It has been two years since I arrived in Edinburgh, Scotland with my Great Dane. My husband and kids were still in Providence, Rhode Island, trying to frantically pack up the life we had built there for the past 15 years. Initially we moved to New England for grad school, where I trained to be a chaplain. For 15 years, I developed my skills, did countless hours of professional and spiritual development (including Glean’s START Program for spiritual entrepreneurs), cultivated personal and professional connections and community that resulted in me living my “dream life.” I taught at the medical school; I had a thriving private spiritual direction practice; I frequently led services in my spiritual community; and I had my absolute dream “unicorn” job as a Pediatric Palliative Care and Hospice Chaplain, with patients and colleagues that I loved and a boss who respected me. So, how did I get to Scotland?
In 2019, we went to Scotland on vacation. I will admit that I was not really interested in going there. What I knew about Scotland was from Brigadoon, Mike Myers, and Mel Gibson. I had no family connections there and wasn’t trying to find my tartan. We chose it because traveling with teenagers is hard enough, so we chose to go somewhere that speaks English. We landed in Edinburgh, got off the plane, and got into a taxi. We had traveled around two blocks or so into the city when I turned to my husband and said, “We need to move here! This is our next place!”
“Really?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said.”
“Okay,” he said.
“Okay,” said my son.
“I like Dublin better, “ said my daughter, who was off to college soon anyway.
That was it. I had a gut feeling, and we just went with it.
Three years later, I arrived.
I had thought about doing healthcare or university chaplaincy in Scotland, and I was even offered a position, but it seemed very hard to recreate the dream situation that I had in Rhode Island, so I sought out a new dream. If you find old bios of me from 10-15 years ago, I would often throw in the line, “If Ceceley weren’t an oncology chaplain, she’d be the chaplain of a bar.” It was a bit of a joke, but it always seemed to me that being a bartender wasn’t too far off from what I did as a chaplain. A bartender holds people’s stories and supports them during a liminal time. The best bars create community and hold space for different types of people who enter those doors.
So maybe it wasn’t so far-fetched when I walked into a small community pub for sale in Leith (a fiercely independent former city, now a neighborhood in Edinburgh) and immediately felt at home. We were fortunate enough to have some proceeds from the sale of our house in Providence, and my husband liked the idea of investing in a business rather than an expensive apartment.
I wanted to invest in a community. I asked the locals and barman about the pub, and they happily told me all about the history and the colorful characters who drank there. I asked why it was being sold. They shared that the owner was in his eighties, had owned it for 30 years, and was ready to pass it on. I asked how they would feel about a couple of Americans buying their local bar, and one guy said, “As long as you don’t turn it into a yuppie wine bar, we’re fine.”
In January of 2023, we became the eccentric Americans who bought a wee back road pub in Leith and I started my new dream job as a pub chaplain. My life as a pub chaplain has had the same span of emotions as being a healthcare or university chaplain: ecstatic joy, heartbreak, pure adrenaline rush, unbelievable exhaustion. But boundaries as a pub chaplain/owner can be a little more tough. At least with my patients, I knew there were limits to what I could do, and I had a team to help care for them. As a business owner, though, it is all on me.
I do love the lack of hospital masks and gowns and physical boundaries: It literally takes at least ten to twenty minutes to either enter or leave the pub because everyone needs a kiss, cuddle, or fist bump. Of course, they also like to tell me that the men’s faucet is loose, or this person is sick, that person is on holiday, and why don’t I get my pies from this butcher? I’ve had deep theological discussions on belief in the unseen versus the seen, and then had everyone in the whole room break into song. I have been showered in love and positive feedback, and I have had to accept that I can’t please everyone. There are some people who we’ve had to ask to leave, and some who disagree with every decision we have made. There are many who are thrilled with how the pub is doing, and others who are seriously grieving “how things used to be.” I try to hold them all and stay true to my vision of what a community pub can be, in a diverse and actively changing neighborhood.
My people talk to me about the same things you might expect in any other pastoral setting: illness or death of a loved one, medical or money concerns, relationship issues, life direction. I have found that there is no need to advertise; people who are lonely or looking for support often have a radar that senses there are listening ears at my pub.
I definitely struggle to find balance in my work, personal, and spiritual life (although this was the case in the U.S. as well), but my favorite prayer from my spiritual tradition still rings true: I am so grateful to have been given life, to have been sustained, and to have been brought to this moment… as a pub chaplain living in Scotland!
Ceceley Chambers is a trained pediatric and hospice chaplain, spiritual mentor, educator, Reiki master teacher, and now pub chaplain. She is passionate about bringing a little light and joy in this world with what she calls “irreverent reverence.” Ceceley is an alumna of the Glean Network’s START program.
Ceceley was once called a “Jewish cupcake with Christian icing,” but now she might be better classified as a SBNR cupcake, with Jewish filling, and pagan icing. She radically resists doing things the way one might expect… including writing bios.
Before she bought a pub in Scotland, she was working on a book called You Can Only Trust Kids and Drunks: Irreverent Words of Wisdom from the Front Lines of Spiritual Care. Now she pines for the time to eat/sleep, let alone write. Sigh, they say the first two years of running a small business are the hardest.
Ceceley and her husband enjoy their recently emptied nest in Leith with their Great Dane, Stella, and Kitten, Kitty McFi.