Edinburgh – innerwoven

I’m a musician.

More specifically, a songwriter, a composer of three to five-ish minute stories, sung exposés of heart and soul, guts and grime, faces and places. Sometimes they squeeze out of me like toothpaste from the tube, globular and grotesque until they shape up, shine up, or ship out. Sometimes they feel like a Rubik’s cube – confused and mystifying until the right colours align and the palette finds its rightful place. Sometimes they are a town made of Legos, uninhabitable ghettos, angular, sharp, hard on the feet, until the final block snaps into place and home comes into view.

In rare moments, they arrive complete. Finished. No edits required. A gift that asks only to be notated, promptly sung, and properly introduced to whomever might be interested.

This song is one of those.

2015. It came to me while sitting in my reading room at our home in Yakima, Washington. What follows is the story of its (and my own) emergence.

A church music director for most of my adult life, it had been my remit to satisfy front-of-house needs for artistic class, professionalism, cultural relevance (whatever that means), beauty, and involvement in the particular church of my employ. Choral directing, training, and performance; listening endlessly to frequently banal worship songs, pursuing the best ones for consumption; composing and/or arranging new songs; identifying, training, and releasing new musicians; seasonal concerts and performances; hobnobbing with the muck-a-mucks to ensure funding and support to our program; fielding “concerned” emails about my approach, methodology, song choices, or choice of hairstyle (no, really).

I genuinely loved it. I think I’ve been good at it but won’t ask too many questions, just in case…

But, any job, even one as fulfilling as this, can become stretched, insufficiently gratifying to ensure warmth on those cold days of uncertainty and desire for something new. The best tricks up one’s sleeve become well known, even expected, to onlookers. Tricks of the trade, inside jokes, clever banter (at least I thought so) – where once they generated wonder and amazement, now, at best, they go all but unnoticed and, at worst, prompt eye-rolls, chuckles, even groans generally reserved for Dad-jokes.

At least that was my growing perception. I’d spent my last creative dime, so to speak, and was struggling to feel fresh and original. To a dyed-in-the-wool Enneagram 4, that was unacceptable. Diabolical even. It prompted a long period of reconsideration.

A second presenting concern was the resignation of the senior pastor with whom I’d enjoyed years of heady and inspiring co-leadership. Duncan, a young and vibrant Princeton graduate with off-the-charts charisma, energy, creativity, competence, and ideas had joined our staff. I was smitten by his indefatigable creativity, compassionately confident, and compelling leadership. It was, in a word, a bromance.

Duncan and I in 2011

He had hit a wall personally and professionally and felt the need not just to resign from guiding our church, but from ministry altogether (he is now a happy and successful fire fighter). The news hit me like a train. I believed us to be the Simon and Garfunkel, Lennon and McCartney, Plant and Page of our church. By his own admission, he felt similarly. All that, however, was to be no more. I was lost and shouldered it like Apollo’s world-bearing curse. Could I continue doing all this but in brand new ways? Should I do these things but in a new location? Would I find satisfaction doing something else entirely? None of the above? All of the above?

For many, these questions are professional ones, career-defining questions designed to clarify and shape one’s evolving professional life. For me, they were existential and required a deeper dive towards any kind of answer. Let’s try anyway, shall we?

From longing to belonging. Exile to welcome. Banishment to inclusion. Since most of my best writing has arisen from places of the former, it has been exceptionally difficult capturing the latter. A series of essays sought to explore this topic, captured best in the Welsh Celtic notion of “hiraeth.”

Those like me, perpetually wandering melancholics, happiest when a bit sad can feel a little lost as this begins to melt away in the face of…peace. Shalom. How can it be that someone whose cottage industry had been disenchantment and ennui suddenly finds contentment?

After a sabbatical in 2016 to the UK, it was clear that this was where we were truly meant to be. There began a long process of discernment through which we embarked upon a new journey: a move from Yakima, Washington to Edinburgh, Scotland.

“You Want to Fly Again” was my heart’s cry for what we’re currently experiencing. The song had been covertly prophetic of what was yet to come. I was unaware that I’d written a song intended for everyone but which held within it the seeds of an unfolding reality. And that reality is good. Very good.

I encourage anyone who happens upon these words to do so with faith in the God who still works in mysterious and miraculous ways. If this can become our journey, I am bold to say it can be so for you as well.

May it be so.

*Looking out from the Christmas Festival on Prince’s Street*

The air feels sharp. Like a paper cut on dry skin. The same air that is moderated by the sea is also saturated with it so that the wind denies however many layers one can throw at its defence.

It’s a good thing this city is so photogenic. She blushes with feigned humility at every turn, dipping her shirt to reveal her grey-stone breasts just enough to draw you to her. But, as you draw near, her manner reminds you that you’re a mere stone’s throw from the North Sea.

In early Winter.

*As seen from our window, snow comes wistfully to Comely Bank.*

Anyone who follows us on social media, or has been within camera or earshot of us in the past few weeks, is already aware that my wife and I live now in Edinburgh, Scotland. We haven’t stopped talking about it. You ever hang around new parents and they never quit talking about their newborn? Yeah, it’s kinda like that.

Everything is new. We have new UK phone numbers almost impossible to memorize (memorise). We are learning to write dates day/month/year. We’ve traded a five-number zip code for a postal code with two caps, a number, another number, and two more caps. We’re learning what it’s like to shop for days of food at a time rather than weeks. We’re learning the complexities of laundry in the UK, a process not unlike rebuilding a laptop.

Thanks to the relative compactness of Edinburgh streets, we’ve taken like pros to something we would never have done in North America, ride a bus. We walk everywhere else. Living in the relatively central district of Stockbridge I call this the “one-mile zone.” We can walk almost anywhere we need to be, including downtown (uptown as the locals call it).

The glaring lack of any formal Thanksgiving tradition here is regrettable in one way, given the many memorable observances we’ve enjoyed over the years with family, friends, and one unlucky turkey. But, it is also a wonderful thing not having to engage in the inevitable, often heated, debates about Christmas decorating starting “too early.” Despite its lack of liturgical credibility, “too early” for me would be mid-October, not American Thanksgiving which just happens to fall less than a month from Christmas.

Edinburgh loves her Christmas decorating. She does it well, with a voracious thoroughness that causes Mrs. Claus to blanche at the sight. Is it thoroughly secular? Yeah, pretty much. Is it beautiful and welcoming? Absolutely. Which, as you will recall from my earlier post on the Enneagram 4, is my love language.

Beauty is next to godliness.

*Edinburgh has lighting down to an art.*

I’ve often questioned artists who claim their particular geography to have the “best light” when they live where there’s nothing but an abundance of it, washing out all colour and nuance. When light is involved, “most” does not equal “best.” My soul prefers its light at a premium; where it changes much, leaves me alone for long periods of time, and is therefore, precious.

*Granton Harbour in morning light, shrewdly shrouded*

For me, Edinburgh in winter is that place.

A runner for many years, I confess that the best pathways for moving contemplation are these damp corridors of green-framed stone and shadow. It is something about subtleties where colours can pop because they’re not constantly blanched by direct sunlight. There’s an existential complexity to it utterly lacking in sun-drenched regions.

I have the opposite of seasonal affective disorder (S.A.D.) I’m depressed in constant sun. Nothing changes. It’s like trying to drink from a fire hydrant…all the time. It’s too much, too often, for no reason.

The breadth of human experience requires more than the cheap seats at a bad movie. It needs emotional distance, space to laugh and hurt and question and doubt and start all over again. The heart needs lament; needs thoughtfulness, discernment, the tepid wondering for which it is engineered. I agree with Pàdraig Ó Tuama’s review of Dunez Smith’s amazing poem, “I’m going back to Minnesota where sadness makes sense.” where he states, “not everyone needs to live in perpetual summer.”

Yes. That.

2021. This will be our first Christmas away from our boys. Either one or the other, or both, were always with us for the holidays. However, given the weight of God’s call upon us to love and serve Edinburgh, it seems not so high a price to pay, given the great returns we’ve already enjoyed from this incredible place. Besides, our laddies are squarely in God’s hands every bit as much as we, or anyone else.

So then, this year…it is Christmas in Edinburgh.