Category: Blog Entry

Simon Calder says in today’s Independent, ‘This miracle will make flying safer’   He is for ever saying how safe flying is – safer than the journey to the airport.  But we will all now pay greater attention to the safety stuff.  And we’ll hope that somebody like calm, cool and mega-experienced Sully is at the helm.

Blogstead folk – apart from Poppy who is not welcome on Easyjet – fly more than we should.  I find my reactions to it interesting.  Most of the time, familiarity makes me fairly relaxed.  But I have days when I am not relaxed about it – not just that winter Ryanair flight back from Dublin with Kenny Rathband and David Campbell when we all had the ‘too young to die’ feeling.  Just days when there is no particular reason other than mood.

I always listen to the safety announcement with at least half an ear because it seems to be tempting fate not to.  I do not read or do Sodukus during take-off or landing although I may pretend to.  I require the Captain to have a clipped Biggles-type voice – Sully almost certainly has a very relaxed American delivery.

My only other requirements are to know that the Captain is content, capable and has not had a row with his wife during the past 24 hours.  Above all, I need to know that his competence is matched by a lack of imagination and whimsy.  If I was a pilot, I would always be sitting at the end of the runway wondering, ‘What if this thing doesn’t take off?’  Useless.  I wouldn’t last a week.  But maybe the saintly Sully would find my job a bit of a pain as well.

Goodness – Thursday evening already.  The week has gone in a whirl.  Mainly because of the Clergy Conference.  And then there is all the other stuff which keeps coming anyway.

It was a good conference – exploring liturgy and worship.  I was interested to be told recently by someone – who remembered the SEC in childhood as ‘conservative catholic’ in practice and doctrine – how much it has changed.  One of our clergy described it to me in my early stages as ‘warm catholic’.

Those conversations do tie in with the way in which we seem to be searching for – or developing – a style of worship.  I first met it at the General Synod Service 2008 – very congregational, very alive, very reflective of the world church.  Stuart Muir of St Paul’s Cathedral, Dundee, was in charge of the music at Synod and he was with us for our Clergy Conference.  The reaction of our clergy was remarkably positive.  This is good music but you don’t have to be a cathedral to do it – very good quality material and absolutely rooted in the liturgy.  There is hope.

Great to have a visit on Sunday from Bishop Enoch Kayeeye of Congo.  Enoch is a missionary bishop from Uganda.  Alison and I met him and his wife, Phoebe, at Lambeth so all roads lead to Blogstead ..   Actually he is on a marathon trip round the UK and has been with us at our Clergy Conference this week in Kinross.  So how has it been going?  Pretty well actually.  We’ve been doing liturgy and we really got into the singing – and dancing – this evening.  So I am expecting great changes when I vist some of our congregations in the next few months.

‘Scotland all right?’ they ask.  And as we’ve whiled away the past few days doing nothing more strenuous than this and that … yes it is .. absolutely all right.

We dropped in yesterday to see Niall and Lynn’s Red Kites – at Argaty near Doune near Dunblane.  Amazing to see 20 or 30 of them coming to feed.  If you want to go and look, check out their Argaty Red Kites website.

And today we had a walk – with what seemed like hundreds of others – along the strand at St Andrews.  Cold .. but bright light and snow on the distant hills of Angus.

Meanwhile one slight change in my patterns this Christmas has been a quickening of the pace on Facebook.  My favourite Agony Column – Mrs Mills in the Sunday Times Style Section – posed the interesting question, ‘How does one respond to a Friend request from one’s former spouse?’  You will have read the answer for yourself, of course.  Meanwhile with Roseanna Cunningham’s group to support a St Andrews to Iona Pilgrimage Route – and with the emergence of a sort of post-troubles diaspora of Irish exports, I’ve been finding my Facebook activity busy enough for me to cope with.

Dawn at Blogstead today – the view from the episcopal four poster – looking towards the Sidlaw Hills and Dundee.  Poppy wanted an early morning safari but we’re cautious about that.  She doesn’t realise that there could be that sudden beating of wings, etc.

Happy New Year to you all.  I’m still barking, coughing and spluttering – as is half the population.  Two weeks of it now and Alison is just starting it.

We’ve had crowded churches this Christmas – increasing Christmas congregations have been a visible trend for the last ten years or more.  I was interested to see that Andreas Whittam Smith  in Friday’s Independent decided to link that to the case for maintaining the Church of England as an established church.  I was interested too that he somehow failed to mention that he is First Estates Commissioner of the Church of England – a game-keeper’s gamekeeper, as it were.  I can’t say that I found his argument convincing – tho’ I am properly agnostic on the issue itself.

Firstly he seems perilously close to John Major’s sentimentality about ‘spinsters cycling to holy communion through the morning mist’  I’m not at all sure that the sort of residual  belongingness which he describes really exists.

Secondly, what does he say to those non-established churches which have also found their buildings full at Christmas?  I’ve been watching this increase gathering in both the Church of Ireland and the SEC.  It’s a mission opportunity – I found myself telling a [full] Cathedral in Perth that this is a time when lots of people who might say, ‘I’m not religious but ..’ come to church.  If you want to read the full thing, it’s here.  And if it is a mission opportunity, how do we build on it?  It probably has some affinities with the work which ‘Back to Church Sunday’ is attempting to do.

Meanwhile back at St Ninians, I found myself in middle of one of those events where our small church appears many times larger than it really is.  An outstandingly beautiful building enhanced by new lighting .. wonderful music .. good liturgy.  There is hope.

‘Bring them on’ I say. None of this fashionable snootiness about the ’round robin’ Christmas letters from friends. My Christmas wouldn’t be complete without them. I savour them every one. And of course we send a Blogstead Bulletin to 580 of our closest friends. Somebody once said that these are letters written by those whose children are good at passing exams. If I was to be critical of our particular effort, I would say that it evinces a sort of bland cheeriness while sharing no more real information than it needs to.

It’s really about disclosure. I used to think that the charm – and the danger – of the sort of ‘rolling disclosure’ on blog and Facebook which some of us are into is that it is impossible to dissemble on a continuing basis. You will always reveal your true self in that idle moment when – as now – it’s 1205 and I haven’t a clue what to write about. But as time goes on, I’m less sure about that. Perfectly possible to be endlessly personable without being personal. And to those who say, ‘I read your blog so I know how things are with you,’ I say ‘Aha!’

But the ‘one off’ Christmas letter has none of that professional presentation. I love the sentences which begin, ‘Unfortunately … ‘ and go on to speak of some minor parachute-opening issue ‘. I love the lengthy references to named individuals whom one has never met or heard of – but the dark corners of whose lives one is being invited to share. Most of all – as a religious professional – I love the passages which speak of ‘God’s Unfolding Plan’ and marvel at what people are able to tuck away in that category. It always reminds me of the arms-outstretched realism of an old friend who said of the call to work in Lisburn that ‘You would need your hands pre-drilled to work there.’

Yes I’m something of a kill-joy in that department – not sure that it could ever be safe to speak of GUP other than in the context of suffering.

Well Christmas has crept along the lane to Blogstead.  Unfortunately we had to miss the first in a series of social events last night but there will be others.

My statement on Facebook that I was having my usual problem with a Christmas morning sermon brought a avalanche of helpful suggestions from clergy who were obviously wasting time on Facebook rather than writing Christmas morning sermons.  To a man, as it were, they recommended Ian Poulton on ‘For the Fainthearted’.  And if you’re stuck, you could do much, much worse.  Good Betjeman lines which I might pinch.

I’ve obviously been in trouble before because, when I opened what my former Rector, Hammie Leckey, used to call my ‘store of treasures old and new’ – meaning a file enticingly labelled ‘Christmas Morning St Andrews St Andrews 2007’ I found two pages of Christmas jokes and nothing else.  I must have said something else suitably weighty and episcopal but I haven’t the faintest idea what it was.   The record suggests that all I managed was ‘What did Adam say to Eve on the day before Christmas?’ –  Answer: ‘It’s Christmas, Eve’

Well tomorrow can look after itself.  For now, Bam Bam and Mark are home.  Poppy is luxuriating on the settee.  All is calm.  All is bright.  Happy Christmas to you and yours.