June 16, 2022 - Inverness, Scotland - written in York/London, England

The last few days have been absolutely wonderful, but completely exhausting.  In the states I had booked a three day tour from Edinburgh through the Highlands of Scotland to include the Isle of Skye, Inverness, and the Battle of Culloden.  Since watching Braveheart (great movie/lousy history), Rob Roy (great movie/better history), and Outlander (kind of a strange series with the time travel aspect/but surprisingly more accurate history) I’ve wanted to come here to the Scottish Highlands.  I’ve also been obsessed with the Highland Cow, called a Hairy Coo, and the Shetland Islands, although I won’t get to go there.  The weather didn’t really cooperate, but I kind of expected that.  We had bouts of cloud coverage with rain and wind more often than sunny skies.  I still managed to get some great photos (rained soaked, as I was) and some wonderful stories.  If you’d read my Facebook post from the other day, you’ve already heard this story.  But, here’s the whole thing.  There was a group of girls from the Philippines on our bus tour, another larger family group from Ontario, Canada, one nurse from Pittsburgh, a mother and her son from Seattle, a woman from Romania who was living in France, some additional people that I hadn’t gotten to know well, and a group from Germany.  One of the men from Germany looked vaguely like a friend of mine, a previous ESL (English as a Second Language) student.  The group from Germany and I got to talking and after saying that I was from Pittsburgh, Sebastian said, “My brother and his family live in Pittsburgh.”  I said to him, “This would be weird, but is your brother’s name Benedikt by any chance?”  He stitched his eyebrows together and with a look of surprise said, “Yes”.  It ended up that I was on the same tour in Scotland with the youngest brother of a former student of mine from Germany who is living in Pittsburgh.  What a strange/small world we live in!

I debated taking an organized tour, as I knew I would not have any control over where we went or how long we’d stay anywhere.  I felt rushed in places I wanted to linger and was anxious to move on in places I’d rather have skipped.  Oh, well.  By the last day, the majority of our group believed that our tour guide was somewhat obsessed with waterfalls.  We saw more of them than anything else.  By the 8th waterfall stop, most of us stayed in the bus thinking that this might clue him in on our reluctance to see any more waterfalls, but at the last waterfall before finishing our journey back to Edinburgh, he enticed everyone out of the bus with a free whiskey tasting at “The Hermitage” waterfall.  He had brought two different types of whiskeys and lots of little cups for us to have a taste.  Another member of the group knowing that we were going to have this tasting, had purchased a loaf of bread during our lunch stop to be used between tastes to cleanse the palate.  At the waterfall, ready to say cheers in Scottish which is, “slainte” pronounced shlawn-che, one of the group members who had learned that I was a minister raised his cup to me and said, “Communion at the waters!”  Looking at the loaf of brown bread and all the communion-sized cups, the stories we’d shared on our journey, the friendships we’d forged (we even had a wedding, sort of) - I had no idea whether people among our group were Catholic, Protestant, Jews, Moslems, nonbelievers, skeptics, searchers, or anything else, but the surroundings of God’s amazing creation of rushing water and ancient moss covered trees with Scotch whiskey and Brown Bread - “Slainte/Communion at the Waters, indeed!”

Pictures of waterfalls - there are many.

And where we had our whiskey tasting (communion?)

We stopped at a little town called Portree and there was a church, established in 1820, that was now converted into a restaurant.  I had a rather boring hamburger here, but the ambiance was nice - along the river.

Saw a few Red Deer, but only got a good photo of this one.

Saw a couple of castles (from a distance) - our tour guide was more interested in taking us to those waterfalls than going to visit any of the castles.  Ugh.

I loved the town of Inverness and would have enjoyed spending more time there, but we were on our bus by 7:50am and not back until 8:30pm.  I did walk around the town one evening to take some pictures.  Oh, by the way, the sun rises at 4:10 in the morning and sets close to 11 at night!

The Battle of Culloden - the shortest and bloodiest massacres between the English and the Scots, mostly, regarding the Jacobite Uprising.  The history of the battle which occurred on April 16, 1746 is steeped in ancient history between the Scots and the British, between the Catholics and the Protestants, between one exiled king and another supposed usurper.  The battle lasted less than one hour, in which the British troops of 12,000 men, lost a total of about 300, while the 5,000 Jacobites lost 2,000 men.  In addition, it is believed that another 2,500-3,000 some captured Scots and many women and children who were helping in the battlefield also lost their lives. 

It was a difficult day to stand on the very battlefield where men and women lost their lives.  Just like any other battlefield, the echoes of the dead ring out in silent protest to future wars between brothers/sisters, between countrymen/women, between one ethnic group and another, even between sworn enemies.  The loss of their lives is rarely worth the cost.  I stood on that field in the center of that nearly 300 year old battle line, while other battles are being fought right now in Ukraine.  I write this as young children are being killed in their classrooms, people in their houses of worship, going to the grocery store, or enjoying a night out at a concert or a nightclub.   We, as human beings, must find ways to deal with our frustrations and anger, our sin for power and privilege, and our hatred of others in different ways.

The battle between Abel and Cain rages on.  How long, O Lord, how long?

And my last group of pictures is from the Standing Stones of Cairn Clava, near Inverness, part of the inspiration behind the Standing Stones of Craigh Na Dun in Outlander.