I would make my way home from a long night mid-watch at the base, turning off the A90 at Laurencekirk and onto the narrow and twisting B967 that leads east toward Inverbervie and the sea. This was never a dull drive. The narrow twisting Tarmac with its lush green verges alternately climbing and dropping, passed Arbuthnott House with its stately stone and iron gate. The road tops the last hill, the one that normally presents you in the breaking light with the amazing view of Inverbervie below and its dramatic backdrop of the North Sea.
There were times however as I topped the hill, the village was not visible. The buildings, the trees, the roads, all hidden by a pillow-like cloud of fog. The North Sea fog had silently crept in during the night hiding the still sleeping village. But I usually would know ‘Bervie was there because the towering spire of the old stone church pierced the fog and marked the spot.
Most any village, town or city in Scotland has at least one and depending on its size, maybe several tall pointed spires pointing upward toward the heavens. They invariably are the tallest structure in the town. You can stand in the TESCO parking lot on Riverside in Dundee and count five or six.
The steeples are always old, I recall no new steeples. This may tell us something about our society. The message of the steeple, its concept, its cost and its construction is an important one and I’d suggest it’s lost on much of today’s society. The old steeples, usually topped with a cross, harken back to when people understood there was a God and went to great lengths, in the case of the steeples, great heights, to display their recognition and love for Him.
The steeples are an object lesson, quietly pointing upward. It was as if those Victorian craftsmen, and their medieval brothers before them, somehow knew something I didn’t at that time….that there is in fact a God!
Some called it coincidence…Don Ukens