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them to be ready to receive it.”

Chapter Four
Shock in the Pulpit
    Once o’er the wide moor wending, or round the green hill bending,
    Gay words and wild notes blending, spread far my good cheer,
    For then my heart, light leaping, in waking, in sleeping,
    Had no dubh ciar-dubh keeping, its joys far from here.
    —“The Dark, Black-haired Youth”
    I t was hard to get used to the idea that I was a duchess. Alasdair had long since ceased to be a duke to me. He was just who he was, Alasdair Reidhaven.
    But as much of it as had been thrown out with the march of modern times, the people of Britain still valued their traditional past. In that sense, I suppose Canada and the United States were more alike as a united “America” than Canada was with Britain, despite its long association with the British Commonwealth. The idea of “aristocracy” was still a foreign concept to me. In my mind, people were people. But there remained in Scotland a consciousness of kings, queen, dukes, earls, lairds, titles, and royalty. I would be listed in the book of peers. Even if this truly were my ancestral home, I still wasn’t sure I would get used to it.
    Wherever I went now, women smiled and nodded and sometimes curtsied, men paused and tipped their hats. Along with this, of course, was the natural politeness of the British. Perhaps the gracious treatment I received was simply because the villagers were being nice. But I had the feeling it also stemmed from the fact that I had married a duke…their duke.
    I would never be anonymous again. I may have been an “incomer,” but I was now their duchess, too.
    After my spiritual “awakening,” I could not help but be interested and attuned to Alasdair’s spiritual outlook as well. We had talked about our perspectives, ways we had changed, ways we were still changing. But we had not explored it in great depth. I knew he was thinking about things in new ways. For now, that was enough. Alasdair had come awake, in a different way perhaps, but even more dramatically than I had. Iain once told me that God and ministers were in the business of waking people up. Thanks to him—and God!—Alasdair and I were not only together, we were awake …personally, relationally, emotionally…yes, and spiritually .
    Yet I knew Alasdair might never relate to God in the same personal way I had learned to. After knowing Iain Barclay, however, I had learned to value the individual journey of growth and development and faith that is bound up in each man’s and each woman’s personal life story. I could not expect anyone else’s journey to be like mine, nor for mine to be like theirs…not even Alasdair’s.
    As long as he was awake , God himself would lead him on that journey, without my interfering or trying to nudge it along.
    The subject had come up in preparation for signing the marriage license.
    “When they ask about religion on the license application,” I said to Alasdair, “what will you say?”
    “Church of Scotland, of course,” he replied.
    “I wasn’t certain whether you would identify yourself with a specific affiliation.”
    “I was baptized as a child,” said Alasdair. “That’s as near as half the people inside church get to God in their lives, and I suppose as close as I ever got to him until I heard the angel harp.”
    I smiled. I was still amazed at the impact my harp had had, not only in Alasdair’s life but in Gwendolyn’s life and other people’s lives, too.
    “But I just could never take everything about the church as seriously as Iain does,” Alasdair went on. “And you, too, for that matter,” he added.
    “But you…you believe in God?”
    “Of course. But I can’t go along with all the theology and doctrine the church teaches. It’s one of the reasons I have trouble with the church—the teaching is so complicated, I hardly know what to make of it. But do I believe in him, yes. What about you—how will you answer the question on the license form—Church of