Category: Blog Entry

I suppose I’m a child of the mobile times I live in. I don’t really have anywhere that I call home. Home is where I live.

So it was interesting yesterday – Back to Church Sunday, of course – to go back to the very first church to which I was taken as a young child. It’s Rossorry Parish Church just outside Enniskillen. Arthur, one of my former curates, is now the Rector. So we headed west through Northern Ireland … past the sign that says ‘CH … CH What’s missing? UR’ and past the appropriately named Lungs Gospel Hall.  It was the kind of congregation which I don’t see too often – diverse .. suits .. lots of people younger than we are.  And I met all sorts of people – people from my Primary School class and Nurse from school.

I went up to Portora Royal School before returning.  They have a nice blue plaque nowadays to mark the fact that Oscar Wilde was a former pupil.  I thought there was a sort of irony about that.

Well labyrinth actually. And of course they’re different. A maze is for getting lost in. Labyrinth is a journey with one way in and one way out.

I met with the Chaplains and others today at Stirling University to dedicate their new Labyrinth – pic’s to follow, I hope. Interesting that labyrinth ‘ticks the boxes’ for spiritual without seeming institutionally churchy. So I did my best to seem suitably non-institutional. Quite a feat – or was that feet?

You may have noticed that today marked the 250th Anniversary of Guinness – popularly known in Ireland as Uncle Arthur or ‘the black stuff.’

Slainte!

It’s easy to lose track of days.  I’ve spent the last 24 hours [apart from time for sleep] with our Mission and Ministry Board.  Churches make decisions in funny ways – bit of passion, bit of policy, bit of precedent and [since I like alliteration] maybe even a bit of predestination.  But we’ve been trying to find a measured way of deciding what we need to decide – if, that is, we know what it is that we are trying to decide about.  I sometimes think that things may just have been easier when I wasn’t around here.  People were very patient and persevering and we plodded forward together.

I then moved on to joust with a journalist.  That’s become a fairly regular part of my life.  It’s part of our attempt to place our church in the ‘public square’ and I think that’s important.  Always sexuality and the Anglican Communion.  It’s hard to get attention for anything about mission and growth.  I’m still waiting to use the line which I learnt in media training in the USA – when all else fails you say, ‘Let me tell you what I’m really passionate about’  But I am learning to recognise when the journalist is trying to shape our conversation into a headline.  It’s when they ask three times, ‘Would you welcome …?’ or ‘Would you say then that .. ?’  Our Communications Officer keeps me safe as best she can – I wouldn’t risk doing these without her.

And finally a Reception at the Scottish Parliament to mark the 200th Anniversary of the Bible Society for Scotland.  This kind of event is always a useful place for making contacts – and congratulations to the Bible Society for bringing on an actor [didn’t get his name] who did a splendid monologue on the life of William Wilberforce.  The event was a triumph of experience over expectation.

They were at it all night – four giant machines just across the road from Blogstead working their way through a vast field of broad beans.  We woke up to the smell of them and to the roar of the machines.

Still – a beautiful Perthshire early-Autumn morning as we headed for Pitlochry and Blair Atholl.  The mist was doing that wonderful thing of lying along the line of the Tay and the Tummel with sunshine all around.  But by the time we were coming back, it had returned to being just an averagely dull September afternoon.

I’ve been in London most of the week – doing whatever bishops do in London.  I think we’re supposed to hang out around The Atheneum – but not this one.  I was due to come back from Cambridge this morning – a bit fraught since they seemed to have forgotten how to run the trains  between Cambridge and Stansted.  Croziers on the line at Bishop’s Stortford as Reginald Perrin would have said.  I had to buy a taxi.

Just time to draw breath before launching the episcopal electoral process for the Diocese of Glasgow and Galloway at the Preliminary Meeting of the Electoral Synod on Saturday.  This requires an intimate knowledge of Canon 4 which sets out how it is done.   For obvious reasons, I am a fan of Canon 4 – tho’ it is incredibly demanding of those who submit themselves to its scrutiny.  And of course the one thing that Canon 4 doesn’t help with is the most important and difficult of all – the task of vocational discernment.  I’m happy to tackle most things.  But vocational discernment – whether of potential ordinands or of clergy seeking congregational appointments …   Prayerful and insightful humility, I think.

Interesting outing this evening when I was asked to preach at a Rededication Service for Church of Scotland Elders in the Parishes just south of Perth – around Bridge of Earn. I’m always glad to have the opportunity of visiting other churches. Looking first at the age profile, the most generous thing I can say is that I was among my comtemporaries. I told them how much we admire the pattern of eldership in the Church of Scotland – and invited them to admire the pattern of bishop as ‘leader of mission’ in return. Well – maybe. Perhaps not. Anyway I hope I have the opportunity of visiting others.

Meanwhile here at Blogstead, we’re somewhat horrified by today’s report that the Scottish Government is considering a tax on bicycles. Motoring has been getting cheaper. We want to encourage people into cycling and onto public transport. It’s obvious, isn’t it. What next – a tax on Burmese cats?

Some people hit the ground running after the holidays. Not so for me – not for want of trying. I gradually climb back out of a sort of slough of despond .. maybe next week. But it’s been a fascinating week – all sorts of interesting people passed through ..  two trips to Edinburgh.   We ended with an interview with the editor of the Church of Ireland Gazette – well minded by Lorna our Communications Officer  … ‘Anything you would like to say to your friends in the Church of Ireland?’  Very settled, happy and completely absorbed in Scotland, thank you very much.

Next hurdle is getting the Netbook sorted out – so that I can travel even lighter. Tim the Geek will need to help me sort out Open VPN so that I can talk to the Office Server from all parts of the Anglican world.  I hardly dare to mention that VPN is Virtual Private Network.  Too close to home, I think

My friend Irene comments on the place of compassion in the decision to release Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi.  The reason for my question to myself  on Monday was that I made a statement on the day of the release suggesting that the Scottish Government had made a compassion-shaped choice.  This is what I said:

“The decision to release Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi is a brave political choice taken in the face of strong pressure from outside Scotland.  We respect and honour the courage which the Scottish Government has shown.

“On one side of the balance is the suffering caused by this appalling act of terrorism and the need to sustain public confidence in our system of
justice.  On the other side is the need to consider whether, in circumstances such as these, justice should be tempered with mercy and compassion.

“This decision sends to the world an important and positive message about our values.”

The Church of Scotland issued a rather more forthright statement in the same terms.

I think that politicians who make values-driven choices in the face of international opposition deserve our support.  I remain content with what I said.  I just feel somewhat disappointed as I watch the apparent clarity of that choice seeming to ebb away.

Glad to be back – particularly as we drove eastwards across Scotland last night and watched the roads become dry and the rain stop. Can’t get over living somewhere with a relatively dry climate. Donegal was books and snoozing and rain – constant rain. But you wouldn’t go there if you were bothered by that.

And now I’m trying to grasp all the confusion about the release of the Lockerbie bomber. Was I naive to think that it was a decision of principle?

Time for a blogbreak, I think. Back in September.