scotland

Lost and Found in the Homily

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Today’s homily was all about being lost, and being lost sheep, and the everyday ways we are lost and find ourselves again. I don’t know why, but my first visit to the UK kept popping up in my mind throughout my pastor’s talk. Not just the visit or the trip itself, but all the little times that I was lost there. I don’t think we were ever truly lost,  but those moments seemed so big at the time, and even now they stand out in a seemingly unrelated homily that included my pastor being lost in the snowy woods with his dog.

My first thought of being lost in England was standing in the rain. I don’t think we had umbrellas, but we were looking at a map and it was raining. It was a cold, poking kind of rain that covered my glasses  We were years away from little wipers on your eyeglasses.

At that time, we stayed at youth hostels and you can’t spend the daylight hours at a hostel, even in the cold, winter months, so we were up and out every morning. I don’t remember where we were heading on this day, just that we didn’t know where we were, and we needed to look at our map.

We were surprised when an older woman came out of her house and across the street with an umbrella and showed us where we were, and how to get to where we were going. She said to go across the field we were standing next to – it was faster if a bit muddy. We weren’t sure about going across someone’s property, but she said it would be alright. We took it.

It was definitely a shortcut.

When we crossed the border into Wales, I hadn’t realized that I was lost, but I knew that I had been found. I talk about this aspect of my trip often, so I won’t be redundant, but it is a significant thought of being lost even if I hadn’t known it at the time. It was, and continues to be a sacred place for me.

We also found ourselves lost on Craigower Hill just above Pitlochry in Scotland. We kept climbing up and up and up. We didn’t quite make it to the summit, but we made it pretty close. We slid down and had to start again about halfway up, and then it started snowing.

Luckily we found ourselves at the bottom eventually at The Moulin Inn for some fabulous lasagna and cider.

We became stuck in the Cotswolds having planned on leaving on Sunday, and not knowing that the buses don’t run on Sunday. The hostel warden took pity on us and let us in earlier than their usual evening opening. He also loaned us books and told us some of the history of the town, Stow-on-the-Wold.

Being lost in Edinburgh, in the snow, at two o’clock in the morning was better with a new friend than alone.

This was a three week trip in January with my college roommate, and these are only a handful of memories that popped up during the homily on lost sheep.

Being lost isn’t so bad. I know I’m never alone and what all of these anecdotes remind me is that no matter how long you’re lost or where, there is always a way out, a way to be found, a way to find yourself and that trip was one of those places and times that I did.

(Reading: Jeremiah 23:1-6)

Celtic Recs

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St. Patrick’s Day in the Morning by Eve Bunting, illustrated by Jan Brett

In Bruges starring Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson

The Alarm

Flogging Molly

Gaelic Storm

Dropkick Murphys

Super Furry Animals

Here Be Dragons by Sharon Kay Penman

The Winter King by Bernard Cornwell

A Writer’s House in Wales by Jan Morris

Rob Roy

The Englishman Who Went up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain

Edinburgh

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There are things that stand out in my mind, a quick memory that jumps to another, a smell, the feeling of a particular fabric on your skin.

My first trip overseas was to the United Kingdom. It was 1986/1987 and my college roommate was student teaching in England. She asked me to meet her there and then we would travel together for winter break and afterwards return to school together.

It came at a perfect time, that if any one thing had been different, I would have turned her down. Luckily for me the stars were aligned in my favor, and the trip literally changed much of my life.

She asked me what I wanted on the itinerary, and I believe my response was: Stonehenge and a Castle. Everything else was her choice. I didn’t care as long as I got to see Stonehenge and a Castle.

There is much to tell that happened during these almost-three weeks, but when I put my request for a prompt and I limited it to seven choices, and People: Edinburgh was chosen.

We barely spent any time in Edinburgh, but it truly was the people who stand out in my memory.

For one thing, I’m weak-kneed for a Scottish accent. And bagpipes…… Completely unrelated, but I visited a Gettysburg battlefield at the same time as Bike Week and one of the riders got off his Harley and started playing the bagpipes. It was one of the most moving feelings I have ever experienced. The memory still manages to choke me up. Sorry for the digression.

I’ve always been a tremendous fan of Scotland and the Celtic people.

In the summer before the trip, we both (my roommate and I) worked at a camp that had an entire group of British exchange students, and one of them was Clive A. Clive was the canoe specialist and he and I embarrassingly started a food fight in the dining hall. It was disgusting and we both got in serious trouble and I couldn’t drink orange juice for almost a year afterwards, but it was one of our bonding moments. And I was one of three people who could understand him through his thick Scottish accent.

Our trip from Pitlochry to Edinburgh was somewhat eventful, although not as eventful as Edinburgh to London, but still. The snow had begun falling before we got on the train, and once we’d arrived in York, the snow turned to mush in a country that didn’t know what to do with mush. Trains were delayed, but eventually we made it into the city to meet up with Clive.

On our way, we ran into an Aussie fellow we met on the train in Wales.

This was January and so the hostellers were a small group. We didn’t run into the same people, but we did meet a couple, stay a bit, change hostels with them, meet a couple more and then trade. It was neat. We met Peter in Bangor, went our separate ways. Actually we were ion the same train. At Perth, we went on to Pitlochry and he changed for Aberdeen. I was indeed surprised to find him later on that evening in Pitlochry, and the next morning he came with us to Edinburgh.

The Scottish hostels were a bit different than the English and the Welsh ones we’d been used to up until now. For one thing, the Scottish curfew was 2am rather than eleven or midnight. Scottish hostels also did not provide silverware; you were supposed to carry your own, and we did not know that. They were kind enough to let us borrow. Also in Scotland, we, as women, were not automatically served a half-pint like we were in England and Wales. In Scotland, we got a full pint, and for me who didn’t drink that much, but soon discovered the wonder that is hard cider didn’t really pay attention to the size of the glass other than to be marveled that I was given a pint in Scotland. It was very exciting.

Not to mention that by this time the drinking age in NY was 21 (raised on my birthday, the bastards!), so my first legal drink was received in the UK.

Clive took us to three places, but the only one I remember the name of was Preservation Hall. He’d said it was named for the one in New Orleans. *shrug* I didn’t know. He and my roommate seemed to be in charge and that was fine for Peter and me. We tagged along like wayward puppies, following as Clive searched streets for a working ATM. They weren’t on every street corner in 1987, and it took a little time for him to get some cash.

We laughed and talked and drank and three and a half pints later we stumbled out.

The next thing I knew Peter and I were put on the taxi queue, given an address to get us back to the hostel before the curfew and my roommate and friend left me there.

We stood for a moment or two and decided we could find our way back before curfew, and we didn’t need to pay for a taxi. Thinking back, that was probably one of the stupidest things I’ve done. I met this guy three or so days earlier and so we wandered down the streets.

By now it was snowing, and Peter, being from Australia had never seen snow, but this wasn’t just any kind of snow I told him; this was fairy snow. The kind that lightly dusted your hair, and sparkled in the lamplight. We sat on a snow covered bench beneath the Edinburgh Castle that was lit up for the evening and watched the magical snow glitter and glimmer, twinkling in competition with the stars against the blackness of the Scottish sky, the only light one or two lamps and the castle far above us.

It was sweet and cozy as we walked hand in hand, stumbling down one street and then another, not even knowing what we were missing by not having a cell phone or a nav system, but we made it.

Right before curfew. We came in as the warden was about to lock up, although he was kind enough to ask about my other friend, and I said she wouldn’t be back.

We found a warm spot next to a crackling fireplace and left drips where the snow melted off our woolens, our hair spraying water on each other like a dog might when he comes in from the rain.

Peter and I stayed up most of the night in case my roommate needed us to open the door for her, but he was right about that being futile and I didn’t see her until the morning when she woke me for the train back to London.

Peter and I said goodbye until our pen pal letters started up once he was home and that lasted several years.

A two hour delay, sitting on a moving train car that was only moving for me and my hangover, a crick in my neck from how I fell asleep on my rucksack, wondering why we weren’t in London, an amusing conductor who was much funnier than he should have been sober and snow, snow, snow, and wondering if we’d even get back to the United States because flights were being cancelled left and right.

Finally, we were heading to London, but we weren’t able to sit together. I ended up with a man named Kevin. Scottish, but he needed to show up at the military something in London to check in and then turn around and go home. Didn’t make much sense to me, but we had a nice chat the entire way to London. He was short and had very small hands, and I’m not sure why that stands out in my mind. We also talked about the Scottish money – the pound note, well all of them that doesn’t have a picture of the Queen on them. There was a shortened history lesson of Scotland, and my roommate and I were back in Bishop’s Stortford hoping to get on the plane the next morning, and Kevin and Peter were just happy memories.

 

Faery Snow

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I love snowflakes. Pictures of snowflakes. Books. Those paper cutouts of snowflakes. Sponge painted snowflakes on blue construction paper. My kingdom in the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism) is Concordia of the Snows with a snowflake badge.

However, I hate snow.

The anxiety that comes with the first snow is about the same as getting on an airplane and to get me on one of those takes half a Xanax and a talisman. The cold; the ice; the wet; the slip sliding around the streets. I think I stopped driving after the first snow since around 2004.

I used to walk to school in the snow. Really. I student taught in in a little town in upstate New York, and lived too close to drive. It would have really been absurd to drive, so I walked the rural roads, crossed the bridge over the kill and for a few weeks I was Abraham Lincoln.

I drove back to college from student teaching in blinding and drifting and blowing snow to see a boyfriend. Love, and an old car, makes one stupid.

Fire drills at 2am in the snow. Who pulls a fire alarm at 2am in the snow? Freshman, obviously. Freshmen with a death wish.

The only snow I remember with fondness was the faery snow in Edinburgh, Scotland. It was the worst snow in more than a decade. Started out locked in the hostel at York, hours upon hours of train delays, flights cancelled, but Edinburgh snow in January………brilliant.

Light.

Fluffy.

Shiny.

Sparkly.

Faery snow.

I spent the evening with Peter. He had never seen snow being from Australia and it was the best thing. People who’ve never experienced the bad of an upstate winter like ice storms and Red Cross Shelters – they all love the snow.

Especially if they’ve never seen it.

He had the bright eyes of a four year old, almost twinkling as much as the falling flakes under the lampposts below the castle. Everything is better with a four year old. Or a twenty year old who’s never seen snow.

This snow feels different.

It tastes different.

It grabs the soles of your feet and slides you down the street. You don’t really slip – faery snow’s not there to hurt you, only to enthrall, entangle, entwine you with the web of the faerie’s call.