A Long Climb from the Basement

We are working overtime at Overtoun House tonight as everything is coming together. Jim has put the finishing touches on the trim in both rooms, and Deborah has ironed the curtains. “Faith, Hope, and Love” is stenciled on one of the ceiling beams in the Iona Room.


We debated at dinner whether there are 134 or 139 steps from the basement to the top room. If you take the back stairs, you climb the lesser number, but either way you climb, you end up feeling like you’ve hiked a small mountain or at least a large hill. We all feel like we have shaped up with all our stair climbing…even if we seem to be groaning more and more as each hour passes and each step is taken.

Climbing stairs like the ones in this house serves as good exercise for the body and perhaps also for the soul. Going up stairs might be thought of as moving closer to God, especially in a place like Overtoun House with its tower that reaches into the sky. Yet we who live in this world find ourselves going down the stairs, too. Such is the way of life and of faith. We sometimes move toward God with our actions, and sometimes we move away. Our goal should always be to move toward him, to take the stairway up rather than down, to reach for heaven and not end up in the basement. After all, it’s a long climb from the basement to the top floor. 134 steps to be exact…or 139 depending on who you ask. But who’s counting?