Oh, Glen Coe

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Oh, Glen Coe, I wonder if you’re at all aware of the impression you make upon human souls, or of the expansive, spacious poetry you inscribe upon the hearts of women and men? There’s a liturgical usage that, addressing the Divine, speaks of ‘the silent music of your praise,’ and – in precious moments, when the breeze stilled, I heard the silent music in the praise, and in the guardianship, of a magisterial glen. Yes, one cannot help but wonder whether – by way of millions of years, innumerable sunrises, windswept hours and mountain-painting sunsets – you have known of how you touch us, change us, reshape and restore us.

the silent music of your praise

And it turns out that silent music is unforgettable, immortal – carrying and soothing, as it does, the eruptions and heat and formation and battle and defence and peace and prayer and unimaginable majesty of height and breadth and depth and antiquity. Oh, Glen Coe, you weather the changeability of all that is with such stillness and grace. Your might and height calm my littleness and insecurity. Your breadth and depth remind me to celebrate the gift of life, of a great abiding, of presence, of the human senses and awarenesses. You humble me and simultaneously ‘raise me up.’ In a matter of hours I have visited Doune Castle, and Stirling Castle, and am now home again beneath the storytelling ramparts of Edinburgh Castle. As Enya might have it – ‘how can I keep from singing?’ In silence and in song, how indeed?

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