TESTIMONY TO A LOST WAY OF LIFE

 by adam harbinson

It’s hard to believe that it’s sixteen years next month since my oldest son went to Aberdeen to study medicine. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve since driven up the A77 from Stranraer to Girvan, by-passing Ayr and Kilmarnock, through Glasgow and on to Aberdeen; the Granite City.  

A couple of years ago I decided to take a coach for a change, more relaxing, let somebody else do the driving, I could look around me. I could see over the hedges and there were pheasants and rabbits and castles and farmhouses. And then I saw something else I’d never seen before. As you travel from Stranraer towards Ballantrae there’s a stretch of marshland off to your left called Killantringan Moor, and away in the middle of the moor about half a mile from the road stands a Celtic Cross; nothing else, just a solitary Celtic Cross often shrouded by a mist sweeping down to the Irish sea. I must have passed it a hundred times or more and never saw it, until I sat in the coach that day enjoying the scenery. The last time I was there curiosity got the better of me, so I parked the car in a layby and tramped across Killantringan Moor to unlock the secret of the lonely Celtic Cross.

As I squelched my way across that old bog my imagination was working overtime; could this be the burial site of a bold Scottish Chieftain who fought and died valiantly with his clans men as they sought to repel the English? Is there a secret vortex here that’ll carry me away to a far off time and place where I’ll die a grisly death…? Why can’t I be like everybody else and mind my own business!

The cross stands eight feet tall, and there’s an inscription on it; ‘In Memory of Robert Cunningham, A Postman, Who Perished Here in a Snow Storm in a Noble Attempt to do his Duty. December 28th 1908.’

I stood enthralled by that old cross, testament to a lonely death on a desolate Scottish hillside that reminds us of a way of life that’s long gone, of the virtues of loyalty, commitment and reliability that you don’t see a lot of these days. Modern day Health & Safety regulations keep postmen safe from such dangers, and rightly so. But with all our sophistication and our technological advances we’ve lost something of the stuff of life, and I’ll tell you what I think it is.

Many a time I’ve stood in a church watching a commissioning service, and I’ve thought how fickle we can be. We’re ‘honouring’ a man as he takes up his post as a full-time pastor, but perhaps we should be asking the question; as he occupies the pulpit, is he simultaneously disengaging from real people in the real world? And if so, wouldn’t it be more productive to have a commissioning service for someone taking up employment as a plumber, a solicitor, a newspaper editor – or a postman?

Here’s a thought. When Jesus said, ‘Go into all the world and preach the gospel,’ the word he used for ‘world’ was not the physical earth we can see and touch. No, he was referring to the networks of relationships that we all have; the social system of which we are a part. Who better equipped to do that than a shopkeeper, a dentist, a bricklayer, or a postman?