What Right Have I To Care ?

Really, what right have I, a little nobody lady who lives smack in the center of the North American continent, to care one way or another  what goes on across the world in Scotland?

None, to be brutally frank.

It’s none of my business as the Scots in my lineage are obviously no longer over there.

Even so, I do care.

Just recently I have had reason to do some fairly thorough research on the history of Scotland. I had already begun on account of the history of my own family but took it many steps further back in this last year or so.

And what did I find?

What jumps out first and foremost, to me, is that whatever internal divisions plagued her, when push came to shove she yet managed to unite herself, at least well enough to accomplish whatever task was at hand. Else she would have been roman, right?

Today I read and hear that her people have to make a choice, and that there are differences of opinion as to which course to take.

Whichever Choice is to be made, it belongs to the people of Scotland.

And so?

Well, I’m still watching and listening. Because even though it’s decidedly no business of mine, I still care.

I’m American. Most of the lines of my family came to America before there was a United States, so our roots are deep here already. Some of those lines came from Scotland.

I think there is something that perhaps lies silent within many of us, a thing of mystery whose silence unexpectedly becomes a whisper, or a murmur, or a shouted command even, at times … if we are so deaf as to not have heard it in its quieter Voices. It is perhaps the Call of the ancients demanding our attention but we are lost and don’t know how to respond.

Scotland has sent many and many of her sons and daughters to this big new land over the centuries, to take root here and to grow strong. And so we are Americans now, no longer Scots really at all. Which is as it should be and needs to be.

And yet …

And yet that whispering silence within us remains.

We cannot go back; there is no room for us; we are far too many. And this is Home now.

And yet …

Yet, perhaps we carry still within us those things that our long-ago people carried within themselves. Those Still Small Voices that can become shouts if need be.

And perhaps we are not so very far apart after all.

At any rate, this little old woman watches and listens from across the world, and up go prayers for those who must soon Choose.

Regardless of the difficulty of the Choice-making, please please stand together in the end. Whichever path you walk, walk it together.

And that’s it I think.

Yep.