Category: Blog Entry

Yes it’s bonus time in the Scottish Episcopal Church.  And as in the world of banking, so in the church – everybody wins.  We work on a complicated measurement of prayers said, e mails sent, Vestries chaired, visits done, funerals conducted, sermons preached …. But whatever the measurement, we expect to get our bonuses.

It’s easy to take potshots at bankers at the moment.  Some will protest that they have met their targets – their bit of the bank is profitable – so why should they not receive their due?  But they disregard the fact that they are part of a corporate whole which has been bailed out by the taxpayer.  I know that many of the people who receive bonuses – not the mega-millions – rely on that as part of their pay just to deal with the mortgage or the car loan.  I am mindful too of bank staff who have been rewarded with bank shares which are now almost worthless.  There have been many losers – within the banks as well as without

And yet I have long believed that some choices carry us into the realm of something close to spirituality – even tho’ they are not identifiably religious choices.  The victim – victim of violence or wronged spouse or whatever – is entitled to anger and revenge but chooses to set that aside.  That brave choosing becomes the start of the painful path towards the forgiveness and healing which will ultimately set all parties free.  And the choice about bonuses is a bit like that.  ‘Entitled’ is a big word – it may have moral or contractual dimensions.  The question is whether it is ‘right’ for those, who have already benefitted beyond the dreams of many,  to set aside that to which they feel that they are ‘entitled’.  Because down that road might lie the birth of a more communitarian, less acquisitive and less envious culture.

Whatever you think about Tony Blair, he’s an amazing politician.  Every European leader is aiming to be the first to visit the O’Bama White House – and there he is at the National Prayer Breakfast – the one whom the Portadown Orangemen used to call Mr Blur.  I defend to the last my right to have faith-shaped political views, but I can’t really cope with politicians ‘doing God’

Meanwhile back to the Special Relationship – which I tend to believe is a load of wistful rubbish.  The significant relationship of course is the Irish-American one – have you heard the Corrigan Brothers song, ‘There’s no one as Irish as Barack O’Bama’?

But of course it’s not as simple as that.  I’ve just signed up to be member No 30021 of the Fans of Sully Sullenberger on Facebook.  Did you listen to the cockpit voice recorder – ‘Are you able to return to La Guardia?’  ‘Unable’  Wonderful – so clipped.  So Biggles.   And then there was the film of the homecoming.  His wife introduces him as ‘the man who makes my cup of tea in the morning.’  And the man himself says, ‘We were just doing the job we were trained to do.’  Fantastic.  So understated.  So British. The special relationship lives!

I shall practise being similarly monosyllabic at the endless church meetings.  Sully had them all safely landed in the Hudson before an SEC meeting would have got through the apologies.

Well this was an important day.  Our newly-enlarged Standing Committee met for the first time.  More members still to be added.  We approved the Job Descriptions for three part time Development Workers – one for congregational development; one for ministry training; one for children and young people.

That’s a big commitment to mission and growth for a small diocese to make – all part of our Casting the Net programme.  We’re trying to run fast enough to keep up with the expectations.  There is hope.

Great.  Meetings cancelled – one done by Skype which perhaps teaches us something.  We’re not snowed in but just enough to make people reluctant to travel.  And why not?  Some of the people coming to the Casting the Net Policy Group meeting tonight would have been driving nearly 40 miles each way.

Meanwhile – did you hear the interview with the people whose hobby is to ‘spot’ all the Eddie Stobart lorries?  Apparently they all have girls’ names – the lorries, that is.

Wonderful word.  ‘Just follow me into church’ said Bro Mark-Ephrem ‘and we’ll incline before the altar.’  Last time I went on retreat with the Benedictines in Rostrevor, I reported that I became fascinated by the way in which they reverenced the altar – it seemed to me to sum up the whole of ‘a life consecrated’.  It’s a long slow bend from the waist.  And the use of ‘incline’ reminded me that that all of the brothers were professed at Bec in Normandy – so we were thinking in liturgical French.

If you want to know what I said at their Eucharist, it’s here

Meanwhile, I pondered the resonances – ‘Incline our hearts to keep this law’ and ‘Incline thine ear’  Very Anglican.

And as I pondered, I watched Brother Mark-Ephrem censing the altar.  None of that energetic swinging.  More a gentle inclining of the thurible … in and around the chalice and paten … inclining ever so gently almost into the candle flame.  Not at all in the area of ‘nice bit of chalice work there, Ted’  Just something surprisingly and intensely moving.  I still don’t know why.

Those who thought Northern Ireland is ‘problem solved’ will have had an unpleasant surprise this week.  The publication of the Eames/Bradley Report on the legacy of the Troubles made the proposal that all victims of the Troubles – both victims of violence and perpetrators of violence – might receive a ‘recognition payment’.  It certainly lifted the sticking plaster and allowed us to see the bad stuff underneath.

Winston Churchill’s words came back:

“Then came the Great War: Every institution, almost, in the world was strained. Great Empires have been overturned. The whole map of Europe has been changed. The position of countries has been violently altered. The modes of thought of men, the whole outlook on affairs, the grouping of parties, all have encountered violent and tremendous changes in the deluge of the world.

“But as the deluge subsides and the waters fall short, we see the dreary steeples of Fermanagh and Tyrone emerging once again. The integrity of their quarrel is one of the few institutions that has been unaltered in the cataclysm which has swept the world.”

Northern Ireland has moved on.  There is a pragmatic political settlement which is holding together.  But as somebody there said to me last week, it is a place which is still ‘bound’.  Political leadership may support accommodation – but I don’t see much leadership which seems interested in much more than that.  When you look at South Africa, you can see that spiritual and political leadership did work together – ArchbishopTutu and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, for example.  Maybe the outcry about the Eames/Bradley report is precisely because of the clash of values which happens when people attempt to deal with the deeper issues.

I think Susan Howatch’s church novels talked about ‘flicking the switch’ – the idea that one can plunge into some spiritual realm just like that.  Well it isn’t just like that.  Three days with the Benedictines in Rostrevor.  It takes one day to begin to get yourself calmed down.  Another day of reasonable calm.  And then the ‘stuff’ begins to gather around you again.  But how could it be otherwise?

But it was great and I’ll tell you a bit more about it as we go.

Speaking of ‘flicking the switch’, Mr Easyjet said that we were sitting on the tarmac in Belfast with ‘just a slight technical problem which we hope to resolve very soon.’  Visions of him sitting surrounded by red warning lights .. or Canada Geese flying by.  Dublin accent.  Warm, friendly and reassuring – but maybe not quite that Sully calming effect.

Passing through Belfast today  – Hillhall Presybterian Church’s Wayside Pulpit catches the eye as always.  ‘All God wants for Christmas is U’  I think I prefer ‘Use sun-block.  Don’t block out the Son’

So it’s off on retreat for a couple of days tomorrow with the Benedictines at Rostrevor.   They see themselves as engaged in the mission of ‘spiritual ecumenism’ and they have been both vigorous and successful in forging strong ecumenical relationships.  We’re in the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity and I’ll be preaching at their Eucharist on Sunday.

Some distance, I think, from Ulrika’s triumph in the Big Brother House.  I’m looking forward to the silence and to the Gregorian Chant which seems to belong in the silence without crowding it.

It must be a wonderful thing to be able to engender such hope in people.  Scary on the delivery front – but wonderful.

I’m continuing to read ‘Dreams from my Father’

Wonderful phrases.  ‘The family … preferred a straight-backed form of Methodism that valued reason over passion and temperance over both.’

Most extraordinary of all is the reflection on what is akin to vocation.  He comes to terms with a way of being black which leaves behind the easy path to victimhood.   He constructs a way of assessing the various influences in his life: ‘I can see that my choices were never truly mine alone – and that is how it should be, that to assert otherwise is to chase after a sorry sort of freedom.’

Best of all, he can imagine that it might have been otherwise: ‘…. allowing my ambitions to travel a narrower, more personal course, so that in the end I might have taken my friend Ike’s advice and given myself over to stocks and bonds and the pull of respectability’

To reflect on your life and be able dispassionately to recognise that it might easily have turned out differently ..  that seems to suggest a considerable maturity which is able to hold in tension the serious intent and the ‘almost chance’ in life.

I think that, when I am exploring vocation with people, it’s that sort of personal insight that I am looking for.  So I’m off on retreat next week to do a bit of the same kind of rooting around in my own vocation.

You must be tired listening to me suggesting that I have the best Sunday morning journeys of any bishop in the Anglican Communion.  But .. through Crieff and Comrie … along Loch Earn with snow on the mountains around Lochearnhead … up Glen Ogle .. down to Killin where the Falls of Dochart were at their spectacular best.

I find the soul of the SEC in places like this – fragile and warm little churches tucked away in beautiful places – keeping a flame of sacramental worship alive.  They probably remind me of childhood experiences of rural Church of Ireland churches in Co Cork.  My grandmother wearing her hat – but not her coat – singing loudly and playing the organ while some stout-hearted member of the congregation pumped.

Our Tin Tab at Killin may have all sorts of structural and other problems which you would rather not know about.  But it is warm and friendly and it shares its warmth with the Roman Catholics after we have headed off for lunch.  Which today was the entire congregation of 19 gathered around Angus and Jill’s hospitable table.  And then back up Glen Ogle in the snow.

Tough but somebody, etc., etc.