Yesterday morning, we had the pleasure of attending Sunday services at Marchmont St. Giles Parish Church, the place where I was baptized in 1986. The Minister, Rev. Dr. Karen K Campbell gave a great sermon about humility, in connection with the reading from Jeremiah 18 about the potter and the clay. “’Can I not do with you, Israel, as this potter does? declares the Lord. ‘Like clay in the hand of the potter, so you are in my hand.’” The word “humility” comes from the word for “earth” or “clay.” At the time I was baptized, I was a graduate student in the philosophy department in the David Hume Tower, which we can see from the window of our Air B and B. In the words of Thomas Merton, “I was in the thick of my thesis, making hundreds of mistakes that I would not be able to detect for several years to come, because I was far out of my depth.”
I was out of my depth in other ways as well in those days. Bill Wilson puts it this way: “This lack of anchorage to any permanent values, this blindness to the true purpose of our lives, produced another bad result. For just so long as we were convinced that we could live exclusively by our own individual strength and intelligence, for just that long was a working faith in a Higher Power impossible. This was true even when we believed God existed. We could actually have earnest religious beliefs which remained barren because we were still trying to play God ourselves. As long as we placed self-reliance first, a genuine reliance upon a Higher Power was out of the question. That basic ingredient of humility, a desire to seek and do God’s will, was missing.”
As we were coming into town on the first day, and I told the taxi driver that I had gone to Edinburgh University, he said, “It’s one of the top ten universities in the world, you know.” In the days when I was proud of that fact, I thought humility was some kind of groveling contempt for oneself, a quality to be avoided at all costs. I was desperate to show off my accomplishments and to accomplish even more, because in those days my self-worth was tied to external accomplishments. If I prayed, it was to complain to God or to tell God what to do. Luckily, over the years, repeated humiliations have taught me the folly of reliance on my own intellect, my own accomplishments and achievements. At Marchmont yesterday, we sang a hymn based on Psalm 139 with the line “for the wonder of who I am, I praise You.” This is the meaning of humility for me today – I didn’t make myself, did I?

The castle from Princes Street Gardens; 
Ian once played "Lament for Major General Reginald Harmon" here

The other day, Matt and I were walking past Edinburgh Old College and I asked Matt if he wanted to look inside the courtyard because it was one of the most beautiful examples of Robert Adam Scottish Enlightenment Neo-Classical architecture ever, and he said sure, so we went in and there was this man in highland dress carrying bagpipes.  My old teacher, Bob Beck, taught me to scoff at pipers in full highland dress walking around Edinburgh, because they are usually buskers, not very talented, giving bagpiping a bad name, so I was suspicious. But we went over and struck up a conversation with his companion, who turned out to be an American woman who worked for the Virginia Tattoo. She said he was going to play the bagpipes for some kind of medical school event and who was he? None other than the pipe major for the Scots Guards, Ross McCrindle. For those of you unfamiliar with the world of piping, this would be the equivalent of seeing a random cellist playing in the Edinburgh Old College and then realizing it was Yo-Yo Ma.
He was totally friendly and humble, and very patient with me, even when I showed him the picture of myself in the Vet School Pipe Band.  He asked who my teacher was and I said Bob Beck. He had never met Bob, but said he sounded like quite a character, which he certainly was. I told him how Bob had returned his MBE because he thought he did not want to be a “Member of the British Empire,” how when I had played poorly he had said, “Sounds like the Queen’s comin’ round” and other bits of Bob Beck wit and wisdom. Ross played a little bit of the piobiareachd “Lament for the Children, the jig “”Troy’s Wedding,” and per my request, “The Australian Ladies.”  When I asked him to play that last tune, the look on his face and he said, “That’s sort of an unusual request.” I told him it had been my “signature tune” for the MSR (March, Strathspey and Reel). He replied that it had been his late father’s favorite, and he had never heard anyone request it before. As I listened, I thought of Bob Beck, and his father, both of whom have returned to the earth now.
Ross plays "The Australian Ladies" for us 

The next day, we climbed Arthur’s Seat and looked out to incredible views over Edinburgh Castle, the Royal Mile, the Firth of Forth, and Duddingston Kirk,

On Arthur's Seat

Ruined  St Anthony's Chapel in Holyrood Park

where the matron of Masson Hall (the ladies’ boarding house where I used to live) had attended services. She loved to tell us the story of the time she saw a young lassie sitting in the pew during the service one Sunday. Everyone else was going up for communion except for this young woman, who sat there, weeping piteously, too full of shame to approach the altar. When everyone else had taken communion, the minister came over to her with the bread and wine. He looked down kindly at her and said, “Tak’ it, lassie; it’s meant for sinners.”

fine Georgian architecture