Wednesday, October 9, 2013

A Temporizing Intervention

Rather to my surprise, an opportunity has arisen that will allow me to meet my Wednesday obligation, if only in a symbolic fashion.

I spent the last several days in East Lothian, a lovely part of Scotland twixt Edinburgh and the sea, staying with Joan's cousin Margaret Richards.  When I first met her some decades past she lived in the stunning old manse of Whitekirk, one of the few medieval churches still in service in Scotland.  She has now passed the house on to one of her daughters and taken up residence in the spectacularly converted old stables building.  The church itself once had a holy well, and was a pilgrimage site in the fourteenth century.  I attended a service on Harvest Festival Sunday, when it was decked out with floral arrangements and baskets of various agricultural products--mainly gourds and squash this late in the year.  The Presbyterian minister was a Dutch woman with a perfect Scottish accent and a husband with a pony-tail.  John Knox was not in the congregation