Ancient Caledonian Forest

"With our being we speak the word,
but we can not utter it with our mouth"

I went to a land I knew to have the most meaning in my symbol system. I went to sit among these symbols and be drenched in their meaning until I felt satisfied of the meaning's existence beyond my creation. I found what I have been looking for all my life, and my heart was buried there.

There is a difference between heart and home which I have not perceived. The mountains, hills. heather, forest, skies and wind is foreign to me and I am a stranger to it. It is not my home and it would take a life to make it so. The first night I spent in agony wondering why I had driven myself to be alone is such a desolate place with no friends, no warmth and only the beautiful, strange and wonder. I did not sleep for a restless mind. But that first night I learned that my home and my heart were separate. I learned that my life will always be a tension to balance heart and home. That first night I learned I had roots.

The second day I asked the question with my being, and in my being I received the answer which has always been there, but which had never been answered in time and space. I had the abstract answers of symbols and the mind's generation of meaning, but I did not have the answer which the physical presence of the symbols deliver to a physical being.

I asked the hills what it was they were keeping, why it was they were calling, and what the answer was they promised. Then the answer was like the moment when you realize that you already have what you are looking for, and that it has been there all the while. I had not recognized it. I looked for the chieftain. I looked for the Keeper of the glen. Not the Flemings who own the space (whatever that means), but for the one who is intimately tied to the keeping of the hills, sky and trees. I longed for the person who gives all that life meaning, and I did not look for a bounded presence, yet for an imminent one.

Always I have at the question resigned myself to "symbols" which are finite containing infinite. But this time the difference was what Buber describes as "uttering the word with being." It was different to look at the hills and be there with my whole body and ask the question. I needed only a moment to see that what I looked for surrounded me, yet that moment only exists in the physical space.

Finally I felt the meaning behind the words "holy spirit." Finally my heart can rest because I know that it belongs to that presence who keeps the mountains, and gives life to all life, and knows them each intimately. And who knows me intimately. Scotland's past and present are the words of the gospel and they symbolize the same reality that is spoken of by many different systems in this world.

After this knowing nothing could phase me. And it was after this that I discovered my pack gone, and an adventure ensued. All this seems peripheral to what I have learned there. Whatever has come my way these past days can not compare to the great solid person who keeps all life.

I found out as I waited for the train to take me back, that beneath the heather are the roots of the ancient Caledonian forest. I think my heart lies among those roots. It is there until history wakes from the past and all things are made new. Until then, I live a simple life growing under the symbol system which speaks of that which lies beyond.