed me some clothes she’d found. Virginia had the most beautiful thing of all: a harp. A small harp, not full-size, but wooden and with Celtic patterns carved all around the wood. As we passed the scarf shop, Serenity, Michaela and Missy darted in to buy scarves. We ate at the “authentic American pizza” restaurant, almost at the foot of Grassmarket. We had to crowd around two small tables in the little room, but the food was excellent—piping hot pastry, spicy tomato sauce, fresh vegetables (olives, wonderful mushrooms, bell peppers) and hearty meat. The walls were plastered with crude, silly paintings of people making pizza, and with posters advertising reggae and rock bands. But it was a very good meal, and we cleaned up all the pizza.
After supper, Beth drove three people, plus Sarah, back to Airdrie, while the other nine of us hurried to the train station to catch the 6:18 train to Bathgate. We marched up Victoria Street, across the Royal Mile, through St. Anne’s Close, past the Writers’ Museum, past the art gallery, along the park above the river, past the Walter Scott monument, and down into the bowels of the train station. We were just in time. John bought tickets, and we climbed aboard. I saw a lush green pasture, stained crimson with poppies, and fields of yellow rape. flash past the windows. A black-and-white foal suckled from its mother under the lea of a hedge. At Bathgate, Pastor Quigley picked us up and drove us back to Airdrie. It was a lovely drive, through the countryside. This time, the clouds had lifted, and darts of daffodil-pale sunshine flecked the shaggy green hills. Sunshine like fool’s gold on the grass and small, grey ponds. A little, weather-blackened stone bridge spanned a narrow valley. Cottages leaned into the hillsides. Cattle grazed by the road. Then Airdrie, and the city again.
18 June 2006
15 June 2006
Glasgow: Cathedral and John Piper
June 14, 2006
The train ride to Glasgow took about thirty minutes. We piled off the train at the Glasgow Queen’s Street Station. I stared around. We were in an underground station and had to climb a flight of stairs to get to the ground level. People bustled around us. We left the station and stood on the long, broad covered porch outside. People were hurrying everywhere. “Weird Europeans,” I growled, watching the crowds circulate past. A soldier in a black beret and fatigues. Businesswomen in knee-short, tight skirts. Loungers with long hair, grizzled beards, and flapping trousers. Girls with enough mascara to paint a black-and-white version of the “Mona Lisa”. Tall, dandified men with very tight slacks and half-open shirts, gold necklaces dangling down their chests. It was quite a crowd.
Lucas turned us loose, telling us to be back at the train station at five o’clock. My group wandered away aimlessly. We crossed George Street into a large open plaza. Statues of kings and queens mounted on horseback lined the edges of the plaza: stern faces, upraised swords, crowned heads. Gulls flapped and circled around. The buildings surrounding the plaza were all different from one another. In Stirling, we had seen a small slice of architecture two hundred years old, all crowded together. But in Glasgow, you see architecture from every period and style, built up on top of one another—a zoo of buildings. Most of the buildings in this part of Glasgow seemed to be built out of red sandstone, perhaps in the 1800s—five or six stories tall, with rows of windows staring down on the streets, and lines of carving on the corners. There were the usual suave green-glass-and-steel office buildings. There was an odd building, which had overtones of Frank Lloyd Wright, except that offices occupied the top story, a parking garage the second story, and dirty shops the first story. At the far end of the plaza was a magnificent red sandstone building, covered in wreaths and statues, with vaults and corbels and domes in the best baroque style. A pair of lions guarded a tall obelisk in the middle of the plaza. People lounged around the plaza. John stopped to stare at a greasy-looking man who was offering a small, hand-pushed cart in which to drive tourists around the town.
We wandered down one side of the plaza to a set of triple gates, where we stood and took pictures for awhile. Then we had to decide where we wanted to go. Some people wanted to go to the harbour, but that was too far away. There were science museums, art museums, and other attraction, but they also were out of walking distance. “I’d love to go see a cathedral,” I offered. “I would, too,” John said, and Emily added that she was game for the attempt. So Aaron and Rachel pulled out the map and stared at it for awhile. Then Aaron led us on our trek to the cathedral. It was actually just down the street, several blocks from the station, but we had taken a detour to visit the gates, so it took us longer to reach the cathedral. We walked past a construction zone where they were building some sleek postmodern buildings, all slanted roofs and blue glass and woodwork. We climbed the hill toward the cathedral, walking between narrow rows of grimy shops, which were crowded together like dirty pigeons. Tanning salons, insurance firms, the Cathedral Nearly New shop, hair salons, chemist’s (pharmacist’s), candy stores, clothing stores…. We walked by the campus of Strathclyde University, which was jumbled among the businesses and shops. At last, reaching the top of the hill, I spotted the cathedral: windows like stone flowers opening above the trees. We hurried forward.
Instead of entering Glasgow Cathedral through the front doors, the tourist entrance is through a side door. Everyone else went on ahead, but I lingered behind to get my bearings. Judging from the position of the sun, the cathedral was oriented, like all proper cathedrals, with the front doors facing west (west is the traditional direction of death—and it is interesting to note that when God closed the Garden of Eden to Adam and Eve, He set angels on the east side, but not on the west—it is by “going west” that we return to God). On the south side of the cathedral was a cemetery. The high wall built around the cemetery consisted of large plaques and stone mausoleums. There were many stones laid flat in the ground of the cemetery, so many that the ground was almost paved. Maple and chestnut trees had thrust some of the stones upward with thick roots. On the walls of the cathedral, gargoyles glared out over the graveyard: snarling boars, smiling women, growling dragons, sea-beasts with flowing whiskers and sharp fangs. For a moment, late afternoon sun flashed on the green slates of the cathedral, making them gleam like fishes’ scales. The golden weathercock at the top of the spire glinted. (Weathercocks are often symbolic of reawakening and repentance—think of Peter and the cock crowing three times.)
Opening the small wooden doors, I stepped inside the cathedral. And my eyes shot upwards. Trunks of stone towered above the stone floor, splitting into branches which intertwined far, far overhead. Their tracery held the clerestory windows like leaves, shimmering high above the floor, shining clear, uncoloured daylight into the dim nave. On either side of the nave, aisles ran under the stone columns. Stained-glass windows depicting saints and Biblical figures marched along these aisles—Moses, St. George, windows commemorating the Cameronians, etc. The sun shone straight through the rose window at the front of the church so that all the tiny, intricate pieces of glass glowed in their lead tracery.
In awe, I walked slowly down the nave. The sheer weight and power of the cathedral was overwhelming, almost like being inside a living creature. High, high overhead, the wooden ceiling beams were painted and gilded. Crests and shields bossed the points of the vaults and the places where stone pillars intersected with wooden beams.
Of course, I wasn’t the only person in the cathedral (though in my awe-struck state it sure seemed that way). There were other tourists—Germans, Asians, elderly folks with big cameras. There were costumed guides wearing tartans and cloaks, and a pair of blue-surpliced priests sitting at a table.
I moved down the nave. In the middle of the nave, a flight of steps led up to the body of the church itself. However, this part of the cathedral was separated from the rest of the nave by a wall of woodwork. Through an open door, I could see rows of chairs set up, the pulpit, the altar, two vases of flowers spraying lavishly beside two columns. Before the wooden wall, there were two flights of stairs leading downward into the crypt of the cathedral. I turned aside and followed one of these down, to the right. My feet clicked softly on the smooth, swaybacked lips of the steps. I found John down there, and we wandered around the crypt, staring at the stonework. Arches met and intersected continuously. The stone seemed to have been water once, with light rippling through it—then stone and light froze into pointed vaults and fine, interwoven tracery. The crypt smelled musty, and there were tombs along the walls, and shrines in the middle of the crypt. A plaque on the wall bore a memorial to Covenanters who had been killed standing up for the covenant (odd thing to find in a Catholic cathedral), complete with a victorious poem. The last two lines of the poem ran resoundingly, “They shall know on judgment day/ To kill the saints was no sweet play.”
Down in the crypt, we rejoined Virginia, Rachel, and Aaron. For awhile, I stood with Virginia, looking at an exhibit of old stones found around the cathedral, fragments of statues and gargoyles and other work. Some of the stones had traces of their original paint. Virginia patiently let me talk her ear off about the cathedral. “It looks magnificent now, but imagine what it must have looked like then. All this bare stone that we see would have been painted,” I said, and Virginia’s eyes widened. “This place is so incredibly magnificent. When I come to such a place, I’m reminded of just how small we are as human beings.” “It reminds you that there’s something greater,” Virginia said. “Yes, and look at the stones. No two of them are the same, yet if you pulled one out, this whole magnificent building would come crashing down. And the builders chose and shaped each one of them. It reminds me of the passage that speaks of us as living stones in Christ’s house,” I said. We stood silently for awhile, staring around the crypt. Standing there in the dim, I felt the sheer immensity of the cathedral, the weight of it, bearing down on me. Tons and tons of stone, like huge towering waves of water, frozen in place—power and weight, burden, groaning stone.
After awhile, we went back upstairs. I walked through the wooden partition into the main church. Strolling down one of the aisles, I saw Lucas and Michaela ahead of me. I joined up with Michaela. The soft murmur of people whispering in the seats of the church scurried down the long aisles. The spicy smell of incense made the air tangy. Michaela sat down at the piano behind one of the columns and played a couple of flowing bars from a hymn. The music echoed, gentle at first, then magnified by the stone and glass so that the silence seemed to gather in close and stare down forbiddingly at us.
We entered one of the two small chapels in the apse. Pointed windows told the story of the birth of Christ. A narrow lancet held fragments of glass in the shape of bread, cup, and crown.
I went outside into the cemetery and scrambled among the stones. The stones set in the ground were weathered so that most of them were blank, with only traces of carving. Deep green shadows gathered under the huge trees and under the lea of the wall. John stretched out in the green lawn of one grave while Aaron climbed around taking pictures and Rachel, Emily, Virginia, Michaela, and Lucas sat up at the other end of the cemetery. The others eventually went on ahead to the necropolis on the hill above the cathedral, but I lingered behind again. In that moment of loneliness in the cemetery, I suddenly had the strange feeling that I was not alone. It seemed as though a crowd of people had surrounded me, shadowy shapes in the fleeting sunlight that glanced through the clouds. Just as the sheer weight of the cathedral had overburdened me, so now the throng made me shiver. The hair rising on the back of my neck, I hurried out of the cemetery.
At the gate of the necropolis, just around the corner, I found Emily, Rachel, and Virginia waiting for me. The three of us walked down the road leading to the necropolis. On one side it was lined with paper aspens and rose bushes. The roses are just beginning to bloom, and the sweet smell of the enormous pink flowers vaguely perfumed the air. We crossed the bridge which spanned the valley between the cathedral’s hill and the much higher necropolis hill. We walked up a winding road around the necropolis. Straight stones stood on either side, carved in the shapes of doorways and crosses. Names, dates, scraps of Scripture and poetry. Stones marching up the hill under the thick green shadow of the trees.
To get from one level of the necropolis to another, we had to scramble straight up. The necropolis was built in terraces, with graves along the terraces. Stone retaining walls held back the terraces, and these were covered with ivy. Setting our feet in stones protruding from the wall, we clambered up behind a flat stone monument to the top level of the hill. There we found Lucas, Missy, and Michaela sitting at the foot of a large stone monument with a cross on top. And at the peak of the hill stood a gigantic stone column with a statue of John Knox mounted on its peak. John Knox stood on the highest point of the city, thundering down on the cathedral across the narrow valley, one hand upraised. We walked around the column, which had a large stone block as its base, and around the block was carved the story of Knox. Standing on the grass below the Knox monument, I looked out over Glasgow. On the hill immediately around me, grey monuments stood upright like the quills of feathers trapped upright in the grass. Tombstones, obelisks, crosses, and statues gazed sombrely out over the city. Over one monument, an angel with an upflung face stared hopefully at the sky, held forever in a moment of longing--until "the graves shall open and give up their dead". Across the narrow valley, the cathedral stood shimmering, its green roof like the flicker of wind over a dark grey pool. Lancets of silver light struck through the high white clouds and caught flecks of gold, green, and grey from the roofs of houses and shops below. Red brick and stone were dull under the sunlight. The distant hills marched away onto the hazy horizon. The others started off pretty soon, but I lingered behind again. The cemetery was wrapped up in itself, aloof from the city, looming above the shops and homes. No sound, no smells, no touch save the cool wind--only hazy sight, greys and greens and dull browns. I found myself having to return to the train station with only John and Aaron for company. When we finally decided to get moving (it actually wasn't all that long after the others left), we had to hurry. We jumped down the terraces of the cemetery and walked briskly down the street leading to the necropolis. Passing through the metal gates which at night bar the road, I was reminded of the scene in the "Phantom of the Opera" where Christine visits her father's grave. The cemetery had the same eerie, unearthly feeling of self-enclosure. We marched back to the train station down George Street, pushing through crowds of "weird Europeans". Ahead of us through the crowd, I could see Missy's pink beret. We reached the train station just after the others, and hung around waiting for Toby, Matt, and Brenda. Lucas stood leaning against a pillar with his arms folded, looking like a person I would not want to meet in a dark alley. When they arrived, Lucas said that he had decided not to stay and go to the John Piper lecture, but instead to return to Airdrie for a MET at the Quigleys' house. He left Toby and me in charge of everyone. The next order of business was to find some supper. Brenda offered that she knew a good place to eat, just round the corner, so we followed her to Waxy O'Connor's, which was in fact only across the street from the station.
We had to find our way around back since we weren’t interested in the pub. A pair of braziers burned above the doorway, flames fanning in the breeze. The waiter (who looked like Billy Boyd) led us down to a side table. Wooden legs scraped on the tile floor as the waiter pushed the tables and chairs together. We sat down along the table, and the waiter brought out drinks (water, irn bru, tea, etc.) and took our orders. I ordered fish-and-chips. Emily and Rachel both ordered burgers. While we waited for the food, everyone talked. Rachel sat and read her book of Scottish fairy and folktales, which she'd picked up in the cathedral. The usual queer, unchancy stories which sound as though they were made up on the spur-of-the-moment to frighten recalcitrant children. Virginia and Emily browsed a book of Scottish songs, Emily humming bits of the ones she recognized. The restaurant was dim, lit by a few lamps in our part. We were on the top level. Below us, the restaurant was dug down into the ground two or three stories and half-stories. The stories were open to one another in places, and enclosed in other places, so that the whole restaurant/tavern had the feel of a rabbit warren--or of a place in the Shire, though I felt more like Frodo at Bree, for I'd never been in such a place before, and the half-light and the unintelligible burr of the Scottish accent made everything seem strange. Lots of funny little bits of stairs ran between the stories, with unexpected halls, and flecks of stained-glass windows let chinks light in through odd scraps of windows. The ceilings were low, and the rooms were narrow. The beams supporting the roof and the stairs were carved like tree's limbs, and glowed satin and ruddy in the dim light. From the story below us, we could hear a World Cup game being played on TV. The faint sweet, malt smell of beer and the more bitter, unpleasant tang of cigarettes drifted up to us. When our supper came, it was quite delicious. My fish-and-chips were just as they should be, without the disgusting American grease. John and Toby both ordered haggis, neeps, and tatties (haggis, turnips, and potatoes). John said that the haggis tasted like low-grade hotdog meat, but Toby liked it. None of us ordered black pudding. We sat around talking for awhile, telling stories about squirrels and other things. At about six thirty, we left the restaurant. Virginia paid at the long bar across from the door where we'd come in. I stood behind her: since Lucas had made me one of the two responsible persons, I felt it my bound duty to be the last one of the group out of any place, sheepdog style. Behind the counter, in glass refrigerators, were kept bottles of Irn Bru (a weird orange soft drink which smells something like a cross between bubblegum and cream soda), Coke, and various sorts of golden beer. Bottles and glasses of all shapes and sizes gleamed along the wall behind the counter. Outside in the street again, we walked down a narrow alley between two buildings, down a short street, past a pizza parlor on the corner, and over to St. George's-Tron.
The church stands on a sort of peninsula where three or four streets come together, with a small plaza in front of it. There was a group of people already standing outside, but when the doors of the church were opened, we were the first to enter. Missy led us down to the second row from the front, and we settled in to wait for forty-five minutes until the service started, at seven thirty. The church inside was rococo, with lots of shells and columns painted and carved in the woodwork. Gilt, white, and shades of turquoise and aquamarine made the church feel elegant. A huge multifoliate chandelier hung from the ceiling. Ruffled gilt leaves stood out flat around its base in a large circle where it was attached to the ceiling. The pulpit was built in the old style, at the front of the church with a curving flight of a dozen steps leading up to it. On the stage below the pulpit, an ensemble was warming up to lead the worship: two violins, a flute, a pair of clarinets, a couple of trumpets, a French horn, and a bass guitar, supplemented by a piano on one side and an organ on the other. They played hymn tunes while people entered the church. By the time the service started, the church was warm. Approximately seven hundred people had crowded into the pews downstairs and the large balconies upstairs. When everyone stood to sing the first hymns, the acoustics were wonderful. The sound of that many voices in that small space was so resounding that the instruments were quite drowned out. But I would have prefered them to sing Psalms.... The focus of attention was on John Piper, of course. After prayer, singing, and an offering, all led by a British chap in a pink shirt, John Piper came out and began his lecture. John Piper is a slight older man with curly, fluffy white hair and a sweet, smooth, ruddy face. When he speaks, he uses many broad, emphatic gestures. People around us obviously enjoyed it. There were murmurs of agreement at his main points and appreciative laughter at his anecdotes. He was much less serious than I expected, but quite a good speaker. The main point of his sermon was that we should have courage to evangelize. He took Matthew 10:24-36 as his text. After the message, I felt like singing "All People Clap Your Hands for Joy", but of course we sang "Onward Christian Soldiers" instead.
There was a great press to get out. We inched slowly forward down the aisles and finally spilled out onto the plaza in front of the church. Everyone hung about waiting to speak with John Piper, but our team gathered on the far kerb. Michaela was the last to make her way through the crowd. While we waited, I watched the sunset. Gold and blue glinted in the sky on the fringes of the big, white clouds, so that the sky was like a soft opal. Seagulls flew between the high buildings. Shop windows across the street advertized expensive clothing, stylish short skirts and sweaters in the strangest modern shades of lime green and teal. Taxis, ambulances, cars, and vans rumbled along the brick street. When our group came together at last, we marched down the street to the train station. The guard at the station directed us to the proper platform for Airdrie.
On the ride back, Virginia and I got stuck in a bench separate from the rest of the group. I asked Virginia about her school. She told me that she enjoys being a music major (harp), but that she has many interests, and she's considering switching to an Elementary Ed degree because so many people have told her that she's good with children. She's also interested in training service dogs. She and her siblings worked in 4H, and her last dog project was a service dog. She also enjoys sewing, and she and her siblings showed goats in 4H. She asked about my school, and I told her about some of my frustrations with Anglo-Saxon lit. We talked about the lecture. The rails clicked by under the train, and the sun set over the dismal buildings and scrubby trees. Back in Airdrie, we left the station, which is constantly haunted by the faint, sharp scent of hot metal and cinders on gravel. We walked back to the church in a long, straggling group, like a flock of starlings flying home.
The train ride to Glasgow took about thirty minutes. We piled off the train at the Glasgow Queen’s Street Station. I stared around. We were in an underground station and had to climb a flight of stairs to get to the ground level. People bustled around us. We left the station and stood on the long, broad covered porch outside. People were hurrying everywhere. “Weird Europeans,” I growled, watching the crowds circulate past. A soldier in a black beret and fatigues. Businesswomen in knee-short, tight skirts. Loungers with long hair, grizzled beards, and flapping trousers. Girls with enough mascara to paint a black-and-white version of the “Mona Lisa”. Tall, dandified men with very tight slacks and half-open shirts, gold necklaces dangling down their chests. It was quite a crowd.
Lucas turned us loose, telling us to be back at the train station at five o’clock. My group wandered away aimlessly. We crossed George Street into a large open plaza. Statues of kings and queens mounted on horseback lined the edges of the plaza: stern faces, upraised swords, crowned heads. Gulls flapped and circled around. The buildings surrounding the plaza were all different from one another. In Stirling, we had seen a small slice of architecture two hundred years old, all crowded together. But in Glasgow, you see architecture from every period and style, built up on top of one another—a zoo of buildings. Most of the buildings in this part of Glasgow seemed to be built out of red sandstone, perhaps in the 1800s—five or six stories tall, with rows of windows staring down on the streets, and lines of carving on the corners. There were the usual suave green-glass-and-steel office buildings. There was an odd building, which had overtones of Frank Lloyd Wright, except that offices occupied the top story, a parking garage the second story, and dirty shops the first story. At the far end of the plaza was a magnificent red sandstone building, covered in wreaths and statues, with vaults and corbels and domes in the best baroque style. A pair of lions guarded a tall obelisk in the middle of the plaza. People lounged around the plaza. John stopped to stare at a greasy-looking man who was offering a small, hand-pushed cart in which to drive tourists around the town.
We wandered down one side of the plaza to a set of triple gates, where we stood and took pictures for awhile. Then we had to decide where we wanted to go. Some people wanted to go to the harbour, but that was too far away. There were science museums, art museums, and other attraction, but they also were out of walking distance. “I’d love to go see a cathedral,” I offered. “I would, too,” John said, and Emily added that she was game for the attempt. So Aaron and Rachel pulled out the map and stared at it for awhile. Then Aaron led us on our trek to the cathedral. It was actually just down the street, several blocks from the station, but we had taken a detour to visit the gates, so it took us longer to reach the cathedral. We walked past a construction zone where they were building some sleek postmodern buildings, all slanted roofs and blue glass and woodwork. We climbed the hill toward the cathedral, walking between narrow rows of grimy shops, which were crowded together like dirty pigeons. Tanning salons, insurance firms, the Cathedral Nearly New shop, hair salons, chemist’s (pharmacist’s), candy stores, clothing stores…. We walked by the campus of Strathclyde University, which was jumbled among the businesses and shops. At last, reaching the top of the hill, I spotted the cathedral: windows like stone flowers opening above the trees. We hurried forward.
Instead of entering Glasgow Cathedral through the front doors, the tourist entrance is through a side door. Everyone else went on ahead, but I lingered behind to get my bearings. Judging from the position of the sun, the cathedral was oriented, like all proper cathedrals, with the front doors facing west (west is the traditional direction of death—and it is interesting to note that when God closed the Garden of Eden to Adam and Eve, He set angels on the east side, but not on the west—it is by “going west” that we return to God). On the south side of the cathedral was a cemetery. The high wall built around the cemetery consisted of large plaques and stone mausoleums. There were many stones laid flat in the ground of the cemetery, so many that the ground was almost paved. Maple and chestnut trees had thrust some of the stones upward with thick roots. On the walls of the cathedral, gargoyles glared out over the graveyard: snarling boars, smiling women, growling dragons, sea-beasts with flowing whiskers and sharp fangs. For a moment, late afternoon sun flashed on the green slates of the cathedral, making them gleam like fishes’ scales. The golden weathercock at the top of the spire glinted. (Weathercocks are often symbolic of reawakening and repentance—think of Peter and the cock crowing three times.)
Opening the small wooden doors, I stepped inside the cathedral. And my eyes shot upwards. Trunks of stone towered above the stone floor, splitting into branches which intertwined far, far overhead. Their tracery held the clerestory windows like leaves, shimmering high above the floor, shining clear, uncoloured daylight into the dim nave. On either side of the nave, aisles ran under the stone columns. Stained-glass windows depicting saints and Biblical figures marched along these aisles—Moses, St. George, windows commemorating the Cameronians, etc. The sun shone straight through the rose window at the front of the church so that all the tiny, intricate pieces of glass glowed in their lead tracery.
In awe, I walked slowly down the nave. The sheer weight and power of the cathedral was overwhelming, almost like being inside a living creature. High, high overhead, the wooden ceiling beams were painted and gilded. Crests and shields bossed the points of the vaults and the places where stone pillars intersected with wooden beams.
Of course, I wasn’t the only person in the cathedral (though in my awe-struck state it sure seemed that way). There were other tourists—Germans, Asians, elderly folks with big cameras. There were costumed guides wearing tartans and cloaks, and a pair of blue-surpliced priests sitting at a table.
I moved down the nave. In the middle of the nave, a flight of steps led up to the body of the church itself. However, this part of the cathedral was separated from the rest of the nave by a wall of woodwork. Through an open door, I could see rows of chairs set up, the pulpit, the altar, two vases of flowers spraying lavishly beside two columns. Before the wooden wall, there were two flights of stairs leading downward into the crypt of the cathedral. I turned aside and followed one of these down, to the right. My feet clicked softly on the smooth, swaybacked lips of the steps. I found John down there, and we wandered around the crypt, staring at the stonework. Arches met and intersected continuously. The stone seemed to have been water once, with light rippling through it—then stone and light froze into pointed vaults and fine, interwoven tracery. The crypt smelled musty, and there were tombs along the walls, and shrines in the middle of the crypt. A plaque on the wall bore a memorial to Covenanters who had been killed standing up for the covenant (odd thing to find in a Catholic cathedral), complete with a victorious poem. The last two lines of the poem ran resoundingly, “They shall know on judgment day/ To kill the saints was no sweet play.”
Down in the crypt, we rejoined Virginia, Rachel, and Aaron. For awhile, I stood with Virginia, looking at an exhibit of old stones found around the cathedral, fragments of statues and gargoyles and other work. Some of the stones had traces of their original paint. Virginia patiently let me talk her ear off about the cathedral. “It looks magnificent now, but imagine what it must have looked like then. All this bare stone that we see would have been painted,” I said, and Virginia’s eyes widened. “This place is so incredibly magnificent. When I come to such a place, I’m reminded of just how small we are as human beings.” “It reminds you that there’s something greater,” Virginia said. “Yes, and look at the stones. No two of them are the same, yet if you pulled one out, this whole magnificent building would come crashing down. And the builders chose and shaped each one of them. It reminds me of the passage that speaks of us as living stones in Christ’s house,” I said. We stood silently for awhile, staring around the crypt. Standing there in the dim, I felt the sheer immensity of the cathedral, the weight of it, bearing down on me. Tons and tons of stone, like huge towering waves of water, frozen in place—power and weight, burden, groaning stone.
After awhile, we went back upstairs. I walked through the wooden partition into the main church. Strolling down one of the aisles, I saw Lucas and Michaela ahead of me. I joined up with Michaela. The soft murmur of people whispering in the seats of the church scurried down the long aisles. The spicy smell of incense made the air tangy. Michaela sat down at the piano behind one of the columns and played a couple of flowing bars from a hymn. The music echoed, gentle at first, then magnified by the stone and glass so that the silence seemed to gather in close and stare down forbiddingly at us.
We entered one of the two small chapels in the apse. Pointed windows told the story of the birth of Christ. A narrow lancet held fragments of glass in the shape of bread, cup, and crown.
I went outside into the cemetery and scrambled among the stones. The stones set in the ground were weathered so that most of them were blank, with only traces of carving. Deep green shadows gathered under the huge trees and under the lea of the wall. John stretched out in the green lawn of one grave while Aaron climbed around taking pictures and Rachel, Emily, Virginia, Michaela, and Lucas sat up at the other end of the cemetery. The others eventually went on ahead to the necropolis on the hill above the cathedral, but I lingered behind again. In that moment of loneliness in the cemetery, I suddenly had the strange feeling that I was not alone. It seemed as though a crowd of people had surrounded me, shadowy shapes in the fleeting sunlight that glanced through the clouds. Just as the sheer weight of the cathedral had overburdened me, so now the throng made me shiver. The hair rising on the back of my neck, I hurried out of the cemetery.
At the gate of the necropolis, just around the corner, I found Emily, Rachel, and Virginia waiting for me. The three of us walked down the road leading to the necropolis. On one side it was lined with paper aspens and rose bushes. The roses are just beginning to bloom, and the sweet smell of the enormous pink flowers vaguely perfumed the air. We crossed the bridge which spanned the valley between the cathedral’s hill and the much higher necropolis hill. We walked up a winding road around the necropolis. Straight stones stood on either side, carved in the shapes of doorways and crosses. Names, dates, scraps of Scripture and poetry. Stones marching up the hill under the thick green shadow of the trees.
To get from one level of the necropolis to another, we had to scramble straight up. The necropolis was built in terraces, with graves along the terraces. Stone retaining walls held back the terraces, and these were covered with ivy. Setting our feet in stones protruding from the wall, we clambered up behind a flat stone monument to the top level of the hill. There we found Lucas, Missy, and Michaela sitting at the foot of a large stone monument with a cross on top. And at the peak of the hill stood a gigantic stone column with a statue of John Knox mounted on its peak. John Knox stood on the highest point of the city, thundering down on the cathedral across the narrow valley, one hand upraised. We walked around the column, which had a large stone block as its base, and around the block was carved the story of Knox. Standing on the grass below the Knox monument, I looked out over Glasgow. On the hill immediately around me, grey monuments stood upright like the quills of feathers trapped upright in the grass. Tombstones, obelisks, crosses, and statues gazed sombrely out over the city. Over one monument, an angel with an upflung face stared hopefully at the sky, held forever in a moment of longing--until "the graves shall open and give up their dead". Across the narrow valley, the cathedral stood shimmering, its green roof like the flicker of wind over a dark grey pool. Lancets of silver light struck through the high white clouds and caught flecks of gold, green, and grey from the roofs of houses and shops below. Red brick and stone were dull under the sunlight. The distant hills marched away onto the hazy horizon. The others started off pretty soon, but I lingered behind again. The cemetery was wrapped up in itself, aloof from the city, looming above the shops and homes. No sound, no smells, no touch save the cool wind--only hazy sight, greys and greens and dull browns. I found myself having to return to the train station with only John and Aaron for company. When we finally decided to get moving (it actually wasn't all that long after the others left), we had to hurry. We jumped down the terraces of the cemetery and walked briskly down the street leading to the necropolis. Passing through the metal gates which at night bar the road, I was reminded of the scene in the "Phantom of the Opera" where Christine visits her father's grave. The cemetery had the same eerie, unearthly feeling of self-enclosure. We marched back to the train station down George Street, pushing through crowds of "weird Europeans". Ahead of us through the crowd, I could see Missy's pink beret. We reached the train station just after the others, and hung around waiting for Toby, Matt, and Brenda. Lucas stood leaning against a pillar with his arms folded, looking like a person I would not want to meet in a dark alley. When they arrived, Lucas said that he had decided not to stay and go to the John Piper lecture, but instead to return to Airdrie for a MET at the Quigleys' house. He left Toby and me in charge of everyone. The next order of business was to find some supper. Brenda offered that she knew a good place to eat, just round the corner, so we followed her to Waxy O'Connor's, which was in fact only across the street from the station.
We had to find our way around back since we weren’t interested in the pub. A pair of braziers burned above the doorway, flames fanning in the breeze. The waiter (who looked like Billy Boyd) led us down to a side table. Wooden legs scraped on the tile floor as the waiter pushed the tables and chairs together. We sat down along the table, and the waiter brought out drinks (water, irn bru, tea, etc.) and took our orders. I ordered fish-and-chips. Emily and Rachel both ordered burgers. While we waited for the food, everyone talked. Rachel sat and read her book of Scottish fairy and folktales, which she'd picked up in the cathedral. The usual queer, unchancy stories which sound as though they were made up on the spur-of-the-moment to frighten recalcitrant children. Virginia and Emily browsed a book of Scottish songs, Emily humming bits of the ones she recognized. The restaurant was dim, lit by a few lamps in our part. We were on the top level. Below us, the restaurant was dug down into the ground two or three stories and half-stories. The stories were open to one another in places, and enclosed in other places, so that the whole restaurant/tavern had the feel of a rabbit warren--or of a place in the Shire, though I felt more like Frodo at Bree, for I'd never been in such a place before, and the half-light and the unintelligible burr of the Scottish accent made everything seem strange. Lots of funny little bits of stairs ran between the stories, with unexpected halls, and flecks of stained-glass windows let chinks light in through odd scraps of windows. The ceilings were low, and the rooms were narrow. The beams supporting the roof and the stairs were carved like tree's limbs, and glowed satin and ruddy in the dim light. From the story below us, we could hear a World Cup game being played on TV. The faint sweet, malt smell of beer and the more bitter, unpleasant tang of cigarettes drifted up to us. When our supper came, it was quite delicious. My fish-and-chips were just as they should be, without the disgusting American grease. John and Toby both ordered haggis, neeps, and tatties (haggis, turnips, and potatoes). John said that the haggis tasted like low-grade hotdog meat, but Toby liked it. None of us ordered black pudding. We sat around talking for awhile, telling stories about squirrels and other things. At about six thirty, we left the restaurant. Virginia paid at the long bar across from the door where we'd come in. I stood behind her: since Lucas had made me one of the two responsible persons, I felt it my bound duty to be the last one of the group out of any place, sheepdog style. Behind the counter, in glass refrigerators, were kept bottles of Irn Bru (a weird orange soft drink which smells something like a cross between bubblegum and cream soda), Coke, and various sorts of golden beer. Bottles and glasses of all shapes and sizes gleamed along the wall behind the counter. Outside in the street again, we walked down a narrow alley between two buildings, down a short street, past a pizza parlor on the corner, and over to St. George's-Tron.
The church stands on a sort of peninsula where three or four streets come together, with a small plaza in front of it. There was a group of people already standing outside, but when the doors of the church were opened, we were the first to enter. Missy led us down to the second row from the front, and we settled in to wait for forty-five minutes until the service started, at seven thirty. The church inside was rococo, with lots of shells and columns painted and carved in the woodwork. Gilt, white, and shades of turquoise and aquamarine made the church feel elegant. A huge multifoliate chandelier hung from the ceiling. Ruffled gilt leaves stood out flat around its base in a large circle where it was attached to the ceiling. The pulpit was built in the old style, at the front of the church with a curving flight of a dozen steps leading up to it. On the stage below the pulpit, an ensemble was warming up to lead the worship: two violins, a flute, a pair of clarinets, a couple of trumpets, a French horn, and a bass guitar, supplemented by a piano on one side and an organ on the other. They played hymn tunes while people entered the church. By the time the service started, the church was warm. Approximately seven hundred people had crowded into the pews downstairs and the large balconies upstairs. When everyone stood to sing the first hymns, the acoustics were wonderful. The sound of that many voices in that small space was so resounding that the instruments were quite drowned out. But I would have prefered them to sing Psalms.... The focus of attention was on John Piper, of course. After prayer, singing, and an offering, all led by a British chap in a pink shirt, John Piper came out and began his lecture. John Piper is a slight older man with curly, fluffy white hair and a sweet, smooth, ruddy face. When he speaks, he uses many broad, emphatic gestures. People around us obviously enjoyed it. There were murmurs of agreement at his main points and appreciative laughter at his anecdotes. He was much less serious than I expected, but quite a good speaker. The main point of his sermon was that we should have courage to evangelize. He took Matthew 10:24-36 as his text. After the message, I felt like singing "All People Clap Your Hands for Joy", but of course we sang "Onward Christian Soldiers" instead.
There was a great press to get out. We inched slowly forward down the aisles and finally spilled out onto the plaza in front of the church. Everyone hung about waiting to speak with John Piper, but our team gathered on the far kerb. Michaela was the last to make her way through the crowd. While we waited, I watched the sunset. Gold and blue glinted in the sky on the fringes of the big, white clouds, so that the sky was like a soft opal. Seagulls flew between the high buildings. Shop windows across the street advertized expensive clothing, stylish short skirts and sweaters in the strangest modern shades of lime green and teal. Taxis, ambulances, cars, and vans rumbled along the brick street. When our group came together at last, we marched down the street to the train station. The guard at the station directed us to the proper platform for Airdrie.
On the ride back, Virginia and I got stuck in a bench separate from the rest of the group. I asked Virginia about her school. She told me that she enjoys being a music major (harp), but that she has many interests, and she's considering switching to an Elementary Ed degree because so many people have told her that she's good with children. She's also interested in training service dogs. She and her siblings worked in 4H, and her last dog project was a service dog. She also enjoys sewing, and she and her siblings showed goats in 4H. She asked about my school, and I told her about some of my frustrations with Anglo-Saxon lit. We talked about the lecture. The rails clicked by under the train, and the sun set over the dismal buildings and scrubby trees. Back in Airdrie, we left the station, which is constantly haunted by the faint, sharp scent of hot metal and cinders on gravel. We walked back to the church in a long, straggling group, like a flock of starlings flying home.
13 June 2006
St. Margaret's Catholic High School
Now Playing: "Master and Commander" soundtrack. Missy, thank goodness, brought it along in Christi's CD case. There's a little CD player in the kitchen, and thanks to the acoustics of the hall, it projects even back into the office, where Missy and I are sitting at the table. Beth, the church secretary, clicks through four hundred and twenty-nine pictures from my camera which she just downloaded, while Missy tries to call her dad.
Anyhow....
Today was B Day: the Big Day. We were going to go into St. Margaret's Catholic High School and present our testimonies to a bunch of jaded, inner city Scottish kids.
We spent the morning doing distribution, handing out copies of the Airdrie RPC news. In the afternoon, Elder Ian Shaw drove us to the highschool. Everyone was really nervous and really noisy. The blue minibus which is our mode of transportation swayed a little as we sang "The Steps of a Good Man" complete with motions (which means that Rachel on purpose fell over on me at the appropriate bits). People hummed portions of various Psalms and songs, joking around, out-of-tune, chuckling nervously. At the school, Mr. Shaw prayed for us, and we headed in.
St. Margaret's is a school with an old main building of about four or five stories and a new sports complex (like most schools--even the University of Tulsa is that way! you can tell where priorities are....). Anyhow, we marched inside. Lucas, our fearless leader, led us to the visitors' desk, where a receptionist told us to wait. After fifteen minutes of standing around, staring aimlessly at the crucifix on the far wall and the plaque of medallists above the doorway. Eventually, a pair of schoolboys in uniforms came downstairs and told us that we were to come upstairs. With slight smirks, they swaggered at the head of the column as they led us to the teachers' lounge.
The teachers' lounge was painted cheerful (note sarcasm) shades of blue, red, and yellow. Jim, the head of the religion department, a nice older man, greeted us warmly and showed us where we could sit down and told us to wait about ten minutes. We sat around on the old blue sofas. Almost everyone was giggling and chattering nervously. The conversation turned to movies, of course--and a hot discussion of "A Beautiful Mind" and old classics such as "It's a Wonderful Life" ensued. I sat and stared out the window and prayed.
At three o'clock (we arrived at about two-thirty), Jim escorted six students into the teachers' lounge. "You'll follow these students to your classrooms," he said. I scanned them over, wondering whether to cower or to swagger myself. The students stared back at us with a sort of desperado attitude. One girl had her hair curled and frizzed, with a black sequined jacket over her school uniform and pointed red boots under grey slacks. She watched us with an open challenge in her face. Toby, Emily, and I went with this particular chick and another boy to their classroom. The teacher in their classroom, a petite older woman with a sweet, motherly air, greeted us and led us into the room. There were about ten students sitting in a circle of chairs in the middle of the room. I stiffened. Pastor Quigley had been right when he'd warned us about these kids.
Emily started off, and she did an excellent job. She conveyed a warm, personable cheerfulness. I went next, and Toby finished. After we had given our testimonies, we opened it up for discussion. "Any questions?" Toby asked. The kids glanced sideways at each other. The chick and her boyfriend who'd escorted us upstairs flashed looks at one another as though they were about to laugh. Two or three of the girls sitting nearest us looked puzzled and a little curious. They asked a couple of superficial questions ("What is theology?"), but not much else. So we started to ask them questions. We asked them if they went to church, and why. They all said they went to church, but when we asked if they read their Bibles, they laughed sarcastically. "I don't have a Bible! Couldn't find it if I did," one girl said scornfully. The teacher tried to support Emily, who'd been asking the questions. She talked to us about how Catholics don't usually have Bibles, but she encouraged the kids to read their missals. "Those have the Bible in them," she said. The kids still stared incredulously at each other. "Well, if you don't have any more questions, I have one for you," I interjected. The kids were still giggling among themselves, but I asked them that EE question that everyone dreads, all-too-familiar to those of us who go door-to-door: "If you died tonight, where would you go? And why would you go there?" They were puzzled for a minute. Someone said, "Disneyworld!" But everyone else, when they understood the question, responded immediately, "Heaven." "And if God asked you why He should let you in, what would you say?" I asked. One of the boys grinned insultingly at me. "He loves and forgives everyone. He'll let me in." "Is that what you think?" I asked. "I'd say that I go to church and pray," a couple of girls offered, "but we know that isn't enough." "That's what we've been telling you. That's why Christ died," I explained. The teacher nodded emphatically.
I left the classroom feeling rather defeated. The kids had obviously been laughing at us. But I didn't mind their laughter at me. They were laughing at Christ. That was what made me tremble.
As we walked down the hall, Emily chatted cheerily with the teacher. We found the rest of the group gathering in the lounge. Jim asked us how it had gone and told us that if we ever wanted to come back, we were more than welcome.
Everyone was celebrating on the drive back to the church. Mr. Shaw told us that we had spoken the truth of the Gospel, and that we should rejoice and leave it in Christ's hands. Back at the church, Pastor Quigley sat down with all of us and asked us how it had gone. "Brilliant. That's very good," he rewarded us. When Lucas told him that we had been invited back, he said, "That's Victory Number One! Excellent." Missy brought out tea and biscuits for everyone. Pastor Quigley asked us what we'd thought. I mentioned my surprise that the kids didn't have Bibles since most people in the States, even non-Christians, at least own Bibles. Everyone discussed the experience for awhile. Pastor Quigley then asked for someone to write an article for the church paper, which goes out internationally. I could immediately feel everyone staring at me. "Would you, Evelyn? You don't have to. We can find someone to help," Lucas said. Everyone instantly burst out with concerned affirmations, as though I was a porcelain doll in need of careful preservation. I laughed at them all, thanked them for their concern, and took the job after Pastor Quigley explained it.
Then Virginia, Matt, Brenda, and I walked to the town centre. I mailed off seven postcards (some of you will be receiving one in a week or so), and the kind lady behind the counter promised to stamp and mail them for me. We stopped into three card shops looking for Father's Day cards for Virginia's father. And we bought a mug for Beth, the church secretary, who's birthday is tomorrow. Brenda bought a chocolate car for her. Virginia and I walked back together, window-shopping. Virginia admired a girl's trousers and jacket in a window--it was emroidered, with beads. She likes to do embroidery and beading on clothes, too. We talked about how weird it was to be in another country. Sometimes I wish I could don a Scottish accent because the broad nasals of the American accent seem almost like an insult at times.
Back at the church, we hung out and fooled around. I chatted with John, and Missy tried to organize a game of Mao, while Rachel fixed shepherd's pie for supper. We ate supper, and then Lucas sent out almost everyone for distribution. He left Missy and me behind to wash dishes. Missy turned on Beethoven's seventh symphony--and I was instantly happy. :o) Scrubbing dirty pots and plates had never been so enjoyable. Missy and I giggled about our siblings, discussed her father's job as an airforce pilot, and laughed at how dirty the team makes our living quarters as we swept up under the tables. Beth loaded pictures from my camera onto the computer.
People have returned from distribution now. In the heat of writing this post (cough cough), I'd whipped out my scrunchie. So Michaela, when she came in, didn't recognize me. But she started to mess with my hair, bringing out Missy's endless supply of clips and barettes. She's done something to my hair.... They're all sitting around in the office now, discussing distrbution, chatting and joking about dogs shredding our magazines and sweet old women. Missy was talking to Christi, her sister, on the phone, and laughing and laughing until Beth asked Missy if someone had proposed to her.
*hem*
John has aptly said that Missy likes to be laughed at, but that I like to be laughed with.
And now Missy is trying to dial more of her friends, but the phones are all busy. And Rachel is reading this and trying to figure out what I'm writing.
Ok, that's enough of this nonsense. I'm so glad to have the highschool over! Can you tell? I was actually a bit ashamed this afternoon: After we came back, Pastor Quigley asked who'd enjoyed it. Earlier in the day, Virginia had said that evangelizing gives her an adrenaline rush. So now everyone raised their hands. Except moi. Go figure....
But God is gracious. As we walked down the stairwell in the school, I glanced out the window and could see the kids walking home across the field behind the school. We were the last class of the day, as Virginia pointed out: those students will have all day to mull over what we've said. It will be kicking around in their heads for the rest of the afternoon, and, hopefully, forever.... By God's grace. By God's grace. We don't bring anyone to Christ, but His Spirit uses the foolishness of our Gospel.
Anyhow....
Today was B Day: the Big Day. We were going to go into St. Margaret's Catholic High School and present our testimonies to a bunch of jaded, inner city Scottish kids.
We spent the morning doing distribution, handing out copies of the Airdrie RPC news. In the afternoon, Elder Ian Shaw drove us to the highschool. Everyone was really nervous and really noisy. The blue minibus which is our mode of transportation swayed a little as we sang "The Steps of a Good Man" complete with motions (which means that Rachel on purpose fell over on me at the appropriate bits). People hummed portions of various Psalms and songs, joking around, out-of-tune, chuckling nervously. At the school, Mr. Shaw prayed for us, and we headed in.
St. Margaret's is a school with an old main building of about four or five stories and a new sports complex (like most schools--even the University of Tulsa is that way! you can tell where priorities are....). Anyhow, we marched inside. Lucas, our fearless leader, led us to the visitors' desk, where a receptionist told us to wait. After fifteen minutes of standing around, staring aimlessly at the crucifix on the far wall and the plaque of medallists above the doorway. Eventually, a pair of schoolboys in uniforms came downstairs and told us that we were to come upstairs. With slight smirks, they swaggered at the head of the column as they led us to the teachers' lounge.
The teachers' lounge was painted cheerful (note sarcasm) shades of blue, red, and yellow. Jim, the head of the religion department, a nice older man, greeted us warmly and showed us where we could sit down and told us to wait about ten minutes. We sat around on the old blue sofas. Almost everyone was giggling and chattering nervously. The conversation turned to movies, of course--and a hot discussion of "A Beautiful Mind" and old classics such as "It's a Wonderful Life" ensued. I sat and stared out the window and prayed.
At three o'clock (we arrived at about two-thirty), Jim escorted six students into the teachers' lounge. "You'll follow these students to your classrooms," he said. I scanned them over, wondering whether to cower or to swagger myself. The students stared back at us with a sort of desperado attitude. One girl had her hair curled and frizzed, with a black sequined jacket over her school uniform and pointed red boots under grey slacks. She watched us with an open challenge in her face. Toby, Emily, and I went with this particular chick and another boy to their classroom. The teacher in their classroom, a petite older woman with a sweet, motherly air, greeted us and led us into the room. There were about ten students sitting in a circle of chairs in the middle of the room. I stiffened. Pastor Quigley had been right when he'd warned us about these kids.
Emily started off, and she did an excellent job. She conveyed a warm, personable cheerfulness. I went next, and Toby finished. After we had given our testimonies, we opened it up for discussion. "Any questions?" Toby asked. The kids glanced sideways at each other. The chick and her boyfriend who'd escorted us upstairs flashed looks at one another as though they were about to laugh. Two or three of the girls sitting nearest us looked puzzled and a little curious. They asked a couple of superficial questions ("What is theology?"), but not much else. So we started to ask them questions. We asked them if they went to church, and why. They all said they went to church, but when we asked if they read their Bibles, they laughed sarcastically. "I don't have a Bible! Couldn't find it if I did," one girl said scornfully. The teacher tried to support Emily, who'd been asking the questions. She talked to us about how Catholics don't usually have Bibles, but she encouraged the kids to read their missals. "Those have the Bible in them," she said. The kids still stared incredulously at each other. "Well, if you don't have any more questions, I have one for you," I interjected. The kids were still giggling among themselves, but I asked them that EE question that everyone dreads, all-too-familiar to those of us who go door-to-door: "If you died tonight, where would you go? And why would you go there?" They were puzzled for a minute. Someone said, "Disneyworld!" But everyone else, when they understood the question, responded immediately, "Heaven." "And if God asked you why He should let you in, what would you say?" I asked. One of the boys grinned insultingly at me. "He loves and forgives everyone. He'll let me in." "Is that what you think?" I asked. "I'd say that I go to church and pray," a couple of girls offered, "but we know that isn't enough." "That's what we've been telling you. That's why Christ died," I explained. The teacher nodded emphatically.
I left the classroom feeling rather defeated. The kids had obviously been laughing at us. But I didn't mind their laughter at me. They were laughing at Christ. That was what made me tremble.
As we walked down the hall, Emily chatted cheerily with the teacher. We found the rest of the group gathering in the lounge. Jim asked us how it had gone and told us that if we ever wanted to come back, we were more than welcome.
Everyone was celebrating on the drive back to the church. Mr. Shaw told us that we had spoken the truth of the Gospel, and that we should rejoice and leave it in Christ's hands. Back at the church, Pastor Quigley sat down with all of us and asked us how it had gone. "Brilliant. That's very good," he rewarded us. When Lucas told him that we had been invited back, he said, "That's Victory Number One! Excellent." Missy brought out tea and biscuits for everyone. Pastor Quigley asked us what we'd thought. I mentioned my surprise that the kids didn't have Bibles since most people in the States, even non-Christians, at least own Bibles. Everyone discussed the experience for awhile. Pastor Quigley then asked for someone to write an article for the church paper, which goes out internationally. I could immediately feel everyone staring at me. "Would you, Evelyn? You don't have to. We can find someone to help," Lucas said. Everyone instantly burst out with concerned affirmations, as though I was a porcelain doll in need of careful preservation. I laughed at them all, thanked them for their concern, and took the job after Pastor Quigley explained it.
Then Virginia, Matt, Brenda, and I walked to the town centre. I mailed off seven postcards (some of you will be receiving one in a week or so), and the kind lady behind the counter promised to stamp and mail them for me. We stopped into three card shops looking for Father's Day cards for Virginia's father. And we bought a mug for Beth, the church secretary, who's birthday is tomorrow. Brenda bought a chocolate car for her. Virginia and I walked back together, window-shopping. Virginia admired a girl's trousers and jacket in a window--it was emroidered, with beads. She likes to do embroidery and beading on clothes, too. We talked about how weird it was to be in another country. Sometimes I wish I could don a Scottish accent because the broad nasals of the American accent seem almost like an insult at times.
Back at the church, we hung out and fooled around. I chatted with John, and Missy tried to organize a game of Mao, while Rachel fixed shepherd's pie for supper. We ate supper, and then Lucas sent out almost everyone for distribution. He left Missy and me behind to wash dishes. Missy turned on Beethoven's seventh symphony--and I was instantly happy. :o) Scrubbing dirty pots and plates had never been so enjoyable. Missy and I giggled about our siblings, discussed her father's job as an airforce pilot, and laughed at how dirty the team makes our living quarters as we swept up under the tables. Beth loaded pictures from my camera onto the computer.
People have returned from distribution now. In the heat of writing this post (cough cough), I'd whipped out my scrunchie. So Michaela, when she came in, didn't recognize me. But she started to mess with my hair, bringing out Missy's endless supply of clips and barettes. She's done something to my hair.... They're all sitting around in the office now, discussing distrbution, chatting and joking about dogs shredding our magazines and sweet old women. Missy was talking to Christi, her sister, on the phone, and laughing and laughing until Beth asked Missy if someone had proposed to her.
*hem*
John has aptly said that Missy likes to be laughed at, but that I like to be laughed with.
And now Missy is trying to dial more of her friends, but the phones are all busy. And Rachel is reading this and trying to figure out what I'm writing.
Ok, that's enough of this nonsense. I'm so glad to have the highschool over! Can you tell? I was actually a bit ashamed this afternoon: After we came back, Pastor Quigley asked who'd enjoyed it. Earlier in the day, Virginia had said that evangelizing gives her an adrenaline rush. So now everyone raised their hands. Except moi. Go figure....
But God is gracious. As we walked down the stairwell in the school, I glanced out the window and could see the kids walking home across the field behind the school. We were the last class of the day, as Virginia pointed out: those students will have all day to mull over what we've said. It will be kicking around in their heads for the rest of the afternoon, and, hopefully, forever.... By God's grace. By God's grace. We don't bring anyone to Christ, but His Spirit uses the foolishness of our Gospel.
10 June 2006
Ayr
Long posts are the best, right? *grin* Rachel tells me that I amaze her by how much I write. She wishes she could write more. I wish I could write less. :o)
I was the first girl to wake, at seven thirty this morning. I read bogs, wrote e-mails, did devotions, and cleaned up odds and ends of dishes left over from last night. We ate a late breakfast because Matt had to run to the store to buy milk to go with our cereal. At this meal, John and Brenda discovered that I've never eaten Lucky Charms--they both decided that I've had a deprived childhood, while Lucas told me with a wag of his head that I wasn't missing much. We scrambled to eat, wash dishes, and pack our sandwiches for lunch while people from the congregation arrived for the congregational trip to Ayr. The fellowship hall soon filled. Emily latched onto me, proudly showing off her floppy "Little Mermaid" sunhat. (For those of you who don't know (and I can't remember if I've introduced Emily before), Emily is the five-year-old, blond, freckled daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Robertson.) At ten forty-five, Pastor Quigley addressed everyone. The hall was noisy, but everyone was quiet as he prayed for safe travel. Then Mr. Robertson read off lists of names. As people's names were called, they followed their leader to the buses outside. Emily and I were in the same group. We filed out to one of the two big "luxury" tour buses waiting beside the kerb, and went as far back as we could. The buses soon filled up, and we started off. The buses chugged and swayed, long, ungainly things, as we swung round corners.
Emily sat by me, cheerful and excited, chirping and giggling. She played with Rachel, who sat in the seat in front of us. She showed off her little stuffed lamb, and had a tickling match with Rachel. She and Rachel chanted animal sounds, all mixed up: "What does a cow say?" "Moo." "No, no. A cow says baa. What does a gull say?" "Caw, caw." "No, a gull says mine, mine, mine," Rachel said, and Emily squawked, "Moine, moine, moine," until Rachel shook with uncontrollable laughter. Mr. Shaw, one of the elders, passed out little booklets of Psalm selections. We sang Psalm choruses ("The Lord will light my candle", "The Lord builds up Jerusalem", "The steps of a good man", etc.). Emily joined in enthusiastically, her voice squeaking over everyone else's. Jess Edgar, sitting across the aisle in the bench ahead of us, turned back and laughed in delight. After the singing, Emily chirped and chattered happily. She shouted up to her friend Jessica, a plump, brown little girl with a perpetually worried look. I told Emily a story (in which our friend Eric, the Alien, and our friend Christa figured prominently--don't worry Christa, though, it wasn't nearly as elaborate as the ones I've told her :o).
We drove through Glasgow. Another dirty industrial city, in many ways, though it has some lovely old stone buildings. We drove over the River Clyde, which used to be famous for shipping, then out into the country. Fields in ungainly patches sprawled on the hills. Sheep and cattle grazed in the pastures. Wide open spaces in some places, and forests of fir and hemlock in other places, all gliding by under a warm, pale blue sky.
Ayr is a little town on the western edge of Scotland, by the sea. It's another dirty town, and I can understand why Tolkien complained about seaside towns. Ayr has a feeling of being cobbled together carelessly from various bits and pieces. The elegant old buildings obviously had important purposes at one point, but now they've been converted into little sleazy tourist shops and greasy restaurants, which fit awkwardly. But the town does have a church where Robert the Bruce is said to have rested after the Battle of Bannockburn, and where John Knox is said to have preached.
The buses drove us down to the seashore, in a spot where all the tourist attractions seemed to be concentrated. There was a large playground area with enormous tunnel slides, swings, ziplines, sandpits, etc., and a gawky whitewashed construction that looked like an overgrown sandcastle, labeled "Pirate Pete's Children's Adventure" in flamboyant letters over the front door. We all piled out of the buses and straggled around the various attractions to a broad green field, the Low Green, between the town and the beach. At one end of the green were the tourist attractions. To the south were the tourist shops. To the east, along the long town side, were the trees and fences of back gardens. The turrets of an occasional Victorian home peered over the trees, towers and widow's walks and gable windows staring in weathered stone. To the south, a line of cliffs bordered the green, jutting out into the sea to form a long headland. To the west ran the Esplanade road, supported by a seawall, and below the seawall, the beach. In the distance, I could see the outline of a blue island, which, as Mr. Shaw said, was supposed to be in the shape of a warrior asleep on his side. The sun flashed on the water and on bars of sand running out into the shallow sea. Waves lapped against the beach.
Everyone sat down on the grass, and we ate lunch in a happy sprawl, everyone sitting every-which-way with knapsacks, waterbottles, strollers, bags, frisbees, soccerballs, sandals, and jackets tumbled through the mess. Emily and her little friend Jessica sat with Michaela, Rachel, and me, and Sarah, an American girl who's visiting Scotland before she goes to college in the fall. It was just sandwiches for us RPM kids: strawberry jam and peanut butter for me. Emily shared her garlic potato chips ("crisps", as she insists they're called) with me. Seagulls dropped out of the sky and stalked about impatiently on the edge of our crowd, eyeing us hungrily.
After lunch, Mr. Shaw organized races. Grandpa Jimmy, the oldest man in the church, stood at the finish line to toss candybars to anyone and everyone who had been involved (or even some who hadn't been involved). The races involved everyone: there were straight running races, divided by age so that the littlest children raced one another; there were piggyback races, where the little children grabbed a partner and climbed on (Missy carried Emily, and Jessica took a tumble in this one--"She tried to fly without wings", as her kind aunt said); there was an egg-and-spoon race (with a potato substituted for an egg--Emily and I sat on the sidelines and cheered Missy on); there was a wheelbarrow race (in which Lucas was a wheelbarrow for Rob Edgar--quite a ridiculous sight to see these two brawny chaps scrambling across the grass); there was a three-legged race; and there was a scramble race (in which children grabbed a partner, and the pairs swung across the field like whirligigs, grasping each other by the wrists). I sat and watched with Emily, when Emily wasn't running. Emily cheered for her dad in the men's races, and dashed up to hug him when he'd finished. After all the races, Mr. Shaw tossed handfulls of small coins into the grass, showers of silver flashing in the sun. The little children scrambled like hungry seagulls to snatch them up. Emily proudly displayed her seventy pence to me.
After the races, we somehow got organized for several group pictures. This was a tedious process, since wandering children had to be gathered up from the park, and straggling, reluctant adults had to be persuaded to join the photo. The photographer, Karen, made all of us RPM team lie on our backs in a circle so that she could take our picture. We were all miserable because of the hot sun glaring in our eyes.
Then everyone broke up to their various activities. Mr. Robertson organized a game of "football". A bunch of people went shopping, while others opted to walk along the beach. Emily grabbed my hand, and I skipped with her and Jessica down to the beach. Mrs. Robertson and her sisters followed us, all middle-aged women with young children. They clustered under the seawall, which supported the Esplanade road, in the dry sand. Draping a towel carefully around my waist, I wriggled out of my jeans and into a pair of shorts. Then Emily, Jessica, and I sprinted across the hot sand to the edge of the water. The sand ran from powdery to firm, from scorching to cold under our bare toes. We shouted with delight as we splashed through a little inlet, running parallel to the sea. The sand had been rippled into firm curves by the tide. Seaweed squished under our feet, and Emily wrinkled her nose in disgust.
We settled down at last to digging a hole in the sand. The children (Daniel, Emily's cousin, I think, had joined us--a small, impudent, ruddy boy) decided to dig a dungeon for a castle. Jessica, Daniel, and I scraped sand out of a hole while Emily piled it in walls on the edge of the hole. Every so often, the walls of the hole would cave in (as is the habit of wet sand), and the children would squeal and hurry to patch it up. Water oozed up through the dark sand. We uncovered fragments of shell, like iridescent butterfly feathers, and rough shale pebbles. We found whole clamshells, small and white like fingernails. We scooped and scraped and laughed in delight. Mrs. Robertson took pictures of us with my camera. She offered to relieve me, but I was having so much fun with the kids that it didn't really matter. So, after hovering over us for awhile, she wandered off down the beach.
When we got bored with our hole, we decided to build sandcastles. We found a spot where the sand was dryer but firm enough to congeal, and Emily and Jessica used their purple plastic buckets to make two turrets. Then all of us sprinted out into the water. I shouted with joy and surprise as the water ran up round our legs. It was warm at first, then grew colder and colder as we ventured out farther. But it never got very deep. We walked out a long ways, and the water was only up to my knees. Emily and Jessica were shivering, but delighted. Emily begged that we keep going, but she and Jessica had water nearly above their waists, and I didn't want them to get any wetter than they were. We scuffed up clouds of brown sand with our feet. The little waves lapped over our sandy skin. We stood still and laughed at a seagull that appeared to be standing on the water (I think it was standing on a Coke can that was floating on the water), and we laughed at a jaunty little terrier which paddled out into the waves, courageously chasing a silver ball that its owner tossed. Emily thought this terrier was the best thing in the world, and she stared at it, giggling happily as it bounced like a rubber ball itself through the waves, its ears back, valiantly snapping at the ball.
Our feet splashed through the cold water as we walked along the beach. After the hot sun, the water felt wonderful. I held out my arms like a hawk's wings to the south wind, and felt it whip my hair. Licking my lips, I realized, half-surprised, that they had the salty tang. Emily complained that the water tasted funny when Jessica accidentally splashed some into her face, but I said it was only the salt. We paddled about for awhile, running out, then dashing back in again. Whenever we ran out, Emily and Jessica would grab my hand. Once we got to the place where the water was about knee-deep on me, they would fall to their stomachs, still holding my hands, and I would drag them through the water. "One, two, three!" Emily shouted, this game being her idea. I hauled them along, howling and groaning in mock agony, while they giggled and laughed with glee. They kicked up little trails of spray, their feet splashing. Water flew up in wings round my ankles in the shallows.
We ran out, then ran back in, ran out, then ran back in. On our last run, I spotted something unusual floating in the water: a small grey pebble with a tall strand of seaweed swaying from it. I scooped it up. The girls shrank back, wrinkling their noses. "What's that?" Emily asked. "It's seaweed," I explained. "Did you know that it's in your shampoo? And when you eat ice cream, you're eating seaweed. Touch it. It feels squidgy." The girls put out timid fingers and squeezed the green strands. "Ooh," Emily giggled, "let me hold it." The green strands were wet and squishy, soft, like soaked green hair. We showed it to Mrs. Robertson, who told us that people in Chinese restaurants around here cook and eat this stuff. "How would you like to eat it?" she asked. "Noooo," Emily squealed. Emily gently put it back in again. The rock sank to the bottom, and the seaweed trailed out behind it in the swell of the tide.
Mrs. Robertson called us back up the beach. Emily and Jessica were reluctant, but they came, picking up small shells along the way. "Youse give Evelyn a rest," Mrs. Robertson ordered. "Play in the sand by yourselves." (Yes, the Scots use "youse" the way New York people do. It's rather weird. But then, Emily thought "y'all" was strange....) The girls commenced dolefully scooping at the hot, dry sand by themselves, until Mrs. Robertson suggested brightly that they dig a deep hole and bury themselves in it. Mrs. Robertson, Daniel, and one of Mrs. Robertson's sisters set to, helping the girls, scraping away in the sand. I stretched out on a towel and watched. The dry, powdery sand became dark like brown sugar further down. Emily and Jessica were delighted, and scraped away diligently. Soon they had a broad, shallow hole in which all three kids could lie. They were in the process of covering themselves up again when Emily P. (on the RPM team), Missy, Michaela, and John came up. "We're going to grab our stuff and help set up for supper," they said. "Oh, that's right! Lucas told me to remember!" I jumped up. It was right on time, though. I waved good-bye to Emily. Mrs. Robertson thanked me profusely--which seemed rather odd to me, since I'd just been enjoying myself. I'd nearly shouted myself hoarse, behaving like a little kid.
I quietly pulled on my shoes and followed the other four up the seawall and back into the town, swapping stories of what we'd done during the afternoon. Emily P. was distressed when she'd heard that I'd been alone the whole time. They had been walking up the beach a ways. We walked to the Baptist church mission hall, which was being rented to us for the occasion: a large fellowship hall, with a slanted ceiling and a few big windows, and lots of wooden chairs. Reminded me of a conference center in Oklahoma with all the rough wooden furniture. Mr. Robertson told me to go out to the front door and direct people to the side of the building (the Baptist church is the corner of one of these long rows of shops that are all joined together). I leaned in the doorway of the church and watched for people from the RP church passing by. The sidewalks were crowded with everyone else, it seemed. The impression of Ayr as a dirty city grew on me unpleasantly. Though the cars here are all little, efficient, brand new European cars (I only saw two SUVs, and they were small ones, the whole time I stood there), the people walking the sidewalks are about as dingy as anyone from redneck Oklahoma or Texas. All the men seemed to be tattooed, and all of them seemed to be going about without any shirts. Most of the women wore shirts which could hardly be called such, and trousers or skirts slung down round their hips in a rather disgusting style. Yes, it can be said that this is normal American fare, but the tattoos and the immodest costume seemed to be far more popular here than in the U.S. And almost everyone was raw-red, cherry-baked, sunburned to a crisp--either that or sand-dune-white. The constant reek of cigarette smoke and the endless "THUD thud THUD thud" of European dance music blaring from passing cars and from stereos on the beach. I was fairly well jaded and bored by the time Rachel and Emily P. showed up to make life a bit more cheerful. "Have you been by yourself again? Oh, you poor dear!" Emily P. said and gave me a motherly hug. We watched people go by and shook our heads at the general deshabile of the crowd.
Back in the hall for supper (or "tea"), I found a seat with Emily, Jessica, and Daniel at a table on the far side of the room. Emily was delighted when her dad came and sat with us. Toby sat with us, too, as did the Knodles, an American couple visiting the church. Pastor Quigley prayed. Then Carla (Pastor Quigley's eldest daughter) and her friend Laura called out names from a roster, and as names were called, people went to get their packages of food. I had fish-and-chips in a squishy, greasy brown paper wrapper. Emily and Jessica both had sausage. Sausage, as Mr. Robertson informed us uneducated Americans, is served battered. Looked quite unappetizing to me. I pulled apart the smoking-hot fish with my fingers, and sprinkled salt on the "chips". There was very, very sweet applejuice to drink. The little children giggled and talked aimlessly among themselves, while Mr. Knodle asked Toby and me about ourselves. After supper, Pastor Quigley led everyone in family worship, reading the beginning of 1 Peter and giving a brief Gospel message. We sang Psalm 116--full-throated, rich, joyful, shaking the wooden rafters.
After supper, people gathered up their belongings and their children and streamed out of the hall. On the way out, Jess Edgar and Laura served ice cream to everyone. The RPM team stayed behind. We wiped tables, swept the floor, threw away trash, etc. When everyone had gone, Jess handed us our ice cream cones. The ice cream has a similar consistency and flavor to whipped cream (it's not as firm as U.S. ice cream, and it's sweeter), but it's very good. We helped pick up various odds and ends which had been left behind in the cloakroom downstairs, then marched down to the beach. Carla helped us carry things--a sack full of ropes, ties, and balls from the races earlier (left behind by the Edgars, who always seem to be behind such events), and a carton of fruit juice for the kids on the drive back.
We found the buses already parked beside the kerb at the beach. I snapped photos of the sun as it began to set over the water. A dark bank of grey cloud had rolled in over the west. The sun shone slantwise through it, sending silver light raining down on the grey water. The islands hung hazy behind the sunlight, like Avalon or the Hesperides, hovering on the horizon.
People sat on the grass and waited for everyone to gather. We filed back onto the buses, and drove back to Airdrie. I had a bench to myself since Mrs. Robertson had taken charge of Emily when I'd started to help clean up after supper. I wrote some, and dozed some, and thought a lot. We've been reading a book called Spiritual Disciplines, and in response to a chapter on Bible reading, the team decided to memorize Hebrews 12. So I now have the first two verses memorized. I pondered them over and over on the trip--like holding warm tea in your mouth until all the sweet-bitterness of it soaks in. Golden fields of rape flew past, and pastures bordered with hawthorn. The hawthorn is in bloom: writhen trunks, dwarf-stumpy, thick, dark foliage covered with white flowers, like foam.
Back in Airdrie, I stood by the front gate of the church and chatted with some of the adults. They're very, very friendly and cordial, and asked me questions mingled with much smiling and nodding. People streamed away to their cars. I hugged Emily good-night when she came to find me. Then I promptly scurried off and showered. Some of the girls from the church (Carla, Laura, and a couple of others) hung around with the team, playing Mao. I sat on the steps that lead up to the bedrooms and watched. After awhile, people went outside to play ultimate frisbee. Missy suggested it, but then she didn't want to play--so she took refuge from the boys, and hid in the office. Then she went off to watch.
Rachel drifted into the office, and we discussed the RP church (she's not an RP). She said that the dresscode here is much more liberal than the usual attire at home (usual European get-up: even the good people wear things that make my eyebrows go up; the Europeans have been at it for years--when the French ladies were wearing dresses with necks down their chests, the pioneer women had clapped on sunbonnets and collars up to their throats), but that in general it has a more conservative feel than her church. John's laptop, perched on the table in the office, started to bling and beep, so Rachel sat down to chat on AIM with one of John's friends, a twelve-year-old girl named Anna. Rachel giggles every so often. She has a funny giggle--once it gets started, she can hardly stop it, and she just keeps giggling, shaking and shaking, and making everyone else laugh, too. I just read that last bit off to her. "Hahaha," she said.
The evening is becoming cool, clouded, and windy outside. Missy chuckles out in the fellowship hall. Matt has taken to calling her Avery because she breaks into spontaneous song, just like Avery Mann. :o)
Good-night, my friends. God bless.
I was the first girl to wake, at seven thirty this morning. I read bogs, wrote e-mails, did devotions, and cleaned up odds and ends of dishes left over from last night. We ate a late breakfast because Matt had to run to the store to buy milk to go with our cereal. At this meal, John and Brenda discovered that I've never eaten Lucky Charms--they both decided that I've had a deprived childhood, while Lucas told me with a wag of his head that I wasn't missing much. We scrambled to eat, wash dishes, and pack our sandwiches for lunch while people from the congregation arrived for the congregational trip to Ayr. The fellowship hall soon filled. Emily latched onto me, proudly showing off her floppy "Little Mermaid" sunhat. (For those of you who don't know (and I can't remember if I've introduced Emily before), Emily is the five-year-old, blond, freckled daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Robertson.) At ten forty-five, Pastor Quigley addressed everyone. The hall was noisy, but everyone was quiet as he prayed for safe travel. Then Mr. Robertson read off lists of names. As people's names were called, they followed their leader to the buses outside. Emily and I were in the same group. We filed out to one of the two big "luxury" tour buses waiting beside the kerb, and went as far back as we could. The buses soon filled up, and we started off. The buses chugged and swayed, long, ungainly things, as we swung round corners.
Emily sat by me, cheerful and excited, chirping and giggling. She played with Rachel, who sat in the seat in front of us. She showed off her little stuffed lamb, and had a tickling match with Rachel. She and Rachel chanted animal sounds, all mixed up: "What does a cow say?" "Moo." "No, no. A cow says baa. What does a gull say?" "Caw, caw." "No, a gull says mine, mine, mine," Rachel said, and Emily squawked, "Moine, moine, moine," until Rachel shook with uncontrollable laughter. Mr. Shaw, one of the elders, passed out little booklets of Psalm selections. We sang Psalm choruses ("The Lord will light my candle", "The Lord builds up Jerusalem", "The steps of a good man", etc.). Emily joined in enthusiastically, her voice squeaking over everyone else's. Jess Edgar, sitting across the aisle in the bench ahead of us, turned back and laughed in delight. After the singing, Emily chirped and chattered happily. She shouted up to her friend Jessica, a plump, brown little girl with a perpetually worried look. I told Emily a story (in which our friend Eric, the Alien, and our friend Christa figured prominently--don't worry Christa, though, it wasn't nearly as elaborate as the ones I've told her :o).
We drove through Glasgow. Another dirty industrial city, in many ways, though it has some lovely old stone buildings. We drove over the River Clyde, which used to be famous for shipping, then out into the country. Fields in ungainly patches sprawled on the hills. Sheep and cattle grazed in the pastures. Wide open spaces in some places, and forests of fir and hemlock in other places, all gliding by under a warm, pale blue sky.
Ayr is a little town on the western edge of Scotland, by the sea. It's another dirty town, and I can understand why Tolkien complained about seaside towns. Ayr has a feeling of being cobbled together carelessly from various bits and pieces. The elegant old buildings obviously had important purposes at one point, but now they've been converted into little sleazy tourist shops and greasy restaurants, which fit awkwardly. But the town does have a church where Robert the Bruce is said to have rested after the Battle of Bannockburn, and where John Knox is said to have preached.
The buses drove us down to the seashore, in a spot where all the tourist attractions seemed to be concentrated. There was a large playground area with enormous tunnel slides, swings, ziplines, sandpits, etc., and a gawky whitewashed construction that looked like an overgrown sandcastle, labeled "Pirate Pete's Children's Adventure" in flamboyant letters over the front door. We all piled out of the buses and straggled around the various attractions to a broad green field, the Low Green, between the town and the beach. At one end of the green were the tourist attractions. To the south were the tourist shops. To the east, along the long town side, were the trees and fences of back gardens. The turrets of an occasional Victorian home peered over the trees, towers and widow's walks and gable windows staring in weathered stone. To the south, a line of cliffs bordered the green, jutting out into the sea to form a long headland. To the west ran the Esplanade road, supported by a seawall, and below the seawall, the beach. In the distance, I could see the outline of a blue island, which, as Mr. Shaw said, was supposed to be in the shape of a warrior asleep on his side. The sun flashed on the water and on bars of sand running out into the shallow sea. Waves lapped against the beach.
Everyone sat down on the grass, and we ate lunch in a happy sprawl, everyone sitting every-which-way with knapsacks, waterbottles, strollers, bags, frisbees, soccerballs, sandals, and jackets tumbled through the mess. Emily and her little friend Jessica sat with Michaela, Rachel, and me, and Sarah, an American girl who's visiting Scotland before she goes to college in the fall. It was just sandwiches for us RPM kids: strawberry jam and peanut butter for me. Emily shared her garlic potato chips ("crisps", as she insists they're called) with me. Seagulls dropped out of the sky and stalked about impatiently on the edge of our crowd, eyeing us hungrily.
After lunch, Mr. Shaw organized races. Grandpa Jimmy, the oldest man in the church, stood at the finish line to toss candybars to anyone and everyone who had been involved (or even some who hadn't been involved). The races involved everyone: there were straight running races, divided by age so that the littlest children raced one another; there were piggyback races, where the little children grabbed a partner and climbed on (Missy carried Emily, and Jessica took a tumble in this one--"She tried to fly without wings", as her kind aunt said); there was an egg-and-spoon race (with a potato substituted for an egg--Emily and I sat on the sidelines and cheered Missy on); there was a wheelbarrow race (in which Lucas was a wheelbarrow for Rob Edgar--quite a ridiculous sight to see these two brawny chaps scrambling across the grass); there was a three-legged race; and there was a scramble race (in which children grabbed a partner, and the pairs swung across the field like whirligigs, grasping each other by the wrists). I sat and watched with Emily, when Emily wasn't running. Emily cheered for her dad in the men's races, and dashed up to hug him when he'd finished. After all the races, Mr. Shaw tossed handfulls of small coins into the grass, showers of silver flashing in the sun. The little children scrambled like hungry seagulls to snatch them up. Emily proudly displayed her seventy pence to me.
After the races, we somehow got organized for several group pictures. This was a tedious process, since wandering children had to be gathered up from the park, and straggling, reluctant adults had to be persuaded to join the photo. The photographer, Karen, made all of us RPM team lie on our backs in a circle so that she could take our picture. We were all miserable because of the hot sun glaring in our eyes.
Then everyone broke up to their various activities. Mr. Robertson organized a game of "football". A bunch of people went shopping, while others opted to walk along the beach. Emily grabbed my hand, and I skipped with her and Jessica down to the beach. Mrs. Robertson and her sisters followed us, all middle-aged women with young children. They clustered under the seawall, which supported the Esplanade road, in the dry sand. Draping a towel carefully around my waist, I wriggled out of my jeans and into a pair of shorts. Then Emily, Jessica, and I sprinted across the hot sand to the edge of the water. The sand ran from powdery to firm, from scorching to cold under our bare toes. We shouted with delight as we splashed through a little inlet, running parallel to the sea. The sand had been rippled into firm curves by the tide. Seaweed squished under our feet, and Emily wrinkled her nose in disgust.
We settled down at last to digging a hole in the sand. The children (Daniel, Emily's cousin, I think, had joined us--a small, impudent, ruddy boy) decided to dig a dungeon for a castle. Jessica, Daniel, and I scraped sand out of a hole while Emily piled it in walls on the edge of the hole. Every so often, the walls of the hole would cave in (as is the habit of wet sand), and the children would squeal and hurry to patch it up. Water oozed up through the dark sand. We uncovered fragments of shell, like iridescent butterfly feathers, and rough shale pebbles. We found whole clamshells, small and white like fingernails. We scooped and scraped and laughed in delight. Mrs. Robertson took pictures of us with my camera. She offered to relieve me, but I was having so much fun with the kids that it didn't really matter. So, after hovering over us for awhile, she wandered off down the beach.
When we got bored with our hole, we decided to build sandcastles. We found a spot where the sand was dryer but firm enough to congeal, and Emily and Jessica used their purple plastic buckets to make two turrets. Then all of us sprinted out into the water. I shouted with joy and surprise as the water ran up round our legs. It was warm at first, then grew colder and colder as we ventured out farther. But it never got very deep. We walked out a long ways, and the water was only up to my knees. Emily and Jessica were shivering, but delighted. Emily begged that we keep going, but she and Jessica had water nearly above their waists, and I didn't want them to get any wetter than they were. We scuffed up clouds of brown sand with our feet. The little waves lapped over our sandy skin. We stood still and laughed at a seagull that appeared to be standing on the water (I think it was standing on a Coke can that was floating on the water), and we laughed at a jaunty little terrier which paddled out into the waves, courageously chasing a silver ball that its owner tossed. Emily thought this terrier was the best thing in the world, and she stared at it, giggling happily as it bounced like a rubber ball itself through the waves, its ears back, valiantly snapping at the ball.
Our feet splashed through the cold water as we walked along the beach. After the hot sun, the water felt wonderful. I held out my arms like a hawk's wings to the south wind, and felt it whip my hair. Licking my lips, I realized, half-surprised, that they had the salty tang. Emily complained that the water tasted funny when Jessica accidentally splashed some into her face, but I said it was only the salt. We paddled about for awhile, running out, then dashing back in again. Whenever we ran out, Emily and Jessica would grab my hand. Once we got to the place where the water was about knee-deep on me, they would fall to their stomachs, still holding my hands, and I would drag them through the water. "One, two, three!" Emily shouted, this game being her idea. I hauled them along, howling and groaning in mock agony, while they giggled and laughed with glee. They kicked up little trails of spray, their feet splashing. Water flew up in wings round my ankles in the shallows.
We ran out, then ran back in, ran out, then ran back in. On our last run, I spotted something unusual floating in the water: a small grey pebble with a tall strand of seaweed swaying from it. I scooped it up. The girls shrank back, wrinkling their noses. "What's that?" Emily asked. "It's seaweed," I explained. "Did you know that it's in your shampoo? And when you eat ice cream, you're eating seaweed. Touch it. It feels squidgy." The girls put out timid fingers and squeezed the green strands. "Ooh," Emily giggled, "let me hold it." The green strands were wet and squishy, soft, like soaked green hair. We showed it to Mrs. Robertson, who told us that people in Chinese restaurants around here cook and eat this stuff. "How would you like to eat it?" she asked. "Noooo," Emily squealed. Emily gently put it back in again. The rock sank to the bottom, and the seaweed trailed out behind it in the swell of the tide.
Mrs. Robertson called us back up the beach. Emily and Jessica were reluctant, but they came, picking up small shells along the way. "Youse give Evelyn a rest," Mrs. Robertson ordered. "Play in the sand by yourselves." (Yes, the Scots use "youse" the way New York people do. It's rather weird. But then, Emily thought "y'all" was strange....) The girls commenced dolefully scooping at the hot, dry sand by themselves, until Mrs. Robertson suggested brightly that they dig a deep hole and bury themselves in it. Mrs. Robertson, Daniel, and one of Mrs. Robertson's sisters set to, helping the girls, scraping away in the sand. I stretched out on a towel and watched. The dry, powdery sand became dark like brown sugar further down. Emily and Jessica were delighted, and scraped away diligently. Soon they had a broad, shallow hole in which all three kids could lie. They were in the process of covering themselves up again when Emily P. (on the RPM team), Missy, Michaela, and John came up. "We're going to grab our stuff and help set up for supper," they said. "Oh, that's right! Lucas told me to remember!" I jumped up. It was right on time, though. I waved good-bye to Emily. Mrs. Robertson thanked me profusely--which seemed rather odd to me, since I'd just been enjoying myself. I'd nearly shouted myself hoarse, behaving like a little kid.
I quietly pulled on my shoes and followed the other four up the seawall and back into the town, swapping stories of what we'd done during the afternoon. Emily P. was distressed when she'd heard that I'd been alone the whole time. They had been walking up the beach a ways. We walked to the Baptist church mission hall, which was being rented to us for the occasion: a large fellowship hall, with a slanted ceiling and a few big windows, and lots of wooden chairs. Reminded me of a conference center in Oklahoma with all the rough wooden furniture. Mr. Robertson told me to go out to the front door and direct people to the side of the building (the Baptist church is the corner of one of these long rows of shops that are all joined together). I leaned in the doorway of the church and watched for people from the RP church passing by. The sidewalks were crowded with everyone else, it seemed. The impression of Ayr as a dirty city grew on me unpleasantly. Though the cars here are all little, efficient, brand new European cars (I only saw two SUVs, and they were small ones, the whole time I stood there), the people walking the sidewalks are about as dingy as anyone from redneck Oklahoma or Texas. All the men seemed to be tattooed, and all of them seemed to be going about without any shirts. Most of the women wore shirts which could hardly be called such, and trousers or skirts slung down round their hips in a rather disgusting style. Yes, it can be said that this is normal American fare, but the tattoos and the immodest costume seemed to be far more popular here than in the U.S. And almost everyone was raw-red, cherry-baked, sunburned to a crisp--either that or sand-dune-white. The constant reek of cigarette smoke and the endless "THUD thud THUD thud" of European dance music blaring from passing cars and from stereos on the beach. I was fairly well jaded and bored by the time Rachel and Emily P. showed up to make life a bit more cheerful. "Have you been by yourself again? Oh, you poor dear!" Emily P. said and gave me a motherly hug. We watched people go by and shook our heads at the general deshabile of the crowd.
Back in the hall for supper (or "tea"), I found a seat with Emily, Jessica, and Daniel at a table on the far side of the room. Emily was delighted when her dad came and sat with us. Toby sat with us, too, as did the Knodles, an American couple visiting the church. Pastor Quigley prayed. Then Carla (Pastor Quigley's eldest daughter) and her friend Laura called out names from a roster, and as names were called, people went to get their packages of food. I had fish-and-chips in a squishy, greasy brown paper wrapper. Emily and Jessica both had sausage. Sausage, as Mr. Robertson informed us uneducated Americans, is served battered. Looked quite unappetizing to me. I pulled apart the smoking-hot fish with my fingers, and sprinkled salt on the "chips". There was very, very sweet applejuice to drink. The little children giggled and talked aimlessly among themselves, while Mr. Knodle asked Toby and me about ourselves. After supper, Pastor Quigley led everyone in family worship, reading the beginning of 1 Peter and giving a brief Gospel message. We sang Psalm 116--full-throated, rich, joyful, shaking the wooden rafters.
After supper, people gathered up their belongings and their children and streamed out of the hall. On the way out, Jess Edgar and Laura served ice cream to everyone. The RPM team stayed behind. We wiped tables, swept the floor, threw away trash, etc. When everyone had gone, Jess handed us our ice cream cones. The ice cream has a similar consistency and flavor to whipped cream (it's not as firm as U.S. ice cream, and it's sweeter), but it's very good. We helped pick up various odds and ends which had been left behind in the cloakroom downstairs, then marched down to the beach. Carla helped us carry things--a sack full of ropes, ties, and balls from the races earlier (left behind by the Edgars, who always seem to be behind such events), and a carton of fruit juice for the kids on the drive back.
We found the buses already parked beside the kerb at the beach. I snapped photos of the sun as it began to set over the water. A dark bank of grey cloud had rolled in over the west. The sun shone slantwise through it, sending silver light raining down on the grey water. The islands hung hazy behind the sunlight, like Avalon or the Hesperides, hovering on the horizon.
People sat on the grass and waited for everyone to gather. We filed back onto the buses, and drove back to Airdrie. I had a bench to myself since Mrs. Robertson had taken charge of Emily when I'd started to help clean up after supper. I wrote some, and dozed some, and thought a lot. We've been reading a book called Spiritual Disciplines, and in response to a chapter on Bible reading, the team decided to memorize Hebrews 12. So I now have the first two verses memorized. I pondered them over and over on the trip--like holding warm tea in your mouth until all the sweet-bitterness of it soaks in. Golden fields of rape flew past, and pastures bordered with hawthorn. The hawthorn is in bloom: writhen trunks, dwarf-stumpy, thick, dark foliage covered with white flowers, like foam.
Back in Airdrie, I stood by the front gate of the church and chatted with some of the adults. They're very, very friendly and cordial, and asked me questions mingled with much smiling and nodding. People streamed away to their cars. I hugged Emily good-night when she came to find me. Then I promptly scurried off and showered. Some of the girls from the church (Carla, Laura, and a couple of others) hung around with the team, playing Mao. I sat on the steps that lead up to the bedrooms and watched. After awhile, people went outside to play ultimate frisbee. Missy suggested it, but then she didn't want to play--so she took refuge from the boys, and hid in the office. Then she went off to watch.
Rachel drifted into the office, and we discussed the RP church (she's not an RP). She said that the dresscode here is much more liberal than the usual attire at home (usual European get-up: even the good people wear things that make my eyebrows go up; the Europeans have been at it for years--when the French ladies were wearing dresses with necks down their chests, the pioneer women had clapped on sunbonnets and collars up to their throats), but that in general it has a more conservative feel than her church. John's laptop, perched on the table in the office, started to bling and beep, so Rachel sat down to chat on AIM with one of John's friends, a twelve-year-old girl named Anna. Rachel giggles every so often. She has a funny giggle--once it gets started, she can hardly stop it, and she just keeps giggling, shaking and shaking, and making everyone else laugh, too. I just read that last bit off to her. "Hahaha," she said.
The evening is becoming cool, clouded, and windy outside. Missy chuckles out in the fellowship hall. Matt has taken to calling her Avery because she breaks into spontaneous song, just like Avery Mann. :o)
Good-night, my friends. God bless.
07 June 2006
Victoria Primary School and Stirling Castle
Warning: long post
This morning we all ate cold cereal for a quick breakfast. After breakfast, we loaded up the blue minibus that we've been taking everywhere. We loaded a red cardboard box containing scraps of cloth (otherwise known as Israelite headdresses and Egyptian scarves), plastic swords, and aluminum foil headbands. We also loaded an impressive staff for Moses and two long blue wooden boards on wheels, for the Red Sea. The boards were almost as long as the van, so we had to squeeze in around them. We drove up the hill to Victoria PS (elementary school) to give our first school presentation.At the school, we unloaded. The school is a huge brick rectangle with four or five stories, built of blackened stone and standing in the middle of a bleak asphalted playground. A palisade of metal stakes, instead of chain link, fences it around. We marched into the school, up a short flight of stairs, and into the main assembly hall. The hall is a little bit smaller than a basketball court, with a stage at one end. We set up our props, then stood in a row below the stage. In the middle of the stage, the school had set up a projector and a screen so that we could project our Psalm choruses ("This Is The Day", "The Lord Builds Up Jerusalem", and "The Steps of a Good Man") onto the screen.Pretty soon, the children trooped in. We were to perform twice this morning. First for Primaries 1, 2, and 3, with children ranging approximately from six to eight. The children filed in, their shoes clomping on the old wooden floor. They sat down cross-legged in neat rows on the floor, their dark trousers and maroon shirts like the uniforms of tidy toy soldiers. "Good morning children," the assistant headmistress, Mrs. Houston, said. "Good morning, Mrs. Houston," the children replied dutifully. Mrs. Houston introduced us. Then we introduced ourselves, going down the line and giving our first name, home state, and "occupation". There was an excited buzz when Rachel said that she works at a toy store. :o) After introducing ourselves, we started to sing. Virginia, who's a music major, proved herself to be excellent in dealing with the children. We sang each Psalm chorus first, and then the children sang after us, Virginia leading them cheerfully. Angus, one of the older men in the Airdrie congregation, had escorted us to the school as driver, and he helped Virginia out. "That wasn't loud enough, boys and girls! Let's show these Americans how loud we can sing!" he'd tease. When the singing was finished, we launched into the skit. Virginia, Emily, and I collected four volunteers from the crowd of eager children. We dressed two of them up as Israelites with scraps of blue and yellow cloth for armbands, and two of them up as Egyptians with aluminum foil headbands. Then we assigned each of them to a player (Michaela and Rachel or Brenda and Matt), and the play began. It went fairly well. Emily and I managed the blue boards, rolling them across the stage when the Red Sea is before the Israelites, parting them when Moses fells his staff, and crashing them towards the Egyptians when the water falls. Melissa left out a scene by accident, but the Egyptians covered for her. Afterward, Lucas gave his Gospel presentation. We sang some more, to the children's delight. They really liked “This Is The Day”. Then Mrs. Houston handed out awards to the children--regular school stuff. Mrs. Houston proved, like Virginia, to be excellent in dealing with them, turning everything into a game. She got them to compete with each other to see who could be quietest in filing out. Virginia, standing beside me, chuckled softly when she saw one little lass with dark hair, deep blue eyes, and a pointed face tiptoeing cautiously out of the hall.The next class we performed for were Primaries 4, 5, and 6, children from nine to thirteen or thereabouts. The older children sat on benches behind the younger ones. One little boy sitting in the front row, with skinny arms and an impudent freckled face grinned and poked his classmates before Mrs. Houston called everyone to order. "Alright, children. Can any of you tell me what's different today?" "There are a bunch of strange people here," one of the kids replied. "That's right, we have visitors from America," Mrs. Houston said. "Now, you all behave yourselves. Primaries 1, 2, and 3 were stars, and I don't want you to disappoint me." We started the production over again. Virginia dragged out the Psalms as much as possible, milking them for all they were worth, singing the songs louder and faster, getting them to compete. “How many are there of us? Twelve! That’s right! And how many are there of you? A lot more! You should be able to make a lot more noise than us!” she challenged. The children seemed to enjoy singing, warming to their work enthusiastically. Despite the fact that some of older ones, tittering among themselves, obviously thought it was beneath them, even most of the older kids joined in, stomping their feet in time to “The Steps of a Good Man”.
After the play, Lucas gave his Gospel message about how we are like the Israelites, trapped by present and future sin, and about how Christ, like Moses, opens a way of escape for us. When the presentation was over, Mrs. Houston asked the children if they wanted to sing some more. There were emphatic nods. “What do you all want to sing?” Virginia asked. She took a vote, and everyone seemed to want “The Steps of a Good Man”. So we sang that at least twice more, stomping our feet and jumping up and down (“Though he fall, he shall not be cast down…”). The hall rattled as our feet marched, and the mirror on the projector slipped because the floor was shaking. When we had finished singing, Mrs. Houston asked the children, “What was your favourite part?” One of the older girls, after consulting her friends, said, “The Steps of a Good Man.” The other children concurred: they liked either that particular Psalm chorus or the part in the skit where the Egyptians are drowned—thanks to Michaela’s and Rachel’s dramatic screams at that point. The children filed out, Mrs. Houston trying to get them to be as quiet as the first three grades. Just then, the fire alarms went off. So everyone bundled outside. Crowded in the hall, I smelled burned toast. Out on the playground, the children stood in neat lines like marionettes in the sunshine. We clustered together until the alarm went off. As the children marched back to their classes, they waved to us and grinned cheerily. Back inside, we picked up our belongings and headed to the van. Crossing the playground, where one of the middle Primary classes was taking its break, we waved to kids who were smiling at us. “Hello! Good morning!” they called. We packed everything up. Toby and I rode in the van to steady the boards while everyone else walked back to the church.
Back at the church, we held our team devotions: Hebrews 3. Michaela entered a little late. “Nice walk,” she commented. “Yeah, it was,” everyone agreed. We discussed Hebrews, then went into the sanctuary to pray for the unbelievers in the church. Sitting in the varnished pews, we bowed our heads. After we prayed, we sang several Psalms, voices ringing in the high hall. Pastor Quigley joined us. Today an older couple brought lunch for us. As we sat down for lunch, Michaela asked, “Did you all plan for me to be left behind?” Lucas stared. “You were left behind?” he asked. “Well, I stayed talking to the kids. One of them brought out a jumprope, and I showed them how to jump backwards. They offered me potato chips, and I chatted with them. Then I asked where everyone else was, and one little boy said that you all had left. So I walked back on my own,” Michaela explained. Of course, we were all mortified that she’d been left behind.
We ate thick sandwiches for lunch. Since Pastor Quigley joined us, it was a rather funny meal. Pastor Quigley is scary both when he’s serious and when he’s silly (on Monday he poured tea on the table at lunch to show the parting of the Red Sea). Today, he was shocked because Rachel, Michaela, and Brenda, on their grocery shopping trip yesterday, hadn’t bought biscuits. “You must buy biscuits! While everyone else goes to Stirling this afternoon, you’ll take a jaunt down to Cosco and buy biscuits,” he joked, though he sounded quite serious.
After lunch, I washed the dishes while Toby dried. Lucas and Rachel started supper behind us—thick beef stew. Lucas sliced onions while Rachel broke up the ground beef. They talked about curry, and Lucas remembered an Asian friend he’d had who made the most wonderful fruit curry.
When the dishes were finished, I sat outside on the side steps and worked on reading the chapter of Spiritual Disciplines for today. John sat on the ground and read, too. I noticed that there was something carved into the stone wall running round the church grounds. Pushing back a bush, we discovered a tombstone carved into the wall. A whole family had been buried there, it seemed: a son who’d died at sea, a girl fifteen years old, and a three-month-old baby. They had been born and died in the 1800s.
When Pastor Quigley was ready, we piled into the minibus and drove to Stirling. Lucas was going to stay behind at first, but we all raised such an outcry at this that he decided to come along. “That’s good. You love your leader enough to persuade him to come,” Pastor Quigley commented to the bus at large. Everyone was quiet and sleepy on the drive. We drove through Bannockburn and several other small towns. Lovely countryside: horses grazing in rape fields, sheep dotted like seed dandelions on green pastures, lush walls of white-flowering bushes bowing and raising on either side of the road. In one pasture, a tractor was plowing the dark earth.
Stirling is an old town. Old stone houses crowd together like battered leather books on a shelf. Narrow cobbled streets, the cobbles worn green-grey like an angry sea, rattled under the tyres as the van chugged up the steep hills. People thronged the thin sidewalks. Brick chimneypots poked up like disgruntled hawks against the sky. We wove past a couple of lovely churches with windows of delicate stained-glass and stone webbing, surrounded by graveyards, topped by spires. At the top of the hill stood the castle, Stirling Castle. Pastor Quigley let us out in the parking lot just below the castle. He was not coming with us, nor was Lucas. We were all rather confused as we climbed out of the bus, and I stared back dolefully at Lucas, who winked at me from the back of the bus.
When the bus pulled away, I sprinted across the lawn to the edge of the outer ramparts. The castle is surrounded by a broad, flat valley, like an island in a lake. On the edges of the valley rise tall dark hills. They were vague and misty in the afternoon sunlight. Staring out across the valley, I could sea the tower of the Wallace Monument jutting up from a ridge. Yellow, green, and blue like ripples in water ran down the sides of the distant hills. A graveyard lay far below the castle. After awhile, the group trooped in under the massive outer ramparts. We bought tickets in the outermost courtyard, then walked into the castle itself. We scattered into smaller groups of ones and twos to explore the castle.
Stirling Castle as I saw it was a conglomeration of architecture from different eras, all jumbled together with bits of wall. I explored the battlements and the heavy canons which poked out through slits in the wall. I climbed down into the dungeon under Elphinstone Tower, feet slipping on worn stone stairs. Their edges were depressed from centuries of feet, and a musty smell of dank stone rose up from the dark corners. I stooped to duck under the rough uneven doorways. Tiny slits let in light. Back up in the courtyard, I climbed through another courtyard to the inmost close, or courtyard, and from the inmost close to the Great Hall. A gigantic space with a wooden crossbeam roof. Metal panelled windows let in clear light, and stained-glass roundels blazoned the hardwood floor with the emblems of the Scottish noble houses. Thick hangings muffled sound. On the dais stood a table and two chairs under the cloth-of-state. After the Great Hall, I entered the chapel, another restored space with a wooden roof. Speakers played soft Gregorian chant behind the shuffle of feet as people entered the chapel. Twelve windows down the north wall of the castle represented the twelve apostles, and the door represented Christ, who is the Door to God Himself. On the wall hung two tapestries, replicated from the Hunting of the Unicorn tapestries in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. One of them was “The Hunt Begins”, and the other one was of the unicorn himself. Intricate tapestries with correctly detailed flowers embroidered on dark green backgrounds, the unicorn’s tail intertwining with the stems of the flowers, and the red caps on the hunters and the dogs’ red tongues standing out vividly against the dark green. From the chapel, I crossed the courtyard to the palace itself. The palace’s two arms form the north and west sides of the inmost close, with the east side being the Great Hall and the south side being the chapel (if I have my bearings straight). I crawled all through the north side of the palace since the west side is made of museum and offices. The north wing of the palace is in the process of being restored. Slipping through clusters of people, my feet thudded hollowly on plywood flooring. Overhead, steel girders and new wooden beams reinforced the original ceiling planks. Down a long hall to the king’s reception chamber, and from the king’s reception chamber to the king’s bedchamber. From the king’s bedchamber to the queen’s bedchamber, and from that to the queen’s reception hall in which the unicorn tapestries will someday hang. All the rooms had enormous stone fireplaces, their corners carved with gargoyles and thistles. Arched stone windows slit the massive walls. Bare stonework, rough with the passage of years, was cold to the touch. I found a tiny courtyard in the middle of the wing. Many blank windows stared down on this courtyard, where a few plants in pots grew. I tried to imagine it as it would once have looked, but it seemed silly somehow. I’m so used to people making fun of the modern obsession with the Medieval that to try to imagine actual people living as Medievals seems corny. Sunlight slanted over the tiled roofs, slates iridescent green and grey like pigeons’ wings.
Strolling through the cold rooms, I listened to the people around me talking. Spanish women jabbered away, pointing up at the ceiling. A German man slowly translated a sign into his guttural language for a group of women. An Asian girl chirped into her cellphone. A British couple studied the carving on the fireplaces. Scottish workmen rattled on in their burr, like gravel, as I passed them. I briefly joined a tour on which the rest of the group had gone, with a short, stout woman as tour guide. She gave us vivid anecdotes about the Jameses and Stuarts and Scotts which had inhabited the castle—jealousy, tragedy, desperate pride, murder. Then I ventured off on my own again.
I left the palace and the inmost close to the middle courtyard where the canons were. Under the battlements on which stood the canons, I found the kitchen. Peeping in through a doorway, I nearly jumped out of my skin: mannequins dressed in medieval clothes were busy stoking the oven with loaves of bread, while other mannequins turned meat on a spit. In the shadowy, musty darkness, I half expected the mannequins to jump to life. Their painted wooden smiles were almost ready to break into speech, and their braced arms almost ready to relax and turn to the next task. I hurried out.
A long thick tunnel ran under the battlements below the Great Hall, leading to another loop of battlements which had once been pierced by a postern gate. I walked through this tunnel. My footsteps echoed on the chilly masonry. I clambered all over the battlements, staring down at the land below me. Laid out there were red roofs and white walls of another town clustered on the valley, the cemetery on a boss of hill that looked back at the castle, the Wallace Monument, and the distant mountains. The colors were faded and hazy, dappled blue as clouds slipped over the hills. I scrambled along the stone wall, my feet feeling their way over the gigantic, smoothly-squared stone blocks. The webbing of massive stone walls on which the castle is built stood menacing and dark against the vague sunshine. Up here, on the battlements, where the air was quiet and there were hardly any other tourists, my imagination had liberty: I was a messenger, my booted feet quick over the hard stones, my cloak tugging over my shoulders as I hurried past the guards on the parapet. Descending from the battlements, I stepped into a line of huts huddling under the upper castle walls, caught between the walls of the inmost close and the outer battlements on which I’d just climbed. In one of the stone huts, I watched a woman busy weaving one of the unicorn tapestries. She used her spindle to poke down the threads as she wove.
Leaving the tapestry gallery, I climbed through the tunnel into the middle courtyard again, breathless by the time I reached the top of the steep slope. Still imagining, I could feel the jolt and lift of the horse under me, and the clatter of hooves dinning harshly like bells on the sharp, uneven masonry of the tunnel.
Back in the inmost close, I met up with Melissa, Emily, Virginia, Michaela, and Toby. Michaela spotted a narrow doorway between the chapel and the western arm of the palace. Exploring through it, we found ourselves in Douglas’s Garden: a quiet, green space, where tall trees stood serenely over the green lawn and tiny purple flowers bloomed in neat beds. The garden was sun-warmed, self-contained, elegant, tossed like a lost glass bead into the castle walls. We returned to the outer battlements above the tapestry gallery. Bracing herself against the huge walls, Melissa leaned out and picked pink stonecrop from the wind-blackened stones, tucking them into her pink newsboy cap. We climbed over the walls again. I stood staring out over the valley—hazy light and shadow, the whir of a raven’s wings as it winged sedately through the air below me, the bulk of the hill bulging out slightly through stern grey rock giving way to thick grass. Pale blue, green, saffron, and orange lichen starred the dark rocks. The castle was quiet and remote from the valley below, from which I could hear the faint hum of traffic and the clink, quiet as windchimes, of a backhoe breaking concrete on a construction site by the highway.
Stepping into the bookstore, which was nestled in the walls of the middle courtyard, I bought eight postcards for friends at home. A garrulous clerk poured small samples of whiskey for John, Emily, and Michaela to taste. John liked it a lot. The strange malt smell made my nose wrinkle.
Outside in the first courtyard, we met up with the others. Someone had to go back and fetch Virginia, who was exploring the dungeons. We hurried down to the van. Michaela and I sat in the front seat. On the way back to Airdrie, the traffic was thick, with heavy trucks pushing through lines of small, sleek European cars. Michaela and I chatted about the castle. Michaela showed me a little silver ring she’d bought, engraved with hands. I paid small attention to a conversation between Lucas and John behind me about British economics. Both Michaela and I listened to Pastor Quigley, Lucas, and the boys behind us discuss theology: John asked why we pray in Christ’s name. So Pastor Quigley asked if anyone had a Bible, and I pulled my Bible out of my leather backpack, where it’s been riding for the past week. “Good girl,” he said, and opened it to Hebrews while guiding the van around a tight bend (which of course made Michaela nervous). He explained that we come to God in Christ’s name the way the friend of a man’s son would come to that man asking the father a favour that the man’s son had told him to ask. Pastor Quigley and Lucas discussed church politics and seminary exams—an interesting conversation.
Back in Airdrie, everyone hurried inside. Lucas gathered us all around the tables set up in the fellowship hall to talk about preparing our testimonies for St. Margaret’s Catholic Highschool next Tuesday. He had filled a teakettle full of cold water for himself, and while he talked, he poured himself brimming cupfuls, and gulped them down at one breath one after another.
One of the younger women in the church came and ate supper with us. We had a good, solid meal, discussing the logistics of presenting our testimonies next Tuesday. Afterward, while Melissa washed the dishes, she put on her Broadway “Phantom of the Opera” soundtrack. Then everyone went off to play ultimate frisbee except Rachel, who stayed behind to work on her testimony, Lucas, who went to a MET at the Quigleys’ house, and myself. Melissa’s CD is still playing out in the hall. Last I saw Rachel, she was toying with a set of sterling silver figurines she’d bought at the castle.
This morning we all ate cold cereal for a quick breakfast. After breakfast, we loaded up the blue minibus that we've been taking everywhere. We loaded a red cardboard box containing scraps of cloth (otherwise known as Israelite headdresses and Egyptian scarves), plastic swords, and aluminum foil headbands. We also loaded an impressive staff for Moses and two long blue wooden boards on wheels, for the Red Sea. The boards were almost as long as the van, so we had to squeeze in around them. We drove up the hill to Victoria PS (elementary school) to give our first school presentation.At the school, we unloaded. The school is a huge brick rectangle with four or five stories, built of blackened stone and standing in the middle of a bleak asphalted playground. A palisade of metal stakes, instead of chain link, fences it around. We marched into the school, up a short flight of stairs, and into the main assembly hall. The hall is a little bit smaller than a basketball court, with a stage at one end. We set up our props, then stood in a row below the stage. In the middle of the stage, the school had set up a projector and a screen so that we could project our Psalm choruses ("This Is The Day", "The Lord Builds Up Jerusalem", and "The Steps of a Good Man") onto the screen.Pretty soon, the children trooped in. We were to perform twice this morning. First for Primaries 1, 2, and 3, with children ranging approximately from six to eight. The children filed in, their shoes clomping on the old wooden floor. They sat down cross-legged in neat rows on the floor, their dark trousers and maroon shirts like the uniforms of tidy toy soldiers. "Good morning children," the assistant headmistress, Mrs. Houston, said. "Good morning, Mrs. Houston," the children replied dutifully. Mrs. Houston introduced us. Then we introduced ourselves, going down the line and giving our first name, home state, and "occupation". There was an excited buzz when Rachel said that she works at a toy store. :o) After introducing ourselves, we started to sing. Virginia, who's a music major, proved herself to be excellent in dealing with the children. We sang each Psalm chorus first, and then the children sang after us, Virginia leading them cheerfully. Angus, one of the older men in the Airdrie congregation, had escorted us to the school as driver, and he helped Virginia out. "That wasn't loud enough, boys and girls! Let's show these Americans how loud we can sing!" he'd tease. When the singing was finished, we launched into the skit. Virginia, Emily, and I collected four volunteers from the crowd of eager children. We dressed two of them up as Israelites with scraps of blue and yellow cloth for armbands, and two of them up as Egyptians with aluminum foil headbands. Then we assigned each of them to a player (Michaela and Rachel or Brenda and Matt), and the play began. It went fairly well. Emily and I managed the blue boards, rolling them across the stage when the Red Sea is before the Israelites, parting them when Moses fells his staff, and crashing them towards the Egyptians when the water falls. Melissa left out a scene by accident, but the Egyptians covered for her. Afterward, Lucas gave his Gospel presentation. We sang some more, to the children's delight. They really liked “This Is The Day”. Then Mrs. Houston handed out awards to the children--regular school stuff. Mrs. Houston proved, like Virginia, to be excellent in dealing with them, turning everything into a game. She got them to compete with each other to see who could be quietest in filing out. Virginia, standing beside me, chuckled softly when she saw one little lass with dark hair, deep blue eyes, and a pointed face tiptoeing cautiously out of the hall.The next class we performed for were Primaries 4, 5, and 6, children from nine to thirteen or thereabouts. The older children sat on benches behind the younger ones. One little boy sitting in the front row, with skinny arms and an impudent freckled face grinned and poked his classmates before Mrs. Houston called everyone to order. "Alright, children. Can any of you tell me what's different today?" "There are a bunch of strange people here," one of the kids replied. "That's right, we have visitors from America," Mrs. Houston said. "Now, you all behave yourselves. Primaries 1, 2, and 3 were stars, and I don't want you to disappoint me." We started the production over again. Virginia dragged out the Psalms as much as possible, milking them for all they were worth, singing the songs louder and faster, getting them to compete. “How many are there of us? Twelve! That’s right! And how many are there of you? A lot more! You should be able to make a lot more noise than us!” she challenged. The children seemed to enjoy singing, warming to their work enthusiastically. Despite the fact that some of older ones, tittering among themselves, obviously thought it was beneath them, even most of the older kids joined in, stomping their feet in time to “The Steps of a Good Man”.
After the play, Lucas gave his Gospel message about how we are like the Israelites, trapped by present and future sin, and about how Christ, like Moses, opens a way of escape for us. When the presentation was over, Mrs. Houston asked the children if they wanted to sing some more. There were emphatic nods. “What do you all want to sing?” Virginia asked. She took a vote, and everyone seemed to want “The Steps of a Good Man”. So we sang that at least twice more, stomping our feet and jumping up and down (“Though he fall, he shall not be cast down…”). The hall rattled as our feet marched, and the mirror on the projector slipped because the floor was shaking. When we had finished singing, Mrs. Houston asked the children, “What was your favourite part?” One of the older girls, after consulting her friends, said, “The Steps of a Good Man.” The other children concurred: they liked either that particular Psalm chorus or the part in the skit where the Egyptians are drowned—thanks to Michaela’s and Rachel’s dramatic screams at that point. The children filed out, Mrs. Houston trying to get them to be as quiet as the first three grades. Just then, the fire alarms went off. So everyone bundled outside. Crowded in the hall, I smelled burned toast. Out on the playground, the children stood in neat lines like marionettes in the sunshine. We clustered together until the alarm went off. As the children marched back to their classes, they waved to us and grinned cheerily. Back inside, we picked up our belongings and headed to the van. Crossing the playground, where one of the middle Primary classes was taking its break, we waved to kids who were smiling at us. “Hello! Good morning!” they called. We packed everything up. Toby and I rode in the van to steady the boards while everyone else walked back to the church.
Back at the church, we held our team devotions: Hebrews 3. Michaela entered a little late. “Nice walk,” she commented. “Yeah, it was,” everyone agreed. We discussed Hebrews, then went into the sanctuary to pray for the unbelievers in the church. Sitting in the varnished pews, we bowed our heads. After we prayed, we sang several Psalms, voices ringing in the high hall. Pastor Quigley joined us. Today an older couple brought lunch for us. As we sat down for lunch, Michaela asked, “Did you all plan for me to be left behind?” Lucas stared. “You were left behind?” he asked. “Well, I stayed talking to the kids. One of them brought out a jumprope, and I showed them how to jump backwards. They offered me potato chips, and I chatted with them. Then I asked where everyone else was, and one little boy said that you all had left. So I walked back on my own,” Michaela explained. Of course, we were all mortified that she’d been left behind.
We ate thick sandwiches for lunch. Since Pastor Quigley joined us, it was a rather funny meal. Pastor Quigley is scary both when he’s serious and when he’s silly (on Monday he poured tea on the table at lunch to show the parting of the Red Sea). Today, he was shocked because Rachel, Michaela, and Brenda, on their grocery shopping trip yesterday, hadn’t bought biscuits. “You must buy biscuits! While everyone else goes to Stirling this afternoon, you’ll take a jaunt down to Cosco and buy biscuits,” he joked, though he sounded quite serious.
After lunch, I washed the dishes while Toby dried. Lucas and Rachel started supper behind us—thick beef stew. Lucas sliced onions while Rachel broke up the ground beef. They talked about curry, and Lucas remembered an Asian friend he’d had who made the most wonderful fruit curry.
When the dishes were finished, I sat outside on the side steps and worked on reading the chapter of Spiritual Disciplines for today. John sat on the ground and read, too. I noticed that there was something carved into the stone wall running round the church grounds. Pushing back a bush, we discovered a tombstone carved into the wall. A whole family had been buried there, it seemed: a son who’d died at sea, a girl fifteen years old, and a three-month-old baby. They had been born and died in the 1800s.
When Pastor Quigley was ready, we piled into the minibus and drove to Stirling. Lucas was going to stay behind at first, but we all raised such an outcry at this that he decided to come along. “That’s good. You love your leader enough to persuade him to come,” Pastor Quigley commented to the bus at large. Everyone was quiet and sleepy on the drive. We drove through Bannockburn and several other small towns. Lovely countryside: horses grazing in rape fields, sheep dotted like seed dandelions on green pastures, lush walls of white-flowering bushes bowing and raising on either side of the road. In one pasture, a tractor was plowing the dark earth.
Stirling is an old town. Old stone houses crowd together like battered leather books on a shelf. Narrow cobbled streets, the cobbles worn green-grey like an angry sea, rattled under the tyres as the van chugged up the steep hills. People thronged the thin sidewalks. Brick chimneypots poked up like disgruntled hawks against the sky. We wove past a couple of lovely churches with windows of delicate stained-glass and stone webbing, surrounded by graveyards, topped by spires. At the top of the hill stood the castle, Stirling Castle. Pastor Quigley let us out in the parking lot just below the castle. He was not coming with us, nor was Lucas. We were all rather confused as we climbed out of the bus, and I stared back dolefully at Lucas, who winked at me from the back of the bus.
When the bus pulled away, I sprinted across the lawn to the edge of the outer ramparts. The castle is surrounded by a broad, flat valley, like an island in a lake. On the edges of the valley rise tall dark hills. They were vague and misty in the afternoon sunlight. Staring out across the valley, I could sea the tower of the Wallace Monument jutting up from a ridge. Yellow, green, and blue like ripples in water ran down the sides of the distant hills. A graveyard lay far below the castle. After awhile, the group trooped in under the massive outer ramparts. We bought tickets in the outermost courtyard, then walked into the castle itself. We scattered into smaller groups of ones and twos to explore the castle.
Stirling Castle as I saw it was a conglomeration of architecture from different eras, all jumbled together with bits of wall. I explored the battlements and the heavy canons which poked out through slits in the wall. I climbed down into the dungeon under Elphinstone Tower, feet slipping on worn stone stairs. Their edges were depressed from centuries of feet, and a musty smell of dank stone rose up from the dark corners. I stooped to duck under the rough uneven doorways. Tiny slits let in light. Back up in the courtyard, I climbed through another courtyard to the inmost close, or courtyard, and from the inmost close to the Great Hall. A gigantic space with a wooden crossbeam roof. Metal panelled windows let in clear light, and stained-glass roundels blazoned the hardwood floor with the emblems of the Scottish noble houses. Thick hangings muffled sound. On the dais stood a table and two chairs under the cloth-of-state. After the Great Hall, I entered the chapel, another restored space with a wooden roof. Speakers played soft Gregorian chant behind the shuffle of feet as people entered the chapel. Twelve windows down the north wall of the castle represented the twelve apostles, and the door represented Christ, who is the Door to God Himself. On the wall hung two tapestries, replicated from the Hunting of the Unicorn tapestries in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. One of them was “The Hunt Begins”, and the other one was of the unicorn himself. Intricate tapestries with correctly detailed flowers embroidered on dark green backgrounds, the unicorn’s tail intertwining with the stems of the flowers, and the red caps on the hunters and the dogs’ red tongues standing out vividly against the dark green. From the chapel, I crossed the courtyard to the palace itself. The palace’s two arms form the north and west sides of the inmost close, with the east side being the Great Hall and the south side being the chapel (if I have my bearings straight). I crawled all through the north side of the palace since the west side is made of museum and offices. The north wing of the palace is in the process of being restored. Slipping through clusters of people, my feet thudded hollowly on plywood flooring. Overhead, steel girders and new wooden beams reinforced the original ceiling planks. Down a long hall to the king’s reception chamber, and from the king’s reception chamber to the king’s bedchamber. From the king’s bedchamber to the queen’s bedchamber, and from that to the queen’s reception hall in which the unicorn tapestries will someday hang. All the rooms had enormous stone fireplaces, their corners carved with gargoyles and thistles. Arched stone windows slit the massive walls. Bare stonework, rough with the passage of years, was cold to the touch. I found a tiny courtyard in the middle of the wing. Many blank windows stared down on this courtyard, where a few plants in pots grew. I tried to imagine it as it would once have looked, but it seemed silly somehow. I’m so used to people making fun of the modern obsession with the Medieval that to try to imagine actual people living as Medievals seems corny. Sunlight slanted over the tiled roofs, slates iridescent green and grey like pigeons’ wings.
Strolling through the cold rooms, I listened to the people around me talking. Spanish women jabbered away, pointing up at the ceiling. A German man slowly translated a sign into his guttural language for a group of women. An Asian girl chirped into her cellphone. A British couple studied the carving on the fireplaces. Scottish workmen rattled on in their burr, like gravel, as I passed them. I briefly joined a tour on which the rest of the group had gone, with a short, stout woman as tour guide. She gave us vivid anecdotes about the Jameses and Stuarts and Scotts which had inhabited the castle—jealousy, tragedy, desperate pride, murder. Then I ventured off on my own again.
I left the palace and the inmost close to the middle courtyard where the canons were. Under the battlements on which stood the canons, I found the kitchen. Peeping in through a doorway, I nearly jumped out of my skin: mannequins dressed in medieval clothes were busy stoking the oven with loaves of bread, while other mannequins turned meat on a spit. In the shadowy, musty darkness, I half expected the mannequins to jump to life. Their painted wooden smiles were almost ready to break into speech, and their braced arms almost ready to relax and turn to the next task. I hurried out.
A long thick tunnel ran under the battlements below the Great Hall, leading to another loop of battlements which had once been pierced by a postern gate. I walked through this tunnel. My footsteps echoed on the chilly masonry. I clambered all over the battlements, staring down at the land below me. Laid out there were red roofs and white walls of another town clustered on the valley, the cemetery on a boss of hill that looked back at the castle, the Wallace Monument, and the distant mountains. The colors were faded and hazy, dappled blue as clouds slipped over the hills. I scrambled along the stone wall, my feet feeling their way over the gigantic, smoothly-squared stone blocks. The webbing of massive stone walls on which the castle is built stood menacing and dark against the vague sunshine. Up here, on the battlements, where the air was quiet and there were hardly any other tourists, my imagination had liberty: I was a messenger, my booted feet quick over the hard stones, my cloak tugging over my shoulders as I hurried past the guards on the parapet. Descending from the battlements, I stepped into a line of huts huddling under the upper castle walls, caught between the walls of the inmost close and the outer battlements on which I’d just climbed. In one of the stone huts, I watched a woman busy weaving one of the unicorn tapestries. She used her spindle to poke down the threads as she wove.
Leaving the tapestry gallery, I climbed through the tunnel into the middle courtyard again, breathless by the time I reached the top of the steep slope. Still imagining, I could feel the jolt and lift of the horse under me, and the clatter of hooves dinning harshly like bells on the sharp, uneven masonry of the tunnel.
Back in the inmost close, I met up with Melissa, Emily, Virginia, Michaela, and Toby. Michaela spotted a narrow doorway between the chapel and the western arm of the palace. Exploring through it, we found ourselves in Douglas’s Garden: a quiet, green space, where tall trees stood serenely over the green lawn and tiny purple flowers bloomed in neat beds. The garden was sun-warmed, self-contained, elegant, tossed like a lost glass bead into the castle walls. We returned to the outer battlements above the tapestry gallery. Bracing herself against the huge walls, Melissa leaned out and picked pink stonecrop from the wind-blackened stones, tucking them into her pink newsboy cap. We climbed over the walls again. I stood staring out over the valley—hazy light and shadow, the whir of a raven’s wings as it winged sedately through the air below me, the bulk of the hill bulging out slightly through stern grey rock giving way to thick grass. Pale blue, green, saffron, and orange lichen starred the dark rocks. The castle was quiet and remote from the valley below, from which I could hear the faint hum of traffic and the clink, quiet as windchimes, of a backhoe breaking concrete on a construction site by the highway.
Stepping into the bookstore, which was nestled in the walls of the middle courtyard, I bought eight postcards for friends at home. A garrulous clerk poured small samples of whiskey for John, Emily, and Michaela to taste. John liked it a lot. The strange malt smell made my nose wrinkle.
Outside in the first courtyard, we met up with the others. Someone had to go back and fetch Virginia, who was exploring the dungeons. We hurried down to the van. Michaela and I sat in the front seat. On the way back to Airdrie, the traffic was thick, with heavy trucks pushing through lines of small, sleek European cars. Michaela and I chatted about the castle. Michaela showed me a little silver ring she’d bought, engraved with hands. I paid small attention to a conversation between Lucas and John behind me about British economics. Both Michaela and I listened to Pastor Quigley, Lucas, and the boys behind us discuss theology: John asked why we pray in Christ’s name. So Pastor Quigley asked if anyone had a Bible, and I pulled my Bible out of my leather backpack, where it’s been riding for the past week. “Good girl,” he said, and opened it to Hebrews while guiding the van around a tight bend (which of course made Michaela nervous). He explained that we come to God in Christ’s name the way the friend of a man’s son would come to that man asking the father a favour that the man’s son had told him to ask. Pastor Quigley and Lucas discussed church politics and seminary exams—an interesting conversation.
Back in Airdrie, everyone hurried inside. Lucas gathered us all around the tables set up in the fellowship hall to talk about preparing our testimonies for St. Margaret’s Catholic Highschool next Tuesday. He had filled a teakettle full of cold water for himself, and while he talked, he poured himself brimming cupfuls, and gulped them down at one breath one after another.
One of the younger women in the church came and ate supper with us. We had a good, solid meal, discussing the logistics of presenting our testimonies next Tuesday. Afterward, while Melissa washed the dishes, she put on her Broadway “Phantom of the Opera” soundtrack. Then everyone went off to play ultimate frisbee except Rachel, who stayed behind to work on her testimony, Lucas, who went to a MET at the Quigleys’ house, and myself. Melissa’s CD is still playing out in the hall. Last I saw Rachel, she was toying with a set of sterling silver figurines she’d bought at the castle.
06 June 2006
from scotland
sorry, no time to edit. this is a copy of an e-mail i sent out to my church at home. enjoy.
Greetings, all.
Here's another update (though I've just been informed by John that I *have* to go pay
ultimate frisbee with everyone).
Well, the Scottish accent is officially wearing off on all of us. It drives Missy nuts
because she's ending all her sentences up, as though they're questions. But catching the
accent doesn't make it any easier to understand the people here, especially the very
little children and the older people.
On Sabbath, we joined in the church's regular worship. We had communion Sabbath morning,
then were broken up into groups to go to people's houses for lunch. Lucas, Rachel, John,
Toby, and I went to the flat of an American couple who are visiting the church here. They
were quite hospitable. Sabbath evening, after the worship service, we drove out to the
Robertsons' house. They're a Scottish family who live on the edge of Airdrie. The drive
to their house is lovely: long, swelling hills spotted with yellow furze, the remnants of
an old schoolhouse, a one-lane bridge, and an old gravel quarry.
Monday morning we began work in earnest. Pastor Quigley sat us all down and read off the
schedule to us. Then Lucas assigned some of us to work on the Bible sketch that we're
performing for the primary schools. We're supposed to write up a stageplay based on the
story of the Exodus and the crossing of the Red Sea. In the meantime, the rest of the
team, great scavengers, came up with four plastic swords, cloth, headbands, and a
"crown" for Pharaoh. Lucas himself is our Pharaoh, and quite an imposing one,
too. He split up the rest of the roles among the team. Missy makes an excellent and
animated narrator, while the three Egyptian soldiers (Rachel, Michaela, and Toby) are
positively bloodcurdling, and John as Moses is a prime example of serene trust in God.
On Monday evening, we attended the MET groups in the church. MET stands for Mutual
Encouragement Time, and is similar to an informal Bible study. I went with Lucas, Rachel,
and John to the Robertsons' house for their MET. We discussed Lamentations 3. Emily, the
Robertsons' five-year-old daughter who goes to Gaelic school, proudly recited a poem for
me in Gaelic after the Bible study ended. Then I went outside to help out in the
Robertsons' yard. The Robertsons just moved into a new house, and their yard was made of
"prime Scottish topsoil": gravel that wouldn't even grow a potato (or so Mr.
Robertson said). We spent all evening raking rocks and gravel off the yard and leveling
it in preparation for sowing grass.
We've spent all day working on the Bible presentation for our first performance tomorrow.
Pastor Quigley came in a couple of times and worked us hard, tweaking various parts of
the performance. He did tell us that we'd given him the best first run-through he'd ever
seen from a mission team, which was encouraging. But we were all very hungry this
afternoon by the time he let us go.
Since we hadn't gone shopping since Saturday, we all marched to the fish-and-chips shop at
the top of the hill and bought our suppers, then brought them back to the church. My
first taste of Scottish fish-and-chips was actually quite promising. Very greasy, but
also much fresher than fish and potatoes in the U.S.
Please pray for us as we continue to prepare our presentation for the primary schools.
Especially, please pray for our first presentation tomorrow morning at about nine
o'clock.
Greetings, all.
Here's another update (though I've just been informed by John that I *have* to go pay
ultimate frisbee with everyone).
Well, the Scottish accent is officially wearing off on all of us. It drives Missy nuts
because she's ending all her sentences up, as though they're questions. But catching the
accent doesn't make it any easier to understand the people here, especially the very
little children and the older people.
On Sabbath, we joined in the church's regular worship. We had communion Sabbath morning,
then were broken up into groups to go to people's houses for lunch. Lucas, Rachel, John,
Toby, and I went to the flat of an American couple who are visiting the church here. They
were quite hospitable. Sabbath evening, after the worship service, we drove out to the
Robertsons' house. They're a Scottish family who live on the edge of Airdrie. The drive
to their house is lovely: long, swelling hills spotted with yellow furze, the remnants of
an old schoolhouse, a one-lane bridge, and an old gravel quarry.
Monday morning we began work in earnest. Pastor Quigley sat us all down and read off the
schedule to us. Then Lucas assigned some of us to work on the Bible sketch that we're
performing for the primary schools. We're supposed to write up a stageplay based on the
story of the Exodus and the crossing of the Red Sea. In the meantime, the rest of the
team, great scavengers, came up with four plastic swords, cloth, headbands, and a
"crown" for Pharaoh. Lucas himself is our Pharaoh, and quite an imposing one,
too. He split up the rest of the roles among the team. Missy makes an excellent and
animated narrator, while the three Egyptian soldiers (Rachel, Michaela, and Toby) are
positively bloodcurdling, and John as Moses is a prime example of serene trust in God.
On Monday evening, we attended the MET groups in the church. MET stands for Mutual
Encouragement Time, and is similar to an informal Bible study. I went with Lucas, Rachel,
and John to the Robertsons' house for their MET. We discussed Lamentations 3. Emily, the
Robertsons' five-year-old daughter who goes to Gaelic school, proudly recited a poem for
me in Gaelic after the Bible study ended. Then I went outside to help out in the
Robertsons' yard. The Robertsons just moved into a new house, and their yard was made of
"prime Scottish topsoil": gravel that wouldn't even grow a potato (or so Mr.
Robertson said). We spent all evening raking rocks and gravel off the yard and leveling
it in preparation for sowing grass.
We've spent all day working on the Bible presentation for our first performance tomorrow.
Pastor Quigley came in a couple of times and worked us hard, tweaking various parts of
the performance. He did tell us that we'd given him the best first run-through he'd ever
seen from a mission team, which was encouraging. But we were all very hungry this
afternoon by the time he let us go.
Since we hadn't gone shopping since Saturday, we all marched to the fish-and-chips shop at
the top of the hill and bought our suppers, then brought them back to the church. My
first taste of Scottish fish-and-chips was actually quite promising. Very greasy, but
also much fresher than fish and potatoes in the U.S.
Please pray for us as we continue to prepare our presentation for the primary schools.
Especially, please pray for our first presentation tomorrow morning at about nine
o'clock.
01 June 2006
"looks like a madhouse, sounds like fun"
CY costume party!
Theme: What do you want to be when you grow up?
Back: Danielle as herself, Elizabeth as an old woman
Next: Philip as a college student, Sam as a mad scientist, Daniel as a businessman, Jessie as an emergency nurse, Betty as a jazz trumpeter, Mr. Y as a hockey player
Next: Mrs. Y as a hairdresser, Raychel as a princess, Anna as a military nurse, Laura as a chef, Ruth as a secretary, Sarah as a surgical nurse, Hannah as a movie star
Front: me as a bard, J.D. as Spiderman, Abigail as a gardener, Catherine (Mrs. Y's youngest sister) as a fingernail-care-girl, Stephen as a pianist
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