May 1st, 2024: Stonehaven, Scotland

I've been on sabbatical since the day after Easter. Sabbatical is a thing that clergy and professors do, but it should be universal. For clergy, it's a couple of months off from your work every seven years to try and remember who you are--to separate out the self that so easily and thoroughly becomes enmeshed with and inseparable from your work as a pastor. For the last month, I've spent my time at home, being with my awesome family, puttering in the yard with my not-quite-as-awesome flowers, exercising, reading, doing nothing. It's been lovely. 

Now the "work" part of my sabbatical begins. I've come to Scotland by myself to sit, think, and mostly to write. I probably haven't been by myself this long since I was in my early 20s. It's terrifying. Write what? I have 3 essays I've constructed in my mind. One is about the future of the church, one is about worship, and the third is autobiographical. Pray for my discipline of writing.

Why Scotland? I shared with a friend before I left that I chose Scotland because it is different enough to stimulate me, but not so different as to disorient me. I love it here--the way the clouds hang low with occasional brilliant peeks of sun, a rolling green pastoral landscape that reminds me of my own ancestral home of Vermont, and the way everything--maybe everyone?--looks a bit tired and worn down. I can relate to this place.

I flew from Atlanta to Amsterdam next to a genial octogenarian who drank five alcoholic beverages (that's what I counted before I fell asleep). On the flight from Amsterdam to Glasgow, I was surrounded by Germans who dressed as though they were ready to conquer the Scottish wilderness. Flying is a miraculous and terrifying event. How is it that we wake up on one part of the earth, jump into a metal tube that hurls through the atmosphere and descends through the very middle of meringue clouds, get out, and go to sleep in an entirely other land and culture? Miracle.

I'll be 12 days here in Stonehaven, on Scotland's east coast, just south of Aberdeen. Settling in.