Ideas are precious and important. That we are thinking, creative, intellectual beings is a wonderful gift from God. I spend more energy reflecting and praying and hypothesizing on the ideas of my faith than I do the plot ideas for my novels. Those are the most significant kinds of ideas of all. I remember the day I walked into the house after a long run and announced to Judy, “I think I have just figured out the Atonement!”
Now that is more exciting than getting an idea for a new novel!
As my brain is engaged in wrestling through some deep theological conundrum on one level, a new story idea might be germinating on another level. Often the two will cross paths somewhere within the pages of a story. Ideas are like that—unpredictable… you never know where they are going to take you.
One of the aspects of ideas I find most intriguing, and which finds its way into every book I write, is simply the question—
How do people respond when confronted with truth, with change, with the demands of the gospel, with relational complexities, with unfamiliar ideas that have not been part of their outlook and perspective?
Whatever else I may be doing in a book, that theme is always present. No matter the character or historical or geographical setting, it is a constant thread: How do people respond to ideas?
What do men and women do when the ideas of truth intersect their lives? How do people respond to the new, the unfamiliar, the uncomfortable, the challenging, the humbling?
How you and I respond to ideas says a great deal about the kind of people we are.
In the case of this particular story, the book in your hand began with nothing, with the absence of an idea.
I had concluded all my existing writing commitments and for the first time in twenty-five years was facing a clean slate as a writer. I had assumed, without the pressure of commitments and deadlines, that a rush of creativity would flow forth from within me.
How wrong that turned out to be!
Clean slates are not all they’re cracked up to be. I felt as if my brain had been wiped clean, too. Or, to be contemporary about it, as if my hard drive had been erased. Suddenly there were no ideas!
Up till that time my problem had always been too many ideas—two or three new book ideas every week, and how to sift from among a hundred ideas to discern those I should pursue. Suddenly during this crossroads period with all commitments behind me, I found my brain empty. I began to seriously wonder, Is it over—will I never write another book?
I was convinced that my brain had run out of gas.
In the spring of 2007, I happened to be alone at our home in Scotland. I hadn’t been very good company for a few months. Judy was probably glad to be rid of me for a while!
Returning from a long bike ride, I stopped a couple of miles from home and sat down on a bench high on an outlook over the Moray Firth of the North Sea. It was a spectacular day, breezy but pleasant, the ocean a deep blue. As I sat at the edge of the promontory, a seagull flew past in front of me, drifting on the winds blown upward from the ocean against the cliff face at about the height where I sat. Slowly, as it glided by a few feet in front of me, wings outstretched, the gull’s head turned and glanced briefly toward me.
It was one of those magical moments of connection between man and the animal kingdom that brings a joy to the heart. Obviously the gull was not thinking about me as he flew by, but the turn of his head stabbed my senses with undefined pleasure. I imagined him saying, “There is a story waiting to be told about that bench you are sitting on, about this coastline, about that village just there along the path. Mysteries are about to be revealed. I know of them, and you will know of them soon.”
Just as quickly he was gone.
As I sat staring out to sea, the awe deepened. I was left to ponder the moment of that fleeting eye contact, and what it might mean. “The look” of the seagull haunted me. Gradually one of those creative what-ifs began to coalesce in my brain—
What if someone, a visitor perhaps, came to this part of Scotland as a tourist and actually came to this very spot, this village… and walked this path along the sea and sat upon this very bench? What if such a person came here knowing nothing, expecting nothing… and slowly found himself or herself drawn into the life of the community? And what if such a person discovered the story the seagull had to tell?
That was it.
A village in Scotland… a path along a high overlook… a bench above the sea… and the momentary glance of a Scottish seagull.
As I continued on my ride toward our home in Cullen a few minutes later, a sentence came to me. I don’t know why, or where it came from. I had no idea what it meant, what it might refer to. I had no idea who was speaking it.
The sentence was—
It is a terrible thing when dreams die.
A curious sentence. What did it mean?
With nothing more than that, I began to write, just to explore what the mysterious look of the gull might have to say. I would write down that one sentence, and hope that perhaps a second might follow.
As I mentioned, Judy was not yet with me in Scotland, but would be joining me in a few weeks. I was obviously thinking of her. I thought, I will make the unknown visitor to this village a woman, a harpist, like my Judy, maybe who has always dreamed of playing Celtic music on her harp in Scotland… perhaps on a high windswept mountain or a cliff overlooking the sea.
Gradually one idea followed another until I had enough to fill a page… then two pages.
That’s how ideas come. One follows another, you pose questions to yourself, you put yourself in a character’s shoes and ask what he or she would do, and in trying to answer your own questions, more ideas follow.
My ideas are not any more stupendous than yours, or anyone else’s. That’s why I say that everyone has within himself or herself all the ideas necessary for a great book. Learning the techniques and craft to put those ideas onto a printed page, that takes some work. But the ideas themselves are the free currency of the creative mind. I am thoroughly convinced that new novels are being born every day, and perhaps new novelists with them.
That is how the succession of ideas that began this doublet called Angel Harp and Heather Song originated. I had no more notion where it would lead than you did when you began. As you have discovered by now, the path, the bench, the cliff, the gull, a harp—even the cyclist in his blue-and-yellow biking clothes!—all come into the adventure.
Michael Phillips
Acknowledgments
With grateful thanks to those who read the manuscript and offered their valuable input: Moira Legge, Brenda Mair, Catherine Mair, Rosanna Mair, Judith Johnston, and Stanley and Wilma Jenkins. Any errors or oversights that may have escaped us all, however, are mine alone.
Appendix
Scots Glossary
a’: all
abody: everyone
aboot: about
abune: above
ahint: behind
ain: own
ane: one
anither: another
athegither: altogether
aye: yes
bairn: child
bin: hill/summit
bleed/blude: blood
bonnie: pretty
buirdly: strong
burn: creek/stream
caw canny: be careful
dee: die/death
deid: dead
de’il: devil
dinna: don’t
disna: doesn’t
div/du/de: do
doon: down
du: do
dune: done
een: eyes
eese: use
fa/wha: who
fae/frae: from
fan: when
feow/fyow: few
fit: what
fitiver: whatever
fleggit: frightened
fleyt: afraid
gae: go
gang/gaed: went
gar: make
gie: give
&
nbsp; gien: if
greet: cry
gude/guid: good
hae: have
hame: home
heid: head
hert: heart
ilka: every
intae: into
isna: isn’t
ken: know
kennt: knew
lang: long
lauch: laugh
luik: look
mair: more
maun: must
mirk: dark
mony: many
muckle: much/big
murlt: crumbled
naethin’: nothing
nor: than
o’: of
ocht: ought
oor: our
oot: out
ower: over
po’er/pooer: power
puir: poor
richt: right
roon: round
sae: so
sanna: shall not
sicht: sight
siller: money
sneekit: snuck/sneaked
spier: ask
sud: should
sudna: shouldn’t
syne: since/since then/ago
tae/till: to
thocht: thought
toon: town
trowth: truth
twa: two
unco: great/much/a lot
upo’: upon
verra: very
wad: would
wadna: wouldn’t
wark: work
warna: weren’t
weel: well
whan: when
whaur: where
whiles: sometimes
wi’: with
winna: won’t
wis: was
Contents
Front Cover Image
Welcome Page
Preface
Map of Port Scarnose Region
Castle Buchan
1. Dreams
2. Bringing a Dream to Life
3. An Adventure Begins
4. The Tourist
5. Port Scarnose
6. Journey Comes Home
7. Gwendolyn
8. The Man’s the Gowd
9. Confusing Roots
10. Small Parish Cathedral
11. Village Gossip
12. Growth
13. Change of Plans
14. Mysterious Churchyard
15. Invitation
16. No Audience
17. Wakings
18. Picturesque Guide
19. Tales of a Historic Land
20. Face-to-Face
21. The Look
22. Follow Me
23. Music on the Bin
24. Along the Headlands
25. Warnings
26. The Curate and the Latitudinarian
27. Brief Good-Bye
28. Right There Beside Me
29. Mystery of the Heather
30. “Home” Again
31. Rose Garden
32. On the Firth
33. Tea with the Duke
34. Angel in the Making
35. The Old Story
36. Banff Springs Hotel
37. Doorway to Oneness
38. I Will Arise and Go to My Father
39. Looking Ahead
40. Unexpected Blow
41. Eleanor Rigby
42. Fateful Night
43. Sobering Question
44. The Other Side
45. A Third View
46. Character
47. Decision at the Bench
48. Authority’s Demand
49. The Prodigal’s Loving Father
50. Strange Castle Among the Cliffs
51. Inside Castle Buchan
52. A Boy’s Terror
53. Formal Differences
54. Away with the Tide
55. Failing
56. Humility to Look Inside
57. Brotherhood
58. Baby Me
59. Peace
60. Fall
61. Angel Harp
62. Remembering
63. The Great Tide of Love
64. Diamond Necklace
65. Angel
66. Everywhere Is God’s Home
67. Facing Destiny
68. Presumptuous Return
69. Decision
70. Unusual Script for Love
71. Girls’ Night Out
72. Gwendolyn in the Gloamin’
Afterword: Ideas and What We Do with Them
Acknowledgments
Appendix: Scots Glossary
Copyright Page
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2011 by Michael Phillips
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Every effort has been made by the author to research copyrights to all songs and poems. In the event any copyright has inadvertently not been accurately discovered, the author apologizes and requests notification in order to rectify such oversights in future printings.
FaithWords
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First Edition: January 2011
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ISBN: 978-0-446-57403-7