Category: Blog Entry

Just time for a rapid pre-Christmas visit to Dublin, mainly to gather up the older generation for a spot of lunch.  The Celtic Tiger has of course become something of a flea-bitten ally cat so it was interesting to find out how things were.  To which one of our friends responded, ‘Nobody knows what is happening’.

As always in Dublin, the nebbing is interesting.   I travelled from Blackrock to Howth on the DART enthralled with a 30-something couple sitting next to me discussing their drinking capacity – as if that was the most natural thing in the world.  And on Ryanair on the way home, a line of girls sitting in front of me explained to some random guy who was trying to chat them up that, ‘She and I have the same Dad and those two have the same Mum’  So unlike the home life of our own dear etc., etc.

Anyway, time to dig myself into the faithful Passat at Edinburgh Airport – now about to reach 170000 – and on to preach  in St Salvator’s in St Andrews this morning.  And then a really impressive afternoon event to mark the end of Inter-faith Week.  I had a four minute slot.  Pity it was badly supported.  And on to the Daily Service from Edinburgh on Radio 4 tomorrow morning.

They keep mentioning it – the apparent calmness of the terrorists in Mumbai .. who stood outside a restaurant and just fired in from the street .. the railway station .. the hotels.  Hard to get your mind around that – particularly when one is constantly trying to avoid hurting anything .. like the deer that dithered in front of me in the dawn yesterday on my way down from Blogstead.

There was often a debate in Northern Ireland about whether one should attach ‘mindless’ to those whom one called ‘killers’.  Does ‘mindless’ allow the idea to grow that those who shoot others in cold blood [why is it ‘cold’ blood, I suddenly wonder] can only do so if they have switched off their minds and are therefore not really responsible?  But I remember carrying around in my mind the working hypothesis that something does die in those who can bring themselves to take the life of another – so that the second or third time it ceases to be as difficult?

I spent a while as a member of the Board of Visitors at Crumlin Road Prison in Belfast.  I exited at the first reasonable opportunity because  I found it very difficult as an outsider to have any real idea what was happening inside.  But it did give me the chance of wandering through the prison and into the exercise yard and looking into the eyes of people who had planted bombs and pulled triggers.  And what did I see?  In truth, probably the product of an over-heated imagination.

But there was one – whose eyes stay with me to this day.

Getting better.  The answer wasn’t what I thought.  Google – answer to almost everything – said that I needed to clear my cookies and cache and then delete my Google Calendar.  And at last contact was established.  Not perfect yet – slight tendency to produce double entries and once is enough for most things.

So I’m now in that interesting and terrifying area where I haven’t quite let go of the old to take hold of the new .. and my sermon for next Sunday on things apocalyptic begins to have a sinister relevance.

Meanwhile Companionlink once started is becoming unstoppable.   Google to Palm .. it’s now moving on to synch the Mission and Ministry Board … to synch Poppy and Spice next door, etc., etc.

Just occasionally here at Blogstead Episcopi we set aside the simple living and high thinking which is the hallmark of Anglicanism … for what?

I’ve used a Palm PDA/diary thingy for about five years now.  Let go of the paper diary long ago and only occasionally turn up in the wrong place on the wrong day.  But the ‘search for the North-West passage’ among Palm users has been the question of how to get information out of the thing and into any other format.  Until now – when Companionlink has produced software which synchronises pretty well everything into everything else – it may do denominational synching for all I know.

Anyway this has become urgent for me because I need to allow my Secretary/PA to get access to my diary on Google Calendar.  But will it synch?  No of course it won’t.

Delightful people over at Companionlink in Silicon Valley, California in the USofA.  Nathaniel has been e mailing me telling me to try this and that.  But will it synch?  No of course it won’t.

Martin Luther King had a dream.  But I have a suspicion that this all goes back to the Celtic Bishops’ Conference in some hotel in Wales … and the WiFi system was German and it would contact only the German version of GMail.  Have I been captured by aliens?

Since Friday is cat-blogging day, I thought I would introduce you to Sue, my mother’s British Blue, who joined in the birthday celebrations yesterday in a characteristically restrained manner. Sue gets on quietly with her life – she lived underneath my mother’s desk for a number of years and seldom came out. Meals were delivered by room service. If cats were churches – which in a way they are, of course – she would definitely be Anglican. The British Blue website describes British Blues as being

Calm, alert and affectionate without being overly-demonstrative he is a soothing presence, unlike some breeds who are very much “look at me!!”

It goes on to say the breed is:

undemanding but displays an understated affection and loyalty

So no exchanging of the Peace there!

Very interesting to find how anxious the Glenalmond College community was on Tuesday – when I was there for the whole morning for a meeting of the Committee of Council [see ‘What do you do all day?’ No 125] – because of the screening on BBC2 Scotland of the first of three ‘fly on the wall’ documentaries about the school.  Why was I there?  Because Glenalmond College is episcopalian in its foundation – and in daily chapel – and I’m written into the Constitution.  Well, I could easily digress into significant issues like the £24000 fees – given that my most recent school involvement in Northern Ireland was as Chair of Governors at Killicomaine Junior High School.  But I think that the key thing about the Glenalmonds of this world is the quality of what the staff give to the pupils – and I suspect that sometimes the parents may not quite see that.  But it was there in the programme – Charlie the housemaster, for example

I spent an evening last year with one of the staff and a group of senior students discussing ‘the social or moral issue of my choice’.  So we tackled human sexuality.  It was a good evening.  I listened to the staff member who was with us – just one of the extra things he does – gently teaching them how to discuss and debate – ‘Why are you saying that – what is your evidence for that statement – what do you mean when you say ??’  Beyond price in training for life.  I do that for free.  Any school that asks.

Just time to see the programme before heading for the sleeper and a meeting in London – a day which included also Peterborough and Cambridge.  Today we celebrate my mother’s birthday and her three children are all going to be in the same place at the same time. 

Quite a weekend it was.  Various friends to stay at various times in Blogstead’s guest wing .. a hospital visit in Edinburgh .. Sunday morning in Forfar.

And the highlight?  Well of course you’ll be thinking of Christine’s Ordination to the Priesthood in All Saints, St Andrews, on Sunday afternoon.  I’ve really got beyond those ‘long way from Portadown’ thoughts which used to afflict me in such moments.  Now I just stand or sit in the midst as my Chaplain directs while waves of pageantry, colour, incense and music swirl around me.  It really was the sort of event which Piskie church does well.   There were some awesome moments – particularly moments of silence.   As long as I have a minder muttering ‘Hat on – hat off’ I’m just fine.

But – sorry Christine – it wasn’t the highlight.  Even the Ordination Service was surpassed by the Cathedral Chapter’s ‘do’ at Blogstead to mark Janice Cameron’s retirement.  Well – you can mark Janice’s retirement.  Whether she’ll take any notice is a different question.  But it did give us an opportunity to move beyond the simple pleasures of our usual Beetle Drive to test-drive the new St Andrews Monopoly [in the shops now £16.99 – 3 for the price of 2].  Here one can light upon Coupar Angus, pass quickly on to Ballintuim, sell Elie and Pittenweem, build the new toilets at Doune – or end up in Jail [now known as the SinBin]  Hours of fun for the whole church family.

I’m watching with great interest the reports of how Obama is gathering together his team.  Nothing more interesting than the management of change, it seems to me.  And, of course, you find it all in the church as well.

I still believe that the problem is usually not a lack of ideas – more a lack of rigour in carrying them out.  Hence it seems absolutely right that Obama should have appointed Rahm Emanuel as his Chief of Staff – a man with a fearsome reputation for pushing along an agenda.  In church circles, the Archdeacon [in the SEC – the Dean] is traditionally the Enforcer – delivering the bad news on behalf of the bishop so that the bishop can subsequently arrive and say he didn’t really mean it.

To digress for a moment, I think that the church does have lots of ideas – but they tend to be a bit floaty – passions rather than policy.  So that we talk a lot but rather less happens.

Meanwhile, having hired an Enforcer, Obama is showing signs of wanting to be collaborative and bi-partisan at the policy level by talking with Hillary Clinton and John McCain – which seems brave.  I hope he’ll be able to sustain it because it seems absolutely the right way to go.

I’ve spent this evening at Paddy’s Institution – new Rector in the Strathearn Group of congregations. That means Crieff, Comrie and Lochearnhead. If you don’t know this part of the world, it’s visual perfection and the people are nice as well.

By my reckoning, it’s more than a year since I first met the Vacancy Committee. We had all sorts of difficulties which I won’t bore you with. I know that I attended a meeting some time ago which they said was their 14th. And yet out of it all .. in that extraordinary way which is the church at its best .. nothing quite turns out as you expected but it’s probably the better for it. They bought a Rectory and that wasn’t easy either. They expected to have to borrow lots of money and then a quiet generosity in the congregations kicked in and they didn’t have to borrow lots of money.

So there we are. Paddy’s tucked up in a nice, easy-to-heat modern Rectory. She’ll hit the ground running tomorrow. And I still have one or two problems to sort out elsewhere. But sufficient unto the day, etc.

Remembrance Day today – so here is another thought for BBC Radio Scotland.  A dreadful morning to be picking my way across the Sidlaw Hills from Blogstead to Dundee.  If only I was paid as much as Jonathan Ross for doing it.