This takes me back to the days I spent as a guest of Scotland's oldest working Cisterian monastery. After the evening meal, we visitors would leave the guesthouse in the gloaming, and walk through the country road to the Abbey, where the priests and brothers would sing the Ave Regina at Compline.
Santa Maria Abbey (Nunraw) is a few miles from the little market town of Haddington (East Lothian) not too far from busy Edinburgh. I stayed several times at the guesthouse, always meeting committed Catholic men and women when I was there, even a few Protestants looking to convert.
The guest master was a priest and a moral theologian of some standing. I recall having a conversation with him about Martin Buber. He helped a lot of mixed-up young people who were searching for the truth.
Nunraw Abbey as it is generally called, sits in the bosom of the grassy Lammermuir Hills where sheep graze. Robert Louis Stevenson wrote a poem about these lovely hills in his unfinished novel, *The Weir of Hermiston*:
*I saw rain falling and the rainbow drawn/ On Lammermuir.*
Stevenson was dying in Samoa as he wrote these haunting lines.
One day soon I shall return to Nunraw Abbey, God willing. I am sure the monks sang Ave Regina at Compline tonight.
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Thank you Irenaeus for *Ave Regina*.
This takes me back to the days I spent as a guest of Scotland's oldest working Cisterian monastery. After the evening meal, we visitors would leave the guesthouse in the gloaming, and walk through the country road to the Abbey, where the priests and brothers would sing the Ave Regina at Compline.
Santa Maria Abbey (Nunraw) is a few miles from the little market town of Haddington (East Lothian) not too far from busy Edinburgh. I stayed several times at the guesthouse, always meeting committed Catholic men and women when I was there, even a few Protestants looking to convert.
The guest master was a priest and a moral theologian of some standing. I recall having a conversation with him about Martin Buber. He helped a lot of mixed-up young people who were searching for the truth.
Nunraw Abbey as it is generally called, sits in the bosom of the grassy Lammermuir Hills where sheep graze. Robert Louis Stevenson wrote a poem about these lovely hills in his unfinished novel, *The Weir of Hermiston*:
*I saw rain falling and the rainbow drawn/ On Lammermuir.*
Stevenson was dying in Samoa as he wrote these haunting lines.
One day soon I shall return to Nunraw Abbey, God willing.
I am sure the monks sang Ave Regina at Compline tonight.
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