Plenary, 25 Sep 2002

Meeting date: Wednesday, September 25, 2002

Official Report 363KB pdf

---

Time for Reflection

To lead our time for reflection this week, we welcome Alison Twaddle, the general secretary of the Church of Scotland Guild.

I thank Sir David and members of the Scottish Parliament for the invitation to share this time of reflection with you.

This summer, my football-daft son has taken up cricket. This has not met with universal approval. There are those who view the game as sissy, snobbish and somehow un-Scottish. I have reacted strongly to that attitude and here is why.

In one of those upheavals of war that affect the lives of individuals as profoundly as they affect nation states and ideologies, a young man from the mills of west Yorkshire found himself posted, 60 years ago, to a highland village in Ross-shire. He met an attractive young woman, and the rest, as they say, is history. The war over, he took his bride back to south Yorkshire where he had work. It was for her a considerable culture shock. The language was difficult to understand; instead of spreading out the washing to bleach on the hedges, she was frequently hauling it in from the line to wash away the soot spots from the neighbouring coal tips—she could see six from her kitchen window. She was able to follow her faith, but even that took strange new forms—quiet highland Presbyterianism was replaced by the social gospel of Methodism. She was, you might say, homesick.

But 50 years later, when on retirement she returned to her beloved Scotland, she wept buckets; not for the soot of the coal mines long gone, nor for the accent she had never quite got the hang of, nor even for the Wesley hymns, but for the people; the people who had been welcoming, accepting and generous-hearted; the people who had been interested in her culture, learning her country dances and appreciating her songs, and from whom she in turn had learned the art of the perfect Yorkshire pudding and a lifelong love of village cricket. How glad she would have been to see her thoroughly Scottish grandson follow in his grandpa's footsteps as a mean spin bowler.

Another young woman in another time and place came as an economic migrant to a distant land, where she found work and a husband and where, in time, her great-grandson became the leader of the nation. That is not the great American dream, although it might well be, but the Biblical story of Ruth, great-granny of King David. Who knows what future sporting heroes, MSPs or First Ministers may even now be arriving on our shores to share the great Scottish dream?

Our prayer is:

God save us from the impoverishment we will inflict upon ourselves if we fail to see and embrace the gifts and insights of those who are different from ourselves.