pat loughery

Thursday – Day 6

On Thursday, our group took our bus into Edinburgh to tour the city on our own.

My day was frustrating, however. I had left my glasses and spare contact lenses at home on accident, and my only pair of disposable contacts was expired. I was having headaches that were getting worse, and I knew that I wouldn’t last till I got home.

I walked through the city for a short while with Mary and Jack, but was distracted. I knew that Edinburgh was my only chance to get another pair of disposable contacts. I hoped to be able to walk into an optometrist’s office, tell them my challenge, and buy a pair to get me home. That wasn’t possible, however. We went to three offices, but each told us that I would have to sit for an appointment AND have my home doctor’s prescription. Finally one said that I could have a set of glasses made in an hour, so I did – two, in fact, because they were running a buy one, get one free special. Unfortunately, my prescription wasn’t accurate during the examination since I had been wearing my contacts, so I had a few days of iffy eyesight through the rest of my trip. But it was better than having migraines.

I did see enough of Edinburgh to know that I wanted to return to the city again. It is a splendid city, the stuff of fairy tales, with cobblestone streets and dominated by cathedrals and a castle.

I felt bad for Mary and for Jack, whose day was spent with me walking back and forth between optometrists, and missing out on the life of the city.

On Thursday evening back in Dunblane at Scottish Churches House, Andrew Patterson spoke to us. Andrew is a member of the Iona Community. He spent a large portion of his time retelling us the stories of Celtic history. Andrew’s style reminded me of a bard, who was entertaining as he tried to teach as well. Andrew’s stories were from what I felt was a very liberal perspective, and at times what he took as facts I’m not sure were historically accurate. Other speakers qualified their histories with “tales were told that the Celts did this…” Andrew’s approach was “the Celts DID this”, even with more difficult stories, such as Brendan sailing to Newfoundland and back.

I also felt very uncomfortable with Andrew’s use of nature in spirituality. This is a point of tension in Celtic spirituality for me – there is a very fine line between panentheism (God is present in creation but not limited by it); and pantheism (God is the creation). As I heard Andrew speak of God and nature, what I heard was too close to pantheism for my tastes. This sense continued as Andrew prayed prayers from the Iona Community as well.

I wish that the speakers had some sense of what we’d been told before on the trip. I felt as though much of our time with speakers was spent in them telling the same historical stories from their own perspectives, and then telling us how their sense of history informed their current ministry. But given what we had read and that we heard many of the same things over and over again, I didn’t think we got as much modern implication as I was hoping to receive.

For me, the best part of Thursday was spending time in the pub again with my fellow students, and I had a deep conversation with Shawna about her experience with her husband’s tragic death and her family’s life after that. Her story was similar to my own experience losing my father thirteen years ago, and I sensed the holy presence of God in that pub during our conversation just as much as I had standing in the sea at Iona.