19 July 2026

This  is one of several similar windows in Ardrishaig Parish Church. It is a leaded window which has been ‘fringed with Edwardian, Art Nouveau patterned stained glass’ as Professor Hume has written. This particular window was located immediately behind our family pew.

I started Sunday School when I was two years old and attended worship every Sunday.  My brother and I sat between my mother and father. The sun shone through our window. The colours danced on the wooden pews. Sometimes we sang my favourite childhood hymn as the light enveloped us:

Looking upward every day,

Sunshine on our faces;

Pressing onward every day

Towards the heavenly places.

Like the ancient Celtic crosses standing in the Scottish landscape and the ruined abbeys and rebuilt cathedrals, this simple Victorian Parish Church was a holy place, a place apart where the beadle carried the Bible into the pulpit and the atmosphere was awesome.

It had a powerful impact on my childhood and provided a foundation for adult life. The memory of it abides – the organ music, the sermon, my mother’s hat, the smell, the light, the sense that we were out of time, out of this world, moving on towards the heavenly places.