http://www.bishopdavid.net Wed, 12 Jan 2011 22:51:01 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en So much of ministry is about making connections .. The Clergy Conference was great. I can say that we a clear conscience since I had very little to do with the organisation! Stuart Muir continued to offer us wonderful, bright and diverse music worship for the enlivening of. ... http://www.bishopdavid.net/?p=1739 Yet more snow - Blogstead residents emerged this morning blinking in the white light. A mere couple of inches - barely worth thinking about. Meanwhile we plough on. Work continues on the Whole Church Mission and Ministry Policy - which is an elegant way of recognising that the SEC, ... http://www.bishopdavid.net/?p=1737 This seems to have gone on for ever and I won't be allowed to slip back into my workaholic tendencies until Wednesday. I've had one or two 'projects' to keep me going - including collating a first draft of our attempt to write a Mission and Ministry Policy for the SEC. ... http://www.bishopdavid.net/?p=1734 More like the St Lawrence than the Tay - but this was Perth this morning. We've sort of got used to living with this level of cold and with the icy roads. It's fine so long as you don't actually want to do anything very much. But ... http://www.bishopdavid.net/?p=1728 At this time of year, I often make a point of going to churches where for one reason or another there isn't a Rector. So I headed for Lochgelly this morning - a round trip of about 75 miles in the snow. It's old mining country in Fife ... http://www.bishopdavid.net/?p=1726 Well it's gone cold again. But the energy levels are returning to something like normal. So what have I been doing? Well, amazingly, for somebody in my position, I've been working on mission and letting the lead valleys look after themselves for a bit. And if they are ... http://www.bishopdavid.net/?p=1724 I think I just got tired of the snow in the end. It seemed extraordinarily enervating - just the struggle to do anything and get anywhere. Anyway, I got myself to St Andrews on Sunday to preach at St Salvators, which is the medieval church at the heart ... http://www.bishopdavid.net/?p=1720 What a nice suprise .... just what I needed. There it was as I slalomed back down the lane today. Unfortunately the snowplough - having finally reached Blogstead - expired in a great puddle of hydraulic fluid. It and its friendly driver are now honorary members of ... http://www.bishopdavid.net/?p=1718 Nature at its most beguiling. Blogstead adrift in the Perthshire snowfields like Debussy's 'La cathédrale engloutie' We did manage to get back there today after having to stay overnight in Glasgow - but the lane is impassable and we were without electricity all day. But the Blogstead folk have ... http://www.bishopdavid.net/?p=1714 This weekend marked the 50th Anniversary of the renovation of the ancient Abbey Church of Bangor - after it was reconstituted as a Parish in 1941. The most striking element of the renovation is the remarkable mural by Kenneth Webb on the East Wall. It shows the three ... http://www.bishopdavid.net/?p=1708 It's been a while. But it's good to have a Secretary/PA again after doing without for a while. Sharon's arrival gives us a new opportunity to discuss how we deal with what comes in, where we put things, how we find things, who to blame when we lose ... http://www.bishopdavid.net/?p=1706 Back to the roots today with a visit to Stonehaven - scene of one of the two iconic paintings from the history of the Scottish Episcopal Church. This one dates from 1748 and shows Rev John Troup baptising a baby through the bars of Stonehaven Gaol. You can ... http://www.bishopdavid.net/?p=1699 There's a mythic quality about the idea of 'dying for Ireland'. So it's not surprising that in the present difficult times that are in it the even the august Irish Times got itself a bit overheated this morning : IT MAY seem strange to some that The Irish Times would ask ... http://www.bishopdavid.net/?p=1694 Random public art seems to be becoming fashionable. I had wondered abstractly in the way that one does when thinking about something else .. what the people who appeared to be on safari in the middle of the Broxden Roundabout just outside Perth were doing. Equally random reading ... http://www.bishopdavid.net/?p=1686 We're in the last of the Autumn here - 0.5C this morning. This is the world-famous Beech Hedge at Meikleour - about two miles from Blogstead. The story is of course about Jacobites ... The story of the hedge is closely associated with the story of Meikleour House, which lies half ... http://www.bishopdavid.net/?p=1682