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On Saturday, October 27th, 2003 –
I got up early – with nervous anticipation –
for a walk above St. Andrews.

I had suggested getting together for a sip of conversation,
but quoting Kierkegaard, you thought a walk in the deer park 
was preferable to coffee in a cup at a shop.

You were right.  

We were scheduled to meet at 11:00 am.
Since I woke early, I walked the back alley to the North Point 
for a scone, and black coffee, and to manage my nerves.

Fearing not knowing what to say, or running out
ways to be interesting, I scratched out 50 different 
questions to spark a conversation,
in case silence settled between us.

I put the scribbled questions into a black pouch,
and met you at your house.  We walked, up the hill,
westward, past the Grange, our future home, and
found a worn lane between fields of farms.

We never needed that bag of questions.

Our conversation was easy and unforced, yet serious. 
There was a quality of your mind, I remember, reflected in the care
of each answer that quickened my pulse. 

It still does.

We talked about Peterson’s micro and Hunter’s macro; 
we discussed political theories of difference,
and homiletic forms of imagination, 
and the burdens that drove us here, 
and as we shared we never missed a step together.

This walk opened my life. For from 
that moment on we never stopped walking 
together, nor ceased from our conversation.

A life-time later it seems – four jobs, three dogs, two kids, a
home, and eighteen years on –
I am captivated still by your answers to 
the questions that flow from a single
walk that began on a Saturday 
in the Kingdom of Fife.

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