is a cluster of chamber tombs very like the renowned Newgrange, only much, much smaller. There must have been a dozen or more of them, each one surrounded by its own cluster of five to a dozen small chamber tombs. Every hilltop as far as I could see with my binoculars seemed to be home to a chamber tomb with its cluster of smaller ones. When I found the one for which I had the key it was already populated with a busload of school kids. I bided my time, checking out other tombs, hoping they would leave before another bus arrived. They did. And no one else had come yet! I had that site to myself. This particular tomb was the largest in this complex, and its central burial chamber had not yet been completely studied by the archeologists, so was kept locked to protect it behind a barred door such that you could see in, but could not get in. But! I had the key! Furtive glances around, no one in sight. Unlock door, creep in, lock door behind me, sneak down the passageway, right into the central burial chamber. No bones or anything, a few candles; some others have been here before with motives as subversive as mine. Some modest but ancient spirals and cupped circles on the stones, nothing spectacular, but certainly authentic. Probably three to five thousand years old. I settled down to experience this space. Here I was alone, in an ancient burial site which certainly had been used, sitting in the very place where the body, probably many bodies had been interred sequentially. Considered a holy place by the pagans who’d made it. Maybe a portal to the spiritual world? I settled in to stay a while, not particularly in prayer; just being there, listening, feeling, sensing, wondering. One family came and explored and left without detecting me. Alone again. Very quiet. There was enough light from the entrance and a hole in the center of the otherwise intact roof to keep it from feeling spooky. Did it feel holy? Sacred? I could not be sure whether the very vague sense I had was of this place, or merely my feeling of oddness for being in it. I came away unsure. But it was certainly a unique experience. I thanked my hostess for her generosity. I knew not what to make of it. I still don’t.
Standing Stone Circles
In Chapter 2 I talk a little about a circle of stones named Gors Fawr. It was not my first circle of stones, but it was my introduction. Nancy and I have sought out a number of circles over the years, even made that search one of the foci of a vacation in Scotland after the end of my sabbatical. I will not offer a discourse on them; you can search that out for yourself. I only need to say that they may be very important. Perhaps holy sites. Not Christian, but holy nonetheless. We do not, after all, have a monopoly on holiness.
My first circle had been the most famous, Stone Henge. Suzy and I encountered it on my first trip to the British Isles the year before she died. Unfortunately we got there only a day or two before the summer solstice, and the surrounding grounds were a solid encampment of self-proclaimed druids and new-agers, and people pretending to be white witches and such. There was nothing holy about that site on that day. Someone (in deep reverence I would suppose) had spray-painted some graffiti on the stones, so they were now well fenced off and unapproachable. A tourist attraction to pass by as quickly as possible.
I may have encountered another circle of stones before Gors Fawr, I can’t recall. I do remember a few standing stones (not circles), while on Celtic pilgrimages that seemed to have some unnameable, faint power about them; or maybe it was my imagination. Or my hope. My next circle after Stone Henge was likely the Ring of Brodgar on Mainland in the Orkneys, a circle three hundred and forty feet in diameter with stones that stand as high as fifteen feet. Nancy and I were introduced to it during a small local tour, and then returned to walk among the stones and experience them for ourselves. I don’t remember experiencing anything of power among them, though they are very impressive.
Clearest in my mind are several circles Nancy and I sought out the summer of 1996, at the conclusion of my sabbatical, these on Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. The first, Ceann Hulavig was off the beaten track, lost in a field you could only get to by walking blindly over a hilltop. We had to get directions from two farmers chatting at a gate; they looked at us and at each other in barely disguised amusement. It was not a huge circle (actually an ellipse forty-three by thirty-one feet) with only five stones still standing, though the stones ranged up to eight and a half feet tall. We spent a while there, in amongst the stones, comparing what we were experiencing, sensing something but with such a vague intensity that we were not the least sure it wasn’t simply our imagination, or wishful thinking. Then two younger folks came over the hilltop from a different direction. They were carrying dowsing rods and dowsing every now and then. When they got close to the circle they started dowsing seriously. We watched a while, doing our own exploring. After they’d covered the area I asked, “Finding anything?” “Yes,” was the reply, “the intersection of two ley lines. (One theory of the placement of standing stone circles is that they mark the intersection of ley lines, lines of power that run along the earth’s surface). Actually, several ley lines.” I sensed something from one of the stones.
We went on to the “The Men of Callanish,” a most impressive circle (again, an ellipse forty-three by thirty-nine feet with a central pillar, thirteen stones, and an avenue of nineteen stones), considered second only to Stone Henge. Called “The Men of Callanish” because the swirls in the graining of the Lewissean gneiss (the oldest stone in the world) create in some of the stones the impression of faces. The stones, while much smaller than Stone Henge, are much more beautiful, and the site is more inspiring, overlooking Loch Roags. But by now it has become the major tourist attraction of Lewis, with a tourist center and all, and signs directing people to stay on the paths outside the circle itself. Too busy to emit any holiness or power for an average observer such as myself.
But only three-quarters of a mile away we found Cnoc Fillibhir within full view of Callanish. Within sight of the highway, it is bypassed by folks headed for Callanish, and so is left alone. We spent over an hour there and no one else came! Two concentric ellipses (the outer forty-five by forty-three feet with thirteen stones, five of them fallen, and the inner thirty-four by twenty-one feet of now only four stones, but taller than the outer ring) made of the same stone as Callanish, so with the same beautiful graining. We had the time and aloneness to explore this circle and felt with some certainty some power emanating from at least one of the stones. Three hundred yards down the hill toward the loch was still another circle, Cnoc Cneann.
I confess that I do not know what to make of these circles of standing stones. I am somewhat repulsed by their attraction for new-agers and self-styled druids. But on the other hand, something about them draws me too, and what my guide in Wales said makes some peace in me about them. I suppose their age, and some unexamined supposition in me that the ancients who sited and built them were working from some ancient wisdom now lost to us, piques my curiosity. Probably pure fantasy, wishful thinking. But the mystery of them is still one of my foundation stones. I cannot bring myself to dig it up and roll it off the slope. I am stuck with it.
The Smell of Dirt
I remember from my tender years the smell of the dirt in the woods, on a hot August day when the temperature was almost unbearable up at the top, but down here, in the quiet, stillness of the shadowed woods it was dimmer and cooler and dank, and as I sat beside that tiny creek, watching the water trickle by, hoping to see a crawdad, the sweet, smell of the cool damp earth was luscious! I did not recognize it then, but God was there, watching me, comforting me in the hollow of Her hand.
The Voice of God
The prophets heard God speaking (“The LORD said . . . ”). Some preachers of the evangelical bent claim to hear God speaking. I am a doubter. Only liars and crazy men claim they hear God speaking to them audibly. There are far too many Elmer Gantrys in this world for me to trust any of them. But I have heard the voice of God, once. I was in chapel, in seminary, in that rough middler year when everything theological I’d brought to seminary was being ripped out of me and new understandings put into their places. The pain was intense. I had only one question, “Did I belong here? Was I intended for ministry in the church?” And the answer coming out of my pain was, “No, bail out now.” But I had a wife and two small children, no occupation, no way to make a living, not the slightest notion what else in life I might want to do, or be able to do. Suzy pointed out that
