My husband returned from a men's conference that was held by our family of churches on Saturday. There were many interesting stories, testimonies of God's grace and meaningful conversations with other men. However, one particular story demanded a response, really. Our pastor provided the comic relief for the retreat and on one evening he donned a kilt and took issue with the small contingent of men from Wales. Lumping the Welsh in with the rest of Great Britain he apparently made fun of tea, the queen, kilts and sporrans. (Please understand that this was all for effect, he doesn't seriously have a beef with the UK or its culture.) The children and I had visited our local kilt shop (yes, we have one) that day to pick up some tartan scraps for making headbands to sell at a upcoming Scottish Dance event. Erin recalled to Ewan that there was a bookmark at the store that said the MacFarlane motto is "This I'll defend!"
We talked for awhile and came up with a plan. A kilted bear, a basket of goodies from the UK including a Wallace and Gromit CD and a book by the Scottish theologian Horatius Bonar. And finally, since I had some sheep liver in my freezer, I'd make a little pot haggis (as best I could) and Ewan would challenge him to eat it!
We presented it to him after the service, where he was shocked to learn that Ewan was married in a kilt. He was such a good sport and tried the haggis - and said it wasn't bad. We hope that rest of the goodies will be enjoyable to the whole family.
The title for this post was a riff from the Burn's song "A Man's A Man for A' That".
