Category: Blog Entry

One of the things about moving house is the way you end up reading five year old copies of the News of the World as you wrap the china.  There is a timelessness to smut.

I don’t quite know why I ended up last week reading the Church Times of July and, in particular, its ‘How Bishops are viewed’ feature.  It seemed to me to be a rather strange piece – the options offered, for example, did not include ‘Leader of Mission’ and invited people to explore what I believe to be false oppositions such as, ‘The Church’s main building block is not diocese but parish’

Be that as it may, I was interested to find tucked away somewhere below the coffee mug stain this rather remarkable statement: ‘ … it is time to turn the deanery of 25 to 35 into a diocese.  We must leave behind all the expensive and irrelevant trappings …. and instead make the episcopal task more manageable and realistic so that practical demonstration may be given to the essential warmth and care of the episcopal shepherd who is meant to mirror the Good Shepherd himself’

So welcome to the Scottish Episcopal Church – and indeed to many other parts of the Anglican world.  I think there is a lot of truth in that.  As always, there is a Goldilocks principle in there.  Close enough to be a pastor but not unhelpfully close.  I don’t hear much concern from our clergy that my time may be a bit less directed towards the diocese … we need constantly to negotiate what is ‘just right’

We’ve had a great weekend – diocesan family and family family gathered round.  The last time the Bishop of St Andrews served as Primus was in 1907.  It might be a while till it happens again – so the diocese decided it was time for a gathering in the Cathedral.  We took the opportunity to focus on our life in mission as a diocese and the Casting the Net initiative.  The Cathedral looked wonderful and it was full.  There was great music.  My old friend Bishop Trevor Williams from the Diocese of Limerick came to preach.  We gathered up our family and it was great to see them.

It’s not always easy today to just ‘bring people together in the Cathedral’.  It sounds easy but it isn’t.  So when events give you the chance of doing it, it’s a wonderful thing.

And throughout the weekend, we’ve been dealing with subterranean rumblings from the septic tank again – well actually most of them.  It’s the water table, you see.  It’s too high and the tanks fill up with ground water and their electrical stuff drowns.  Fortunately Morna, one of our newer cast members here at Bogstead, seems to have allowed the rest of us to appoint her as ‘Aerator in Chief’.   She hasn’t been driving the JCB yet but I can see it coming.

Well some days are just like that.

I turned up in time and well-prepared for a meeting of our College of Bishops in the Synod Office in Edinburgh.  They were glad to see me.  Pity the meeting was in Perth.

And then Alison hit a speed bump – which should really be a slow-speed bump – in Livingston with such vigour that the sump grounded and all the oil ran out.  The warning lights all came on together while we were talking on the phone during my second trip of the day to Edinburgh.

Ah well ..

Not a bad week as weeks go.  By my standards, the diary was quite relaxed.  The faithful Passat and I [now 186000 miles – the Passat that is although the feeling is sometimes mutual] visited Grangemouth, Glenrothes, Kirriemuir and Oban.  It also needed a new tyre.  And I decided that the lights were a bit dim until I got out with the Johnson’s baby wipes which I carry everywhere …. and found that it was just the gunge.

My trip to Oban was interesting – Preliminary Meeting of the Electoral Synod for Argyll and the Isles.  My blogging friend Blethers will give you the blow by blow.

It’s an amazing drive – as are most journeys in Scotland.  I was busy at my usual game of trying to match the music on my MP3 Playlist to the places.  I was on Scott Joplin’s Elite Syncopations in Comrie – where a former German POW has left his money to the community.  Bach Motets on the way up Glen Ogle … brass bands in Crianlarich … ‘A safe stronghold’ in Tyndrum.  The scenery is amazing.  The mobile phone signal and Classic FM fade away.  We had a meeting in Oban – which Blethers will explain better than I could at the moment – and then I drove the 104 miles home again.

So welcome weekend.  I’ll be visiting our little congregation in Tayport.  Oh – and they built a new hall.

We installed a new Chaplain for Mission to Seafarers in Scotland last night – in Grangemouth.   Rev Tim Tunley will spend part of his time working with other Chaplains in Grangemouth and the rest building up a team of people who will do ship-visiting in the ports around the Scottish coast.  Dream job, don’t you think?

As I did what I do – and reminded people that this kind of ministry can be lonely – I thought about the day or two I spent with John Hopper visiting ships in Leith and elsewhere.  I loved it – wouldn’t necessarily want to do it every day.  Clambering around on the gantries at Hounds Point tanker terminal just below the Forth Bridge on a dark night in December isn’t everybody’s idea of ministry …  It reminded me of the purity of ministry which is in all chaplaincy.  The distinction between ‘people who belong and people who don’t’ just disappears.  Most of the people you meet are strangers whom you will never meet again.  So you go up the side of the ship with no idea what you will meet at the top – welcome, indifference, hostility.  You either rejoice in that or you don’t.

If you want to find out what Sally Magnusson and I had to say to each other this morning, her Sally on Sunday programme is available on BBC iPlayer here

Our meeting was a little warmer than our last encounter – during which I was stuck in a snowdrift in Dunblane.  Sounds like a cue for a song?

In my Remembrance Sunday Sermon, I revisited the War Poets – and Archbishop Rowan Williams’ sermon at the recent Iraq War Commemoration.

Ireland is a wonderful country.    Take a look at this report from the Irish Times

Some weeks just have everything in them.  I’ve been to the Synagogue in Edinburgh for an interfaith meeting of religious leaders .. been to the final meeting of one of our own committees [yes – one less] … met the Church of England and the Church of Scotland at Dunblane .. gone to the Scottish Parliament with church leaders to meet the First Minister.  Four trips to Edinburgh and one to Glasgow and it’s only Thursday!  Today offered an interesting mix.  I was the guest with Sally Magnusson for ‘Sally on Sunday’ which was recorded today.  Having tested the resources of the BBC by turning up at Pacific Quay on the Brompton folding bike, we talked of many things and I found myself emotional about Remembrance Sunday.  Always happens and I don’t really know why.  This evening I went to the installation of a new East of Scotland Divisional Commander for the Salvation Army.  Great hymns sung quickly and much else besides.  I struggle a bit with uniforms but then reflect that I’m not averse to a bit of more exotic plumage myself.  Most interesting of course is the practice of installing a married couple together in ministry – welcome to Alan and Alison.

And in the midst of all that, I’ve been taming a new mobile phone.  Farewell to the Blackberry.  We never got on.  It was devised by somebody whose mind works on some principle different from mine.  So I’m now in a relationship with an HTC Magic and Google Android.  We’ve had a struggle or two.  But it did download my entire diary and contacts list in the time it took to travel between the Forth Bridge and Haymarket and connected to my e mail without protest.  I think I belong to the now generation inasmuch as I expect to be able to make things work without reading the instructions.  Sermon in there, I think.

My visit to Oban this week deprived me of my usual fix of The Independent – had to settle for Murdoch and the Scottish edition of The Times. The second leader commented on the election of Rev John Cairns Christie as Moderator Designate of the Church of Scotland.  I look forward to working with him – and the one after that, if I’m spared.  Because the point they were making is that one year is not enough ..

It’s very encouraging to see The Times reflecting on the potential of church leadership in this way – ‘time to build a relationship with the outside world’ and ‘time to explain what may be a complex series of moral messages’.  I don’t know who wrote that.  But their words demonstrate a better grasp of the potential contribution of churches in the public square than I have seen in the press thus far.