Category: Blog Entry

I rather like the ‘straightforward handover’ style of transfer that we did on Saturday.  No big ‘do’ or anything like that.  Just pick up the diary and go .

So today was a meeting of Faith Group leaders with the First Minister and members of the Scottish Government.  You need to have a taste for that kind of meeting – but they were very generous with their time and genuine in their interest.  Tomorrow we have a meeting of our bishops with the bishops of the Roman Catholic Church.

Meanwhile I’m drowning in kind e mails, cards and Facebook messages.  I’ll get through them in time.  People have been asking how Poppy [the cat] views her new status.  I explained to her the elegant polity of the SEC which gives us a Primus and not an Archbishop.  She does elegant – so she grasped that.  She does Prima – maybe even Regina.  But she doesn’t get the ‘inter pares’ stuff.

The Anglican Communion’s first blogging primate doesn’t have much to say for himself today.  Thank-you to everyone for their kind messages and their prayers.  One has in these moments that rather delicious feeling of not being altogether in control of life.

So for now .. if you’ve arrived here, you’re probably already found some of the other stuff.  But just in case, the Scottish Episcopal Church’s website has pictures, a press release, the statement which I made to General Synod this morning and a podcast in which a Canadian and an Irishman talk about the mission and ministry of the SEC.

It seems a little inappropriate to say that a Eucharist was a tour de force. But if you wanted to get a feel of what the Scottish Episcopal Church is about, the opening service of our General Synod would be one place to look.  Last year’s service was a revelation, particularly in its use of music from around the world.  This was closer to home.  But there was  lots of music .. immediately singable by everybody .. space and grace … It was, as my colleague Grace used to say, ‘brisk with spaces.’ Congratulations to the Liturgy Committee and to Stuart Muir. I take a fairly simple view of these things. I think there is no hymn which is not improved by increasing its speed by 50%

For the rest, we were a quiescent lot. No questions on Minutes, Accounts, Budget or anything else for that matter. Tomorrow we are having a go at ‘The Mission of the SEC’ Surely everybody must have something to say about that!

It seems a little inappropriate to say that a Eucharist was a tour de force. But if you wanted to get a feel of what the Scottish Episcopal Church is about, the opening service of our General Synod would be one place to look. Lots of music .. immediately singable by everybody .. space and grace … It was, as my colleague Grace used to say, ‘brisk with spaces.’ Congratulations to the Liturgy Committee and to Stuart Muir. I take a fairly simple view of these things. I think there is no hymn which is not improved by increasing its speed by 50%

For the rest, we were a quiescent lot. No questions on Minutes, Accounts, Budget or anything else for that matter. Tomorrow we are having a go at ‘The Mission of the SEC’ Surely everybody must have something to say about that!

It’s dark and wet this evening – so it doesn’t apply.  But I always associate the good weather of this time of year with incarceration in an exam hall.  Movement into adult life simply involved substituting General Synod for exams.

So we start two and a half days of it tomorrow.  Enjoy is a big word in these circumstances – but I always enjoy it more than I expect.  I’m serving as Convenor of the Mission and Ministry Board at present.  We’re going to invite people to talk about ‘The Mission of the Scottish Episcopal Church’ – more debate and less conference.  I am always fascinated by what people say in these moments – never quite what you expect.

The other side of our life at present is the economic challenge.  Churches are good at dreaming about new things to do – not so good at cutting back.  And we’re going to have to do quite a bit of that over the next year.

Good to be back and to see some decent weather again here in Scotland.

Fascinating place, Poland. We were in a restaurant and they arrived and offered champagne with a slice of strawberry ‘to join us in celebrating the 20th anniversary of the end of Communist rule.’ The Solidarity flags were flying in the main Square. I liked the idea that it was all so low key – and the mind goes back to Lech Walesa and his negotiating committee which numbered some hundreds. And none of the simplistic bluster of B*** who said, ‘They don’t love freedom the way we love freedom’

I also took a look at the residence of the Archbishop of Krakow – the local Blogstead as it were. He swept past me in his Passat – a bit shinier than mine. We don’t have a full-size portrait of JPII over the archway either.

But back to Auschwitz for a moment. I mentioned it en passant on Sunday morning and found myself talking to somebody who had lost seven members of his family there. I’ll always think of the single sprig of spring flower on just one of the hundreds of photos of prisoners taken when they arrived – date of arrival and date of death – seldom more than six months and mostly much less. And the flowers on the railway track at Birkenau. Tiny and inadequate gestures seem like the only possible response – flickerings of grace

We’re having a couple of days in Krakow – dull, overcast and wet.  That’s what you expect in Poland in June?  They’re celebrating the 20th anniversary of the end of Communist rule today.  That makes me feel old.

Auschwitz is one of those things which one simply has to do.  Thousands of people were being well managed and we had an excellent guide.  She was well-informed and passionate about what she was showing us.  Just occasionally I wondered about the roots of her strong feelings – and what it must do to you to tell this story every day of your working life.  She showed us the house where the Commandant lived with his family – as in ‘The Boy with the Striped Pyjamas’ – and allowed herself to wonder if his children playing around their swimming pool so close could smell the camp and the crematoria.  And she told us with a certain satisfaction that he had been hanged from that gallows just there.

It’s the kind of experience which needs a bit of time to think about.  But there is a sort of dilemma in it.  One goes and looks at the unimaginable horrors of it .. look at and let it bear in upon your soul.  But it’s important to remember that these horrors tell you important things about all human nature.  So they are far away from us  and close at the same time.  Like the ‘mindless killers’ tag in Northern Ireland.  No – not mindless killers.  People like us who, in the context in which they found themselves, lost their moral rootedness.

We’re off tomorrow morning to Krakow.  I can’t say I’m looking forward to the visit to Auschwitz but it is obligatory.

It’s been busy these last few days.  I went visiting facilities for the homeless in Perth with CATH.  It was one of those moments when I saw people doing a job which I simply could not do.  Not enough patience or resilience these days.

And on to the Institution of Kimberly in St Mary’s, Dunblane.  It was one of those good moments – to see a priest with great potential beginnning a ministry in a congregation of great potential.  Kelvin preached a warm sermon beautifully expressed – about encounter.  And people felt that a new and exciting chapter had begun.

Today has seen the launch of Casting the Net in all of our churches across the diocese.  It’s taken a while to get here and we are working hard to keep up with expectations.  But it was a good moment.  I was in St Mary’s, Birnam.  We had nets and fish and fish-shaped cakes and there were children and there is hope.

Martin Ritchie comments and ponders a parallel between ministry and the ‘here today gone tomorrow’ of theatre.  And of course there are many parallels between the church and theatre – as there also are with politics.  In my time as a trainer of Curates, I used to suggest to them that they should learn to leave footprints behind them – to act in a situation so that somehow or other it was clear that they had been there.

I suppose that in ministry it’s a bit of both.  If you are the person who conducts the wedding or the funeral or who comes into the hospital in a moment of crisis, you are unlikely to be forgotten – for better or worse.  For the rest, I think clergy tend to operate on the basis of ‘one sows and another reaps’ – sadly in both the negative and positive measurements.  William Barclay said that we stand on the shoulders of our parents.  When I moved from Northern Ireland, I went through a period of feeling that I should have done more.   I celebrate today an e mail from my successor who has got to the finishing line with a building project which I planned with the parish but couldn’t get built.  Thank God for our successors!