Thought for the Week, August 4 2023

A speaker got up at a conference I attended in Paris last month, and introduced herself as an indigenous Australian elder, and then greeted us in her Aboriginal language.

 

Later on, I introduced myself as being from Lochgilphead. After the session, she came up to me, and said: “My family name is MacCallum: that’s my other inheritance. I think the clan comes from your parts?”

 

“Yes”, I said, “the Church of St Columba, Poltalloch, is really the family chapel of the Clan MacCallum or Malcolm.”

 

The session was led by people across the world working in the field of reconciliation: between indigenous peoples in Australia and Canada and the colonial incomers; between the descendants of enslaved people and the owners of slaves in the United States.

 

In the group in America, there are living members of families who formerly owned slaves, and members of the families enslaved to those very people.

 

What is the first step in the unnerving process of reconciliation? Hospitality. It is the Highland way. It is the way of the desert nomads. It is the way of all who live close to nature.

 

Welcoming strangers, some have welcomed angels. Welcome is the first step on the road of peace.

 

We used to have this Celtic Rune of Hospitality on our wall in my childhood:

 

We saw a stranger yesterday.

 

We put food in the eating place,

 

Drink in the drinking place,

 

Music in the listening place.

 

And with the sacred name of the triune God

 

He blessed us and our house,

 

Our cattle and our dear ones.

 

As the lark says in her song:

 

Often, often, often, goes the Christ

 

In the stranger’s guise.

 

Reverend Canon Simon Mackenzie, Lochgilphead Scottish Episcopal Church.