Category: Blog Entry

Not again!  Chaplain hoisting his cassock and treading gingerly on the croquet lawn.  More bogstead sagas.  We’ve sent for the men with the equipment and had knowledgeable discussions about rodding eyes and the like.  But to no effect.  Reinforcements arrive tomorrow.   I hope the kitchen floor won’t have to come up.

Meanwhile, we went to ‘Be Near Me’ in the Perth Playhouse on Saturday night.  It’s based on the novel by Andrew O’Hagan .. about a priest in Argyll .. about his huge ability and his lostness as a person … about paedophilia .. about what happens to priests who get lost.  Great theatre and uncomfortable.

I’m going through a phase of doing Thought for the Day again

This is an amazing time of year at Blogstead.  Having sweltered in London heat on Monday, I found early morning frost on the car on Wednesday .. and a hot air balloon hanging over the Tay in a cloudless sky.

Poppy has been out a lot today and enjoying the sights and smells while we’ve been bringing the gardens up to standard.  And there is wild life everywhere.  As we went out this evening, a red squirrel ran across the road and a buzzard swooped down ahead of us.  On the way back, a hare was running up the main road.

Best of all was the account of our congregation in Lochearnhead which held an early morning eucharist beside the loch on Easter Day.  During the Prayer of Thanksgiving, an osprey came down and caught a large fish just beside them.  Sermon superfluous.

The spaces seem to get a bit longer – must try harder.  We arrived back from a sleepy week in Donegal at 11 pm Sunday and I left for a day in London at 4.30 am.  Diary management, where are you?

Anyway, Ireland is its usual extraordinary self.  We sat in the little pub in Glen – perched by the bar because there are only about five seats.  You think chat in an Irish pub is all effervescent stuff?  This was laconic, taciturn by contrast.  Silence.  Half formed sentences wandered off looking for answers – but didn’t seem bothered about whether an answer came this week or next.  Another round?  A silent raising of a 5 euro note.  Wonderful.  And as we left, the phrase which links Donegal and Scotland -‘See you later’

Out for Sunday lunch with the uncle in Belfast in a much posher establishment with chandeliers and white table cloths.  Belfast is wonderful in its own way.  The waitress was probably trained to murmur, ‘Your coffee Sir’  What she actually said was, ‘If-yous-ud-like-a-wee-top-up-for-your-coffees-just-give-me-a-wee-shout’  Unbeatable.

Oh – and they also said ‘See you later’

Well, it was great.  I could even say that Donegal seems to have returned to something closer to how it used to be.  The aggressive developers and their ‘more money than sense’ clients have departed as if they have never been – leaving only the debts and the finished, half finished and not-yet-started development sites.  The idea that housing in Donegal and elsewhere could be treated like an investment in a Bolivian tin mine seems ever more extraordinary.

Poppy’s reading of the Irish Times financial pages leaves her with a number of unanswered questions.  The most alarming article was by a group of eminent economics academics who raised concerns that, in creating a holding place for so-called toxic debts, the government is at serious risk of wildly overpaying for what it is taking on.  There is an air of ‘hoping for the best’ which does not inspire confidence.

And while Poppy was reading the Irish Times, I tackled the ‘must read’ religious book of the moment ‘The Shack’ which somebody had lent me.  Worth a read, I would say.  It deals with many of the difficult issues – like forgiveness.  In the end, I think I collided with my irritation that God speaks in the tones of an undergraduate theology essay.  I think that s/he speaks much more simply than that.

Meanwhile over at Blogstead na Mara, all is calm, all is bright.

Poppy is relaxing after doing the Irish Times Crossword – and recovering from the excesses of a night in which the fire alarm went off twice.  Her friend, the Celtic Tiger, seems to have gone off to Poland to look for a job.  The three houses across the valley – 615000 euro when first built – are now reputed to be on sale for 300000 euro.  But still no takers.

Amazing in our Cathedral this morning.  People ‘n flowers ‘n music ‘n children ‘ stuff.  Sermon like this

Spring has come.  So our little community here at Blogstead emerged blinking into the sunlight and we re-introduced ourselves to one another after the long, dark days of winter.  I had done a wise virgins by having the mower and the strimmer serviced during February.  So no problems there.  More difficult was my decision to dig a vegetable plot hard by Continuous Aeration Plant No 1 [septic tank to you and me].  Let’s just say it was heavy going.  It remains nameless at present – although the Donald Soper Organic Vegetable garden does trip off the tongue.  And then there was the planting of the rhododenron.  Of course it’s red.  What made you think that a rhododendron might be white?

Alison had decided to unplug the mouse-scarer in the kitchen – so we found that Poppy had been on safari again behind the settee.

Then, as clergy have done through the ages, we’ll roll the stone away tomorrow morning – and then roll it up as quickly as possible and have a week off.  And very welcome it will be. Blogstead na Mara here we come – and time to discover what happened when the Celtic Tiger got knackered.

Always a special moment.  I know we are all into shared ministry – but this seems to be one of those peculiarly ‘clergy’ moments.  So we sat in a circle in our lovely cathedral and revisited vocation.  I always think it is the most wonderful thing.  Clergy as a group are the oddest bunch – extraordinarily diverse in every way.  We are at times mad, fed up, visionary, crotchety, workaholic, bone idle, tired.  We pay a price for ministry and our families pay a bigger price.  And yet.  As I anointed the hands and was anointed myself, I pondered the extraordinary spirit-filled potential of all this.

I had prepared myself with lots of exciting biddings and stuff written into my Order of Service.  So why did I find that I had arrived with only the outside cover.  This was the Homily

In much the same area, I enjoyed a piece from the Alban Institute which turned up in my Inbox today.  I particularly liked this sentence: ‘ In our years of ministry together, the people of St Timothy’s and I had grown from needing to understand worship in order to participate in it to needing to participate in worship in order to understand it.’  That seems to me to express some of the mystery of mission and congregation-building in our times.

Continuing the US theme, I had my first Skype coaching session today with Bishop Philip of the Gulf Coast who is going to haul me through the ‘Living our Vows’ Programme of the College for Bishops in The Episcopal Church.

I attended a ‘stakeholders’ meeting on Spiritual Care in the NHS recently.  As I confided to my Facebook page,  it whetted my appetite for a ‘fence-sitters’ gathering – should anyone feel like organising one other than those which we already attend regularly ex officio.

During all the time that I was Rector of Seagoe, I was also Church of Ireland Chaplain in Craigavon Area Hospital – just over the back hedge.  It was a very rich experience – but for much of the time I felt that marginalisation was not far away.  So I was glad to see a Stakeholders Gathering on Spiritual Care attended by a very wide range of people.

And yet.  At the time and since, I have gradually been turning around in my mind the understanding of spiritual care around which people were gathering.  Ultimately it seemed to me to be ‘helping people to face and respond to major life questions raised by illness’  In spiritual terms, it seemed to me to be content-free [or at least non-specific].  One ponders what it means when there are humanists as part of a chaplaincy team.

And then I heard people begin to differentiate between spiritual care and religious care.  Now it would obviously be wrong for the churches to seek to have a monopoly of spiritual care.  But then to identify religious care as it it was something different seems to bring us back to ….. marginalisation again.  Plus ca change and all that.

Canon Shirley Lobley had been ill for some time – but her death came as a shock.  She served as a member of the Collaborative Ministry Team in our congregation in St John’s, Alloa.  She was prayerful and thoughtful, strong in leadership and generous in sharing ministry.  She encouraged the congregation to look ever outwards – the development of the Community House was just one of the initiatives in which she shared.  I think that lots of people relied on her strength and her wisdom – I used to take my place in the queue.  This is what I said at her funeral.

It’s a big loss for the congregation and the diocese – but more for her husband, David and the family.  They will be in the prayers of all of us.