My pastor had a verbal slip of lips last Sunday – almost a spoonerism – when he merged the two words ‘clothing’ and ‘shelter’ – here’s his post. So in response today, I came up with a few possible definitions of his new word ‘Shelting’:

1. Pelting snow or sleet (don’t know where the ‘h’ came from – perhaps the opposite of the silent letter such as the ‘k’ in ‘KNOCK’?)
2. Herding, a task done by a Shetland Sheepdog (Sheltie)
3. Variants of the ancient Scottish activity of shelting:
   1. Originally, an ancient rite-of-passage that took place in the remote Scottish Highlands, where young bloods would leave the ancestral hovel in a blizzard and attempt to make it to the shepherd’s lean-to on the far side of the mountain. Because of their great dislike of anything English, it was considered even more manly to do this wearing a kilt – which is odd, when you think about it. Not to mention really cold.
      1. This custom is no longer much in vogue, except in families where the grandfather mentions he used to have to do it every day, in a time when the winter snow was much deeper, and it was 10 miles up hill all the way – and both ways, because the shelter had been blown away, so he had to come back home to get the axe to build a new one.
      2. Now being considered a sport for the Winter Olympics.
   2. Couples in their mature years enjoy staying at bed & breakfasts in the area and hiking to these old shelters during the long summer days. Although taking the same ancient paths to reach the lean-to, this cannot technically be considered ‘shelting’, inasmuch as (a) there are no frozen bodies beside the trail; (b) there is no longer any danger from wolves (although there is a large and growing feral rabbit population) and (c) they are more likely to find amorous couples in the shelter than half-starved kilted savages.
4. An evangelistic term, based on the metaphor – there’s a storm in the world that the lost are trapped in. As a church we want to draw them into the fold, thereby ‘shelting’ them.

   Send article as PDF to