community

I’m not religious, but . . .

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If the recent discussion of Tesco’s proposed Sunday opening in Lewis is anything to go by, people are pretty selfish. It’s basically been a rehash of Lanntairgate and that perennial favourite, Swimmingpoolgate. Even the arguments are versions of the usual thing: ‘we need to be like everywhere else’ and, in the case of the sports centre, ‘we need to be like Uist’. Smaoinich. It’s on us the two days have come when we can aspire no higher than that as Leòdhasaich.

Now, it’s already been established that the mighty supermarket is a business and, as such, couldn’t really give a stuff what we islanders think. Though they don’t exactly have a monopoly, they also know that we don’t exactly have a lot of choice when it comes to buying the messages. Therefore, Tesco can do what it likes.

Tesco can change the character of the Lewis Sunday without so much as a by-your-leave. Keep that in mind for a moment.

Now take a look at the pitched battle on social media between the pro and anti-opening lobbies. On the pro side, you will see one refrain repeated often: move with the times. Ah yes, the times. The times we live in, which we have every reason to be proud of – the times in which wars are fought over land, the times in which little children die, fleeing their despotic countries, the times in which politicians lie and defraud us. The same times – closer to home – in which old ladies are terrorised by kids who should be at home, in bed; in which respect seems to have died the same death as shame; and in which parents abdicate responsibility for the feral conduct of their offspring. Mmm hmm, those times sure are worth living up to.

The counter-argument and, as far as some of us are concerned, the clinching one, is that Christ said the very opposite. And, even if you’re not a believer, his teaching is worth paying heed to on this. He told his followers not to be conformed to the world. In other words, he exhorted them to keep to the path of truth and right. If he was here at this moment, I am pretty sure he would be reminding us of something important: the Sabbath was made for man, not the other way round. 

What does that mean? Well, it means that the day of rest was created for the benefit of all humanity – not just professing Christians. So, think on that, if you’re one of the ‘you do you’ brigade. And perhaps also consider this from a different perspective to your opinion on whether or not YOU want the supermarket to open on Sundays. Think of the staff whose families will have to make the sacrifice so that you and I have the option of maybe, occasionally, if the need arises, perhaps, nipping to Tesco once in a blue moon if we want.

Is it really worth it? Are we so utterly sure of our own judgement that we are happy to end a particular way of life simply because a corporate giant wishes it. In fact, if their local manager’s statement is anything to go by, this is being proposed because Tesco is too tight to build a bigger store with more parking. The idea, the demand, has not come from the customers. Yet, we are content to allow a company which offers a cut-rate service to alter the very character of our community.

That’s what this comes down to. And the ‘what about visitors’ defence is an extension of the ludicrous way our islands are being run. Where else would you have business interests trampling so blatantly over the local culture with no one to defend it amongst our local leadership? It’s staggering to me that some islanders and island residents are content to let this just be imposed by commercial concerns.

But, then, I’m often fairly shocked by what islanders are willing to permit.

Like many commentators on social media, I’m not religious either. Religion is often the enemy of Christianity and of common sense. It is not religiosity that makes me wish to see the Lewis Sabbath unaltered, but my personal experience that its rest is a godsend. For me, that is a literal thing. However, whether you believe it was ordained by the Lord, or not, the benefit derived from a universal day free from the obligations of commerce is undeniable.

People, community, culture are more important than trade or mere convenience. But once those precious things are altered, they cannot be put back the way they were.

“Free trolley image“/ CC0 1.0

Crofts, Crofting and Councillors

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If I live long enough to become an old woman, I hope to do so independently. That’s how I live now, and though it wasn’t entirely a matter of choice, I can’t deny that it has its blessings. My home belongs to me and I arrange it the way I want. When I close that door, no matter what horrors lurk outside, nothing much can bother me here.

It’s a house full of memories. I enjoyed almost twelve happy years of marriage here. Indeed, I was proposed to in this house. 

But, if I reach a stage of infirmity where strangers have to care for me, my house will eventually be sold to foot the bill. This home that I have loved, that I would give up willingly to no man, would become the property of Comhairle nan Eilean Siar.

There is nothing particularly outrageous or immoral about this. No local authority is so rich that it can fund limitless care for an ageing population. If outrage and immorality have any place in the debate, they have to appear a little higher up the chain of command. The financial assets of the person in receipt of care inevitably get cashed in to pay expenses incurred.  It’s just the way it is.

Some councillors, however, argue that crofts ought to be exempt from this. They wheel out the expected arguments: protect the heritage of crofting; ensure succession within crofting families; crofting is unique . . .

And it all sounds very worthy. Until you remember the prices that some crofts – bare land or with a dwelling house – have been fetching on the open market. Then you might wonder why the Comhairle should treat crofting like a sacred cow when absolutely no one else does, least of all some crofters themselves. 

Which brings us to one of the great unanswered questions of our age: what IS a crofter? At the moment, it’s defined as anyone holding the tenancy of a piece of land legally recognised as a croft. It doesn’t matter whether that person spends every waking moment tilling the soil and tending livestock, or whether they once visited the place when their granny was alive and got boxed by a ram . . . in the eyes of the law, s/he is a crofter.

So, the law, sir, is an asal. It’s the only conclusion we can come to. The crofter with sheep and hay and turnips gets the same protection as the one planning to sell granny’s acres to a housing developer. 

For, the law doesn’t define crofting, really. It defines ‘croft’ and it defines ‘crofter’, but not the verb. Therefore, we are bound by laws designed to protect a  nineteenth-century subsistence lifestyle that no longer exists. It is  actually an obscene warping of the ideals set out in the 1886 Act that croft land has become – to many, though not all –  nothing more than real estate. 

I understand where the councillors are coming from when they suggest tenancies not be regarded as assets. They cite some vague notion of crofting having a worthiness all of its own. There’s a general agreement that it’s part of our heritage, that we have a duty to protect it, and to stop the Comhairle’s finance department getting its mucky paws on granny’s lot.  

But why, when the minute granny is laid in the dust, her heirs will flog it for the most they can get, and pocket the cash? If I was the Director of Finance, I’d feel pretty darn cheated, I can tell you. 

I don’t think, taking fiduciary responsibility and common sense into account, councillors ought to even try taking the local authority on this particular guilt trip. As surely as Chamberlain looked at ‘national affairs through the wrong end of a municipal drain pipe’, I’m afraid these fellows are doing much the same in trying to make their local council carry the burden for national legislative failure.

In the process of depriving the municipal purse, they will also create a two-tier citizenry. And they still won’t be able to define what crofting is . . . which makes all the words about its importance and the case for protecting it ring a little hollow.

A House Divided

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There is an amusing scene in the Scottish film, ‘The Bridal Path’, when the naive protagonist goes to withdraw some money from his bank account, and is asked ‘what denomination’? He replies – of course – ‘Church of Scotland’.

In my own part of Scotland, denomination has been all too important, time out of mind. I wonder how many of us feel that we belong to the Church of Scotland, or the Free Church, or the Free Presbyterian Church before we belong to the church of Christ. And I equally wonder how Christ, the head of the one church there is, feels about denomination. 

How have we come, in a town like Stornoway, for example, to have two Free Church congregations, three Churches of Scotland, a Free Presbyterian Church, a Free Church (Continuing), an Associated Presbyterian Church, a Reformed Presbyterian Church, and sundry other congregations?  It would be nice if the answer to that was that no one building could contain all the worshippers. That, after all, is the only acceptable justification to have the saints of God distributed across a multitude of churches.

I know this is an awkward topic, and some people don’t approve of it being aired – but we are bound to review our own conduct in light of God’s presence. And like the adulterous woman at the well, we don’t need to hear any accusing words from Him to be convicted of this sin.

Because that’s what this is. It’s pride. Resentfulness. Self-righteousness. It’s putting ourselves and our traditions first. 

Now, I’m as guilty of this as the next person. I like the plain worship style of the island Free Churches, with no accompaniment to our Psalms-only liturgy. Heck, I even like the pews. But, if the necessity and blessing of online church has taught us anything (as I believe it was meant to), it’s that the building isn’t the church. And if the building isn’t the church, the denomination with all its committees and rules and manmade fol-de-rols sure as fate is not the church either.

Yet, we cling to these divisions as though they might be important or worthy. With no outward embarrassment, with no attempt at unity of even the most superficial kind, we have our own separate rule books, our own General Assemblies, our own identities.

As if the identity conferred by belonging to God is somehow less than that of some combination of the words ‘church’, ‘Presbyterian’, ‘Reformed’ and ‘Free’. We declare ourselves freed in Christ – free indeed – and yet, still, we entrench ourselves, not for Him, but invariably for some ‘principle’ that has us standing on our dignity. And while we bicker amongst ourselves (the children of God, mind you) about how to worship, He not only goes unworshipped, but the banner of His beautiful cause sags into the mud. The unsaved watch, open-mouthed, as those of us who profess Christ act like we have never even heard His name.

You think I exaggerate, perhaps – that I’m being harsh and judgemental?

There are four seats on Comhairle nan Eilean Sitar’s Education Committee, which are allocated to faith representatives. One, by statute, is occupied by the Church of Scotland and two, by custom, by the Roman Catholic and Free Churches as being together representative of the islands’ faith profile. The fourth has in the past been filled by the Free Presbyterian Church, but the Chief Executive of the council this week told members that he’d had representations from another denomination, suggesting that they should provide the fourth representative instead because – and I quote – they have a larger membership. 

Let that sink in: Christians – Reformed Evangelicals between whose confessional positions you could not slide one page of the KJV – trying to best one another for a seat on the Education Committee. 

Thanks to their unlovely one-upmanship, it looks like that seat will be shared with other faith groups, including some that are non-Christian.

That, folks, is an object lesson in what denominations do for the cause. The sad truth is that we show no intention of dwelling together in unity, and actually pour more energy into preserving superficial difference than pursuing the one thing needful: togetherness in the Church of Christ.

What a witness we are for the Saviour; what an example to the unsaved. My advice to the council would be not to let any of us near an Education Committee until we grow up.

Hope Springs Eternity

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As I drove the forty miles or so to attend the funeral of my friend’s father in Ness, I thought about his wife – a lovely, warm and cheerful lady, and a sister in Christ. After all their years, and four children, together, she is now a widow. But how wonderful too, I thought, that she does not grieve as those who have no hope.

What does that actually mean, though? They are words often repeated at wakes and funerals, where the doubting, the unbelieving and the seekers gather alongside the saved. Even some who belong to Christ may never have stopped to consider the difference between Christian hope and the everyday, common or garden kind.

When my late husband was diagnosed with cancer, he underwent a battery of tests and scans. The consultant told us that all these were clear and therefore, he said, ‘there IS hope’. It didn’t impress Donnie who, a Lewisman through and through, interpreted it as a forlorn attempt to make the grim certainty of death a little less imminent. Hope, he argued, is all we have to cling onto when reality is a bit hard to take. And ‘hope’ seemed like a weak word in that moment, implying an outside chance at best.

We are often asked to prepare for the worst whilst hoping for the best and – again – this has trained us that hope is little more than a comfort blanket, and a thin one at that.

It was, as I’ve written before, at my own father’s funeral that I really began to understand the nature of Christian hope, and its difference from the common way. As a friend clasped my mother’s hand and told her, ‘he’s in the happy land’, I saw something in both these women that was much stronger than words: it was certainty. They had placed faith in so trustworthy a Saviour that there could be no doubting his promises. This was not a frail hope that the Gospel might just possibly be true, but a living reality, played out in front of me and anyone else whose eyes were open that day.

How strange it must seem to those as yet living in unbelief that death is often the place where Christians display the greatest hope. To those with no faith, the valley of the shadow is a desolate spot, a featureless wasteland where they must part forever with someone they have loved very much in life. That last clasp of hands, the dying breath . . . they are final. It is here in the valley that worldly hope perishes.

For the disciples, there was a time like this too, when the man they thought was the Saviour died, and their hope with him.

But even though they didn’t realise it, they were certainly not grieving as those who have no hope: they were grieving for a Saviour who accomplished so much more than they could have imagined. Jesus did not escape the cross because he did not want to merely cheat death; he embraced his punishment because he had promised to conquer death.

And conquer it he did.

We are asked to always be ready to give a defence of the reason for the hope that is in us. Well, I say you can do worse than look to the widows. 

My friend’s mother, my own mother and myself are all privileged to know the same thing, and to share in the same hope.

Death is indeed the final parting – because when we are reunited with those who have gone before us, it will be eternally and it will be in a better country – yes, even than Ness! This is not the hope offered by a kindly surgeon, but the security we can all enjoy in the Great Physician.

The crofter, the tourist and the black, black Commission

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There is yet another story this week about a croft tenancy for sale in Harris, inviting offers in the region of an eye-watering £200,000. It is obviously with a view to the development value of the croft that this price has been set – acres of glamping pods rather than potatoes are all that could justify such a hefty ticket.

And that’s fine. One person can sell his croft and he’d be a mug not to ask the very highest sum buyers are willing to pay.

The issue here is not with the individual- it’s with the law that permits such a thing to happen at all. In fact, it’s not even that. All over the country, for many years, developers and speculators have brought up prime real estate for all kinds of money-making projects. That’s the kind of malarkey capitalism approves. So, some people scratch their heads, puzzled at the hissy fits being thrown across the Long Island over what is, after all, the legitimate sale of land.

Therein, though, lies the rub. 

Negative reactions to this sort of thing stem from the confusing presence of a relic from a bygone age: crofting legislation. It was created in the nineteenth century to protect our ancestors from landlord whim – the economic imperative (or ‘greed’, if you prefer) that had led to a long period of clearance across the Gàidhealtachd. 1886 was a seminal year, then, with the first Act to protect crofters landing on the statute books.

Read that last sentence again. Notice anything? That’s right – the law was designed to protect crofters, not crofting: the people, not the system; the community, not the commodity.

Over the years, we have become more financially secure, as successive generations left the land to work for the man. Yet, some people continued to work their crofts, until the excesses of headage payments saw everyone packing the acres with sheep and cattle. When I was growing up in the nineteen eighties, the CAP had made it all about subsidy. Then, the greener nineties, with their hole in the ozone layer and their Earth summits, started pushing for better stewardship of the land.

And now, there is tourism. Where the nineteenth century displaced communities for the sheep, our century is doing the same for the visitor. 

For many people, the villain in this piece is the Crofting (no longer ‘Crofters’’) Commission. They exist to regulate crofting as a system of land use and, like opponents of selling crofts as real estate say, it ain’t happening. Social media is full of half-formed opinions which coalesce around the notion that the Commission isn’t doing its duty. But the Commission is subject to the same laws that crofting is, and to woeful underfunding from government.

The problem is that we don’t all agree on why crofting is important. For me, its primary value has been in the way it ensured people could build homes in areas that might – without the grants and loans that used to be available – lie empty. Most of these board houses were built here in Lewis and Harris, anyway, by young islanders wishing to establish themselves in the place they grew up. During those years, ‘community’ in this place was synonymous with the notion of extended family, of continuity and connection with place.

Now, as the progenitors of these homes age and die, they are sold on to strangers. The children of these families are often elsewhere – many went to the mainland for education or work and have made their lives there. It isn’t always possible to keep the family home; and so the houses pass into the hands of those who can afford them.

Times have changed, but crofting legislation has not recognised this. It is a confused mish-mash that actually protects little that is worth having. 

People buy tenancies now in order to make easy money from tourism and related activities. ‘Diversification’ is a bit of a misnomer as far as I can see because non-traditional use of the land is rapidly becoming the norm. The guys with the hay and the cattle or sheep, they’re the real experimentalists. You can even forget about the sanctity of common grazing because you don’t need to be a crofting shareholder to run a business on pasture that was once intended for communal animal grazing. Literally anything goes in some townships.

So, the moment has definitely arrived for hard decisions to be made. We have so-called crofting laws that encourage the destruction of community, and of crofting itself.

It’s time we shifted the emphasis back to the protection of crofters, as opposed to crofting. In doing so, there is a need to define what a crofter is – and that most certainly has got to be a bit tighter than just some fly-by-night who happens to hold a tenancy. Only then will we know what the laws are meant to protect, and evaluate whether they’re still worth the ink that’s been spilt.

And only then will we know if we have any right – or reason – to be outraged by the things that are done under the guise of crofting.

Now Only Three

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On Sunday morning, I was driving through the neighbouring village of Gress. To my left, the carpark was already starting to fill up, and people were unloading an assortment of beach toys, dogs and children. Over to the right, the cemetery lay quietly, an eloquent reminder that even in the midst of life, we are in death. As I continued onwards, I fell to pondering what visitors make of our cemeteries, plentiful and prominent as they are.

In fact, like our primary schools and churches, the burial grounds are a testament to the way in which Lewis was grown. Each village was a world entire for the people who belonged to it. And note my use of language- it’s something those from outside of the islands would do well to take on board: we make no claim of ownership on these communities, but they have a claim on us. That’s why, to a degree, the concept of community ownership in the literal sense is a bit alien. Traditionally, our relationship with land has not been proprietorial.

Indeed, our relationships were always described in terms of claims on, and not by, us. Where do you belong to? Who do you belong to? 

Thus, the villages had their churches to nurture the spiritual lives of the people, and schools to educate. Land was tenanted, not possessed, and the whole patchwork stitched together by fellow feeling, common experience and mutual understanding. 

The cemeteries are a part of it. One of the first things I did as a grown-up, married woman was to pay the lair fees for myself, my husband and my mother in-law. I began life in Tolsta paying nine pounds, then six . . . and now only three. It is an annual memento mori, a gentle pecuniary reminder nach e seo baile a mhaireas. Unlike many other townships, Tolsta’s cemetery is less prominent and so far removed from the village that you could go your whole life without glimpsing it. That’s a shame, I think, because when burial grounds are at the centre of a village, they do serve as a normaliser of death as something natural. For most villages, too, until very recently, burial itself occupied a central role in community life: everyone turned out to local funerals. 

Lewis funerals were the ultimate act of community – a public solidarity with the grieving family, and a respectful acknowledgement of the deceased person’s place in the tapestry of their lives. We understand better than most how someone you barely knew, or knew only by sight or who was just a name to you, still touched your life in some way, however small. They existed, they shared your heritage, they were a part of the same things you are. And thanks to our very civilised and healthy relationship with death, we are able to give them that dignified place at the end of life. The patronymic system ensures that their memory lives on, a chain linking those of us still in life to the relations and neighbours gone ahead into eternity.  It connects us, across the continents and oceans also, to the emigrated loved ones, keeping them a part of our community in life and in death, just the same.

We are losing our hold on what has kept these communities through the centuries. The church building may be where it was placed, at the centre of our villages, but the actual church is rarely at the heart of community life. And because of this, our relationship with death is also changing, turning into something sour and unhealthy.

It is darkly ironic that the unbelievers who call Christianity ‘a death cult’ are so prepared to argue against the sanctity of life themselves. If an unborn life is inconvenient, terminate it in the bud; if a person’s health is deteriorating or their quality of life poor, remove the burden now. Don’t wait on God’s providence, don’t trust him: push his hand away and do it for yourself. Somehow, we think that a life untrammelled by difficulty or pain is our birthright, and if it isn’t provided for us we must take it for ourselves. That justifies breaking the commandment to protect life. What does God know of our suffering?

The people who placed their churches and their cemeteries at the heart of community life knew better than to turn their faces from him. In accepting his seasons of providence, they showed great wisdom. ‘Fatalistic’, some have called it, but I don’t see it that way. They trusted him with all the moments of their lives. We are linked to them, through that patronymic chain, through all the words of prayer uttered by parents for children, by sisters for their brothers and vice-versa, and by pastors for their flocks.

Let us find our way back to a place where God is permitted to be God, and we accept that it is both in and to him we belong.

Another Man’s Croman

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(A belated tribute to the late Eachann Dòmhnallach)

I like a laugh as much as the next miserable Calvinist, if only to take my mind off the doctrine of predestination for a minute. Any longer would be too long, even in the context of eternity. Unfathomable immortality may lie before me, but it’s still a sin to waste any of it on frivolity. 

It was in this grudging spirit that I dislodged ‘A View from North Lochs’ from the bookcase where it had been languishing, and took a flip through. Well, it fairly brought me back to the days when I would, as a geeky teenager, eagerly buy my illicit copy of the WHFP purely for Hector Macdonald’s offbeat look at island life. I had seen him once, shaking his fist at an SNP election cavalcade of which I was part, but he otherwise maintained – for me – an air of mystery and legend. He was smart and funny, with a voice that was nothing if not authentic.

Also subversive. A radical, if you will. And even if you won’t. Indeed, especially if you won’t, for isn’t that the way with radicals?

One of my favourite things about him was the way he managed to be a voice for the maws. Any Leòdhasach over a certain age knows that for long enough particular things ran unquestioningly along established lines. Certain roles were to be fulfilled by townies of a specific caste – it was not merely enough to be born within the samh of taigh nan guts and òcrach Bheinn na Dròbha, but it was a start. You certainly couldn’t have the country Maoris with their turned-down wellies traipsing into the town hall or clarting the carpets of Amity House with  anything unmentionable.

Eachann poked fun at this attitude without mercy. He feigned an exaggerated humility and tugged his forelock in such a way that one knew, somehow, exactly what he really thought. Don’t imagine, however, that this was wanton iconoclasm. In those heady days before the faceless nastiness of social media, this man had the art of satirising without giving gratuitous offence. 

And, as I reread the collected columns, published by Birlinn a number of years after his death, something else came back to me. Last week, in the course of my day job, I had to garner a view from Kinloch. (They will honestly do anything to try and provoke my resignation, but I stand firm). This latter-day Lochie commentator had useful insights to offer on the past and present of the crofting community. One thing really stood out, however.

We talk of schemes to regenerate the crofting community and the Gaelic community . . . and in the process, we overlook the common denominator. All these earnest attempts to revive the language and keep an historic system of land tenure alive, they fail to take account of the way in which community has changed.

One of the proofs that what I say is true is the ebbing away of island humour.
Not long ago, I tried to persuade a neo-crofter that he should keep his hens (I may have called them ‘chickens’ to ensure he understood me) to himself, and that if I was the kind of deviant who wanted hens, I’d get some of my own. He has taken the notion of ‘free-range’ to include my weed-killer infested property, so if the egg consumers of Tolsta start to display odd traits (sorry, odder), you’ll know why.  Not totally au fait with the notion of personal responsibility, he replied unconvincingly that he’d try. I, in turn, suggested that a man who is outwitted by hens probably shouldn’t have any in the first place, lest they overpower him with their superior intellect.

This gentle rejoinder was greeted by apoplexy of the sort normally reserved for hauliers ringing the Calmac booking line. He didn’t get island humour. Of course, why would he? And clearly he thinks that’s the worst I’ve got, so I’ll try to be gentler. Any crofter who wears a safety helmet on a quad probably should be handled with sensitivity, right enough.

I’d have had more respect for him if, instead of throwing a hissy fit, he’d replied as the other fellow did when his neighbour complained of a similar feathery invasion.

‘Tha na cearcan agaibhse staigh an seo a-rithist agus ag ith biadh nan cearcan againne’, the first maw complained.

‘O, tha mi a’ creids’ – tha iad glè bheag umhail mar sin’.

People don’t think of others like they used to, relate to others like they used to or, dare I say, know one another like they used to. It’s ironic that when it was merely ‘sa bhaile againne’, we were more of a community; and now that we no longer know or care for each other as we did, we just can’t stop using the word, ‘community’. 

I’m not all that sure who it is we’re trying to convince. What I do know is that most of the wisest people I’ve ever met had the same answer for dealing with the common or garden amadan – laugh at him. Whether he is an amadan sporting the chains of high office, an amadan with a pen, or an amadan on a grazings committee, he is underneath it all, just an amadan. 

And in a community like ours, we’ve all been the amadan at some point. Some come from a long line of amadain, others strike out for themselves. It would be nice if we could remember that, and learn how to laugh at ourselves – and each other – without it causing a fence.

Reputation or Character?

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Many years ago, the post office at Achmore briefly became a crime scene. Over a period of time, small sums of money had been disappearing and, as is bound to happen in such cases, people were beginning to regard one another with suspicion. This is an unhealthy state of affairs in a small community, and so a plan was hatched.

Two people lay in wait on a given night, hoping to apprehend the light-fingered culprit.

Imagine their shock, then, when he turned out not to be light-fingered – or, more accurately, not to be in possession of any fingers at all.

‘How sad’, you say, ‘what all that inbreeding can cause’.

You misunderstand me: he had a long tail and whiskers.

‘Yes, Achmore’, you nod sadly.

You’re still not getting it: he was a rat; a felonious rodent with a penchant for bent accounting. When his little stash was discovered, the money was even arranged according to denomination. 

Still, isn’t everything in this part of the world?

History doesn’t record the relief this discovery must have occasioned. We are far too ready to regard our fellows with suspicion, and they in their turn to think badly of us. That the real culprit turned out to be a rat must surely have been welcome news all round.

I was thinking about false accusations recently, and the harm they – and gossip – can inflict. It is the instinct of every person to protect their own good name, and to lash out at those who would defame it. That drive is no less present in the Christian, but there is a very particular reason why we have to fight it.

In surrendering your life to Christ you are giving him control of everything. You are acknowledging his complete ownership of all that you are, and all that you have.

Including your reputation.

That’s his too. Remember Job? Joseph? King David? All three saw their good names sullied without cause. David was exiled, Joseph imprisoned, and Job had the particular pain of being doubted by his friends. Surely – as Eliphaz believed – a Christian who suffers loss of reputation must certainly have offended God deeply.

That’s a logical stance for the world to take. They cannot distinguish between character and reputation. And, of course, they refuse to accept that their view of the matter is not final. It is a state of affairs as old as time (or very nearly). Read the Book of Psalms for repeated exhortations that God not allow his servant to be put to shame by the enemy.

Inevitably, these petitions conclude in the same way: remembering God’s faithfulness and praiseworthy name.

The key to bearing trial, whether bereavement slander, or scandal, is to place yourself back where you belong: in God’s hands. See his strength actually perfected in your own weakness. 

These are not just nice words: I have lived them.

Sadly, I have also failed to live them. The unregenerate part of me wants to defend myself against liars. These efforts tend, however, to be fruitless – not because I am wrong, but because my appeal fails in the courts of men. 

The courts of men are built on the very street in which truth is fallen.

We have all, therefore, to seek after the weakness of which Paul boasted, ‘for when I am weak, then am I strong’. God owns my reputation; it is not mine to defend.

Can a Christian be slandered and wronged with impunity, then? Yes. And no. It all depends whose verdict you value. We can, it would appear, be subject to all the vilest jibes and condemnation of the world. Christians may even – as Job was – be judged wrongly by the brethren.

However, we can also stand fast in the love of Christ and pray as he did. If our reputation is God’s then, the awful truth is that our enemies are much to be pitied, for they really know not what they do.

Because He Loved Us First

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When the bombs fell on Buckingham Palace in 1940, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother said that she was glad because it meant that she and the King could finally ‘look the East End in the eye’. Many people have laughed at this statement, believing it to be illustrative of just how out of touch the royal family is. People who had almost nothing, losing everything they owned in one night were not experiencing the same war as the privileged Windsors with their untold wealth and multiple palatial residences. If one castle gets totalled, move to another: that is not poverty.

We seem to believe that empathy can only stem from our having actually experienced something. Until the monarch has to live in a high-rise flat with no food in the fridge and no money to feed the meter, she cannot begin to understand the plight of her poorest subjects.

Empathy, though, is like faith – it shouldn’t require evidence. Nothing breaks my heart more than homelessness, though I have mercifully never been in that position myself. Surely the essence of the empathetic heart is being able to find the common point of experience. The Queen Mother was not suggesting that her domestic situation was the same as that of the Eastenders; she was saying, however, that both knew what it was to have their homes threatened and even breached. One was much larger and grander, yes, but home nonetheless.

And, just the same, when I saw our Queen sitting all by herself at the funeral of her husband, I could finally understand how a blone from Lewis and the monarch of a kingdom might have something in common.

When the time came for the mourners to file into the church on the day of my husband’s funeral, a church officer approached me and asked, ‘are you alone?’ I felt his words like a knife to my heart. Yes indeed, I thought, quite alone. My best friend, my helpmeet, my companion in life, has gone on without me, and I have to navigate this path as best I can with no hand to hold.

I don’t imagine the pain of losing a spouse is any less when you are a world leader. Perhaps, indeed, the pain is greater still for one whose life is so public. She must now find a way in which to do everything she used to do, but always conscious of the absence where Prince Philip used to be. It is likely – though by no means certain – that her reunion with him will come much more quickly than mine with Donnie. When I was first widowed, I used to envy elderly women in my position, because I thought they wouldn’t have to experience so much of life without their husbands.

Now, though, I know it makes no difference. Jesus knew he would raise Lazarus from the dead, but he still wept with the family. His tears were not merely for their pain, but for the human condition – for the fall that has brought us to a place of death. Inevitably, whether we are exalted in the land or humble, we gather at the graveside and mourn for what the great leveller has removed.

Jesus – the Queen’s Saviour and mine – was displaying empathy. He was shedding tears for mankind, for the sin that brought death into our experience. Although he was about to raise Lazarus from the dead, death would eventually claim him a second time.

Of course, the depth of Jesus’ empathy was what led him to finally surrender himself on the cross. So moved was the Lord’s heart by what we have inflicted upon ourselves, that he did not merely weep with the bereaved: he gave himself to death in our place.

Christ became man and walked this Earth. He was born into the humblest of surroundings. As a man, he had no home to call his own, no regular income, no insurance policies. The King of Kings was a vagrant.

But that isn’t what made him the most empathetic man who ever lived.

Before God sent his Son into the world, there was compassion, and there was empathy for our plight. Do we castigate God because he has never had his home destroyed, or lost his spouse? Would it be fair to tell him that he cannot understand our pain? Of course not, because he is the very model of what empathy means. If I may put it like this, he carried empathy to its ultimate conclusion.

If we are followers of Christ, then, shouldn’t empathy be part of our character? There are things I have not suffered, practices I do not approve, walks I have not had to take . . . but when I see my fellow man in their midst, where is my heart? Do I rush to judgement, to vitriol and condemnation, or do I say, ‘there but for God’s grace go I’.

Christ came alongside all manner of sin and suffering. That was empathy. And we are capable of it, it is expected of us, because he loved us first.

More than a Destination

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About ten years ago, I found myself on a small, open boat, bound for Kitchener’s Island. Before you consult the Landranger Taobh Siar map, stop, you maw – it’s in Egypt. While we were making our way, a smaller boat still came alongside us and we were joined by three tall, dignified figures. These men and women were Nubians – indigenous people of southern Egypt – and they were there to sell their beads and trinkets to the day-trippers.

They are a displaced people whose ancient culture was no defence against the march of ‘progress’ – moved aside for the Aswan Dam, they grieve to this day for the loss of ancestral lands. And many eke out a living hawking crafts to rich, white tourists making their way to an island no longer known by its native name.

I wonder what they would make of other age-old civilisations actively choosing that life. Little did they think that, among the pasty-faced travellers who bought bracelets from them that afternoon, were people whose own way of life is being willingly subsumed by the great god of tourism.

People here in the Western Isles talk about tourism in reverential tones, as though it is some sort of moral good. Whenever the prospect of other kinds of economic development is raised – wind turbines being the obvious contemporary example – there is much swooning and tutting and cries of, ‘what will it do to tourism?’ For reasons I cannot fathom, almost everything we do here in the islands has got to be measured against that particular yardstick, as though, like some hideous aping of Brigadoon, we only exist when seen through the eyes of others.

The tedious Sunday issue is the same. Those who like the six-day uniqueness of Lewis and Harris are told that they are selfish, backward and ‘what must tourists think?’.

Well, with all due respect to them – and speaking as an occasional tourist myself – I don’t see why we should actually care. If they are going to visit, they should be pleased to find that we haven’t conformed to some mass-market idea of ‘Hebridean-ness’, but continue to uphold our own traditional values and way of life. Besides, surely we are more than just a destination.

Aren’t we a living community?

In order to go on being a living community, I contend that we have to look to agricultural metaphors – cherish our roots, and encourage our young shoots to grow. That, for those of you with a more literal turn of mind, means protecting our heritage, and nurturing our younger generation.

One of the great white hopes of our recent past has been the advent of community land ownership. It has taken its place alongside apple pie and motherhood (and flipping tourism for some) in the annals of all that is good and positive. I’m not persuaded, however, that it’s the panacea some would claim. The system of crofting tenure in its current form has really meant that the Gàidhealtachd has been wresting land from private control, only to watch the open market in holiday homes and tourist development turn us back into an off-season wilderness. If the tinkers could only see how we have moved from maligning and distrusting them to positively encouraging itinerant wanderers into our midst, the irony would probably knock them off their feet. Anyone with the necessary cash can buy a croft tenancy – or several – and turn these acres over to chalets, glamping pods or gypsy caravans, and there is not one single thing the landowner (community or otherwise) can do about it.

There is, of course, room for tourism in the Western Isles economy. We have many good quality, hotels, bed and breakfasts and guest houses; we have some high-end self-catering, and some good camping facilities. In the years to come, Stornoway’s port development will ensure that we are much better equipped to welcome cruise ship traffic. I recently lunched in a local hotel, where ours was one of only three tables occupied at the peak period. Obviously, local people are not enough to keep the doors of such businesses open. Summer visitors will undoubtedly swell the numbers and fill the tills, which can only be good for the hotelier and the conscientious people he employs.

I understand, too, that people want to come and witness the beauty and the heritage of our islands for themselves. That said, I object to the attitude that manifested last summer amongst some would-be visitors, on being told that locals were reticent about the reopening of our ports in the midst of a pandemic. ‘You can’t stop us’, some (a minority, I would hope) said, ‘the islands don’t belong to you’.

That’s told the land buyout brigade, eh?

Well, no, of course the islands don’t belong to us. What any born and bred islander will tell you, though, is that we belong to them. Lewis is much more than a lovely place to live for the native Leòdhasach; it holds us to itself in ways that I cannot begin to describe. Ask the Leòdhasach abroad to explain his cianalas, and he can’t, but it is the flip-side of loving the place that grew you.

However, that love has to express itself in practical ways for the Leòdhasach (other islands are available) at home. We have to be mindful of the fact that this IS a community. People who live here all the year round want to enjoy a little summer freedom, and not to have to constantly jostle with visitors because our entire economy has been given over to tourism. Equally, we have to provide for those who do come, and we have to allow that there will always be an industry that caters to them.

So, what’s the answer? Well, think of those other two indigenous plants, Gaelic and crofting. In fact, think of economic development in general. What have they all got in common?

Regulation. There is no regulatory body for tourism, though. Indeed, there is no real definition of ‘tourism’. That’s why, despite the extravagant claims made on its behalf, it is actually quite hard to pin down in any assessment of our islands’ or our country’s GDP. There is tension between tourism and Gaelic, tourism and land use, tourism and almost every form of economic development.

Yet, it grows unchecked, like a falasgair on tinder-dry mòinteach.