On Reflection
From the manse window
AT Easter last year I was on holiday with my family in the beautiful area of Torridon, Wester Ross. This area is one of rugged wildness, of crags and cliffs, a mecca for hillwalkers and wild campers.
Even at this rather bleak time of year there were many out braving the elements, the one-man tents in the Torridon camping site holding fast stubbornly against the fierce gales.
Torridon, which consists of a long row of cottages, has a dramatic and desolate setting on the shore of Upper Loch Torridon with the mountains of Beinn Eighe and Liathach as a backdrop.
We had taken a holiday cottage further down the loch and the peace and quiet and beautiful scenery were breathtaking.
Being early April the weather was nippy and wet at times but it only made the mountains more forbidding, the glens more atmospheric and the cosy cottage more welcoming to come home to.
From the local coffee shop in the village store, you can follow a path out on to a rocky outcrop jutting into the loch.
This leads to Am Ploc, a fascinating Open Air church, used up until the late 1960s. Such open-air sites were common along the northwest coast of Scotland after the Disruption of 1843.
Adherents of the newly established Free Church of Scotland were refused sites on which to build churches.
Am Ploc is like a natural amphitheatre nestled in the low sandstone cliffs. Three rows of stone seating face towards a natural fissure in a high rock known as the Pulpit Rock.
I felt hugely privileged to be there on Good Friday. We sat on the cold hard stones and reflected on the passion of these Scottish Christians who probably had walked miles on a Sunday to gather in this isolated, wild place to worship.
I was reminded of Am Ploc at Christmas time. The newspaper article showed Christians in Aleppo holding a Christmas service.
Their meeting place was not a cold semi-circle of stones, hewn out of rock, sheltered slightly from the elements by a dry-stane dyke, but a bombedout cathedral, a shell of a once-beautiful building, blasted by bullets and bombs, with dusty slabs of masonry making it dangerous to move about. Syrian Christians had come together to worship.
I once took my school class of eight-year-olds to visit Kirkwall’s beautiful cathedral. On entering we noticed the incredibly worn steps into the cathedral.
How many feet over how many years would it have taken to erode these beautiful sandstone slabs? How many Christians had passed this way over centuries?
On that particular trip I remember the sense of awe of the children. After telling them the stories depicted in the windows, one little boy, in a hushed voice, asked, “Mrs Ross, can we pray?” We joined hands and worshipped.
Easter is a time of new beginnings. We often say, “Out with the old, in with the new!” I suggest that we think carefully about what we throw out!
Many find the old ways worth holding on to. Next week: The Rev. Ian Petrie tells the tale of two bees.