My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here; My heart's in the Highlands a-chasing the deer; Chasing the wild-deer, and following the roe, My heart's in the Highlands wherever I go.
—Robert Burns
“How familiar are you with the Book of Common Prayer?”
That is what my trip sponsor asked before I boarded a British Airways jet and left America for a study abroad by the bonny, bonny banks of Loch Lomond. Our sponsor took great pains to prepare us for the differences in British-Anglican versus American-Baptist worship styles, citing words like “Eucharist,” “evensong,” “sacrament,” “liturgical worship”—words I’d learned, but never experienced firsthand.
“It won’t feel like church,” he said. And secretly, I was thrilled. I was running away from America, from American worshipers, from the hypocrisy I saw in my Christian circles. I didn’t appreciate the two-faced nature of those who claimed to represent Christ but treated other Christians like garbage. I felt abandoned by God, and I purposed in my heart to abandon Him.
In my ignorance, I assumed that European worship would be distant from God by default. I was leaving Baptist America and its God behind for the rituals of Anglican worship. To exist in a pew would be enough for my spiritual edification.
On my first Sunday overseas, however, I chose to attend a day-long tour of the Scottish Highlands instead of attending church. I could hide in the rolling hills of Glencoe, where God would not be present.
As a poet, I should have remembered that creation is often better at revealing God than theology is. My first view of the Highlands astounded me: hills so green that they seemed fictional—tumbling about the landscape in dramatic inclines and valleys—and lochs so permeated by blue that the sky seemed plain in comparison. And what a sky! High above the clearness, wisps of cirrus punctuated the wide expanse in tufted brushstrokes.
Bob Ross coined the term “Almighty Mountain,” and in Glencoe I found myself beneath one—a plunging escarpment, lined with the wrinkles of an ancient landscape. White streams poured from the peaks and flowed down into the bog where I stood, shaken. How could anyone visit the Highlands and deny the existence of God? In that moment God was reminding me, “I am here too.”
The Lord proclaims His power in Job 40:9-10:
Have you an arm like God’s? Or can you thunder with a voice like His? Then adorn yourself with majesty and splendor, and array yourself with glory and beauty.
The Creator certainly adorned the Highlands with majesty and splendor. His fingerprints are everywhere: in the wide blankets of sweetgrass, in the towering peaks and low bogs, and in the zebra-striped feathers of the hoopoes flying above the beauty of it all. God surrounded me in the last place on Earth in which I’d hoped to feel His presence.
I had thought that leaving church behind would provide me with the sanctuary I desired, but instead, I felt shame. Perhaps other Christians had hurt or even spurned me, but here I was, held steadfastly by God, even though I had spurned Him.
I planted my feet into the swampy ground and cried beneath the hills at Glencoe, asking God to forgive my faithlessness—to let me linger in the Highlands a little longer, and let Scotland’s beauty continue to reveal His goodness.
Part of me will always linger there. The Scottish poet Robert Burns aptly writes, “My heart’s in the Highlands wherever I go.” Glencoe is a personal monument—a place where one heart of stone became a heart of flesh. I’m quite content to leave behind a piece of that transformed heart in the Highland hills.
Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend into heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there Your hand shall lead me, and Your right hand shall hold me. If I say, “Surely the darkness shall fall on me,” even the night shall be light about me; indeed, the darkness shall not hide from You, but the night shines as the day; the darkness and the light are both alike to You.
Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me and know my anxieties; and see if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
—Psalm 139:7-12, 23-24