I’ve just found myself saying to a friend that Holy Week is the time when I miss the parish most. It’s the consistency that I miss – the feeling of slogging your way through the week as the story is imprinted over and over again on your mind. And the people – wrestling with the question of how suffering can be redemptive alongside people whose story and suffering I know about as they know about mine. I really miss that.
But I’m looking forward to it – Chrism Mass with Bishop-elect Gregor and the clergy in Glasgow and Galloway and here in Perth; Good Friday in the Cathedral and in Dollar and couple of other things as well. I hope to step aside from the Via Dolorosa of the management and leadership literature which in which I have been immersing myself. Easy to be sniffy about that stuff – I’m old enough and tired enough not to want to start doing ‘command and control’ around here. Anyway I think they would just cut the phone lines and leave me to it. But it’s clarifying the way in which my role in leadership complements the contributions of all the other people who are helping us to move forward with Casting the Net.
Meanwhile, a couple of things from the archives …..
I was glad to spend Lent IV in St Mary’s Cathedral in Glasgow. Good liturgy and great music .. a growing congregation showing how good our church can be at building congregations in very secular places. The sermon is here
and the talking version is below.
You may also be interested in Lady Day with Mother’s Union at St Ninian’s Cathedral and today’s Rededication of St Mary’s, Aberfoyle