Category: Blog Entry

Always something new in the SEC.  ‘Have you seen the doll?’ they asked yesterday in Alloa.  And there it was – a fully computerised racially-non-specific doll.  This is the programme which gives teenage girls electronic babies to look after in an effort to curb teenage pregnancies.  This really was something new – if you know the SEC, you will understand that our fertility profile tends to be a bit Abraham and Sarah-ish.  ‘So how has your baby been?’ I asked.  ‘Oh just up twice during the night’ was the reply.

We’re doing a lot of thinking about vocational discernment at present.  Is this not a useful principle which we could apply?  We could give the person who is exploring vocation an electronic congregation to live with for a while.  It would telephone at all sorts of odd times to complain about this and that – about the graveyard and the church being cold.  It would be overwhelmingly friendly for a while and then go all funny.  It would sing hymns too slowly.  It would have a sort of soap opera life of tensions and misunderstandings.  In short it would be delightfully and overwhelmingly human.  I do miss parish ministry – a bit. . sometimes.

Long-standing readers will know that, even though I have little hair, I like to take the measure of a community by having a haircut.  You may remember my encounter with a very camp curly-haired Cape-coloured crimper in Capetown.  Well I’ve never found the right hairdresser in Perth until now – it’s in George Street, just up from the hotel.  It has a kind of outer court with a big old-fashioned cash register.  Inside, it’s a bit chappish with lots of chat and some Piskie connections.  I was asked if I knew ‘hairy duke’.

Meanwhile euphoria continues.  Yes I know he’s black.  But just to hear the US government speak in sentences will be enough for me for a while.  So even as I celebrate the triumph of the rational over the irrational, I also ponder the need to embrace the unconventional against the conventional.

Dominic Lawson in yesterdays Independent responded to the attacks on the banks for not instantly passing on the interest rate cut like this, ‘When the entire political class is united on a single issue, you can be sure that it is largely mistaken: the more conventional is the wisdom, the more certain it is to be based on ignorance or mere fashion.’

Which is in some measure the reason why we are in this mess.  I like the idea that the best investment policy is simply to do the opposite of what everybody else is doing – sell when they buy and buy when they sell.  Because of course what inflates a bubble is precisely the desire of [almost] everybody to join in.  And the ones who join in last are the ones who get hurt the most.

Which brings us of course to the dangerous notion that the church – which presents itself as the most conventional body on earth, as it were – should actually be the most unconventional, counter-intuitive and faithful.

A great night.  I have to confess that I lasted only until about 2.30 am.   But it seemed clear enough by then and I was finding the capacity of David Dimbleby and the BBC to make even this seem stodgy more than I could stay awake for.

So Blogstead Episcopi woke up to a changed world.  And of course those of us old enough to be rooted in Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ can’t help seeing this as the fulfilment of that dream.  But I find myself just as glad to see a sensitive thinker and a world class wordsmith – whatever his colour –  at the centre of government.

And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of our world – our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand. To those who would tear this world down – we will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security – we support you. And to all those who have wondered if America’s beacon still burns as bright – tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from our the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity, and unyielding hope.

I found myself feeling great admiration for John McCain in his speech – utterly free of self-pity and rancour.  If he had fought the election with the same grace and strength, he would have been formidable indeed

Senator Obama has achieved a great thing for himself and for his country. I applaud him for it, and offer him my sincere sympathy that his beloved grandmother did not live to see this day. Though our faith assures us she is at rest in the presence of her creator and so very proud of the good man she helped raise.

Senator Obama and I have had and argued our differences, and he has prevailed. No doubt many of those differences remain.

These are difficult times for our country. And I pledge to him tonight to do all in my power to help him lead us through the many challenges we face.

I urge all Americans … I urge all Americans who supported me to join me in not just congratulating him, but offering our next president our good will and earnest effort to find ways to come together to find the necessary compromises to bridge our differences and help restore our prosperity, defend our security in a dangerous world, and leave our children and grandchildren a stronger, better country than we inherited.

 

Slipped in another Thought for the Day for the BBC this morning. Couldn’t resist Obama and the American election. But of course I should really have been talking about Donald Trump and his dune-destroying golf resort. I listened to the First Minister talking about the jobs which will flow and I wondered whether it could really be so. Aren’t many of them likely to be the catering industry pattern of seasonal, low paid and temporary?

Meanwhile we are settling down for a long night here at Blogstead. My Chaplain mentioned almost wistfully that he found strong-minded women of faith like Sarah Palin ‘very, very foxy.’ But he’s out on his own there. I am impervious to her charms, her glasses and her moose-shooting abilities. To be [relatively] serious for a moment .. it seems to me that all American politicians sit well to the right of the political spectrum on which we live. Meaning that Obama is roughly where or to the right of where the Cameroons are. So Blogstead’s support for Obama has more to do with support for rationalists over against irrationalists. Or do I just not understand it?

Well we got home late last night – even though they had simply closed the road which links Cairnryan to Blogstead. It was ‘turn right only’ as we came off the ferry. Amazing. Poppy was a bit ‘travelled out’ and was not amused.

Glad to be home as well. This morning was one of those perfect Sunday mornings as we headed for Dunkeld – snow on all the hills around us; morning sun on the Beech Hedge at Meikelour; partridges on the road near Caputh; wisps of mist over the Tay;

view of blue water through Telford’s Bridge at Dunkeld. And when we got to Birnham, we had Confirmation with Eucharist, the new lighting in the church and a community in good heart.

But of course you’ll be wanting to know how Fin and Emma’s Civil Partnership in Belfast went. Well it was grand. We’re part of the older generation now. So we witter on about how things are and where the last 25 years went to and how none of us has changed a bit We watch the younger generation making its commitments in hope and trust. To be honest, on that very human level matters of sexuality are not the first things one thinks about.

It reminded me of our family visit to the Baghdad Cafe in the Castro area of San Francisco in 1996. The children were younger and we allowed the Rough Guide to help us search for a good value restaurant – not knowing that Castro is the centre of the gay community in San Francisco. Fascinating. But what I remember is how sort of ordinary it all was. Some of the dressing was a little surprising – but it had a very ordinary, comfortable, domestic sort of feel to it. And, in the best sense, that’s how it was with Fin and Emma – and, of course, Alex. And we wish them all the very best.

… does it take to change a lightbulb?  Put that into Google and you get umpteen pages of ‘one to hold the bulb and 99 to turn the house/drink until the room spins round/none – they’d rather live in the Dark Ages.

So how many does it take to deliver cash to the local bank in Dunfanaghy in these peaceful times?

Answer:  One armoured van.  Two army vehicles with lots of people with guns.  One Garda [police] squad car.

Which reminds me that I must write to the nice security people at Edinburgh Airport – to ask why arriving Belfast passengers are always either delivered or bused at great expense to a door at the end of the Terminal marked [surprisingly enough] Belfast Arrivals.  Am I considered to be a security risk as I move from one part of the UK to another?

I’ve spent the last thirty-six hours retouching the frescos on the Blogstead ceiling and pondering the huge changes taking place here.

Two good ones to start with. First, Ireland is still a very young country. The emigration patterns which scarred every generation since the Famine have stopped. Perthshire looks somewhat mature by comparison. Second, the non-Irish population here is now 10%. There are stresses and strains but huge social change has taken place in a very short time and Ireland’s prosperity has been shared with the rest of the world.

And on the other side? Well the empty houses, of course. The process of turning land into a speculative commodity began in the ’70’s when resourceful people found that they could buy land at agricultural prices and get their political friends to rezone it for development. There’s a very sharp edge on some of the journalism here at present. Kate Holmquist wrote in yesterday’s Irish Times about the Irish businessmen who did well in the property boom: ‘one of those men who now finds himself stripped by the bank and working out of his car.’ She goes on, ‘This month, as opposed to last, his office consists of himself, his car and a mobile phone ….. parked at the far end of the Lidl lot.’

Meanwhile on the social and moral front, change continues apace. As I pirouetted on top of the ladder, I listened to one of those dreadful phone-in discussions which are the bread and butter of RTE radio. Marriage, living together, personal choice, the protection of children … Fascinating because one is listening to Ireland trying to make up its mind whether it is a secular, liberal social democracy which prizes personal choice. The old Ireland, where the Catholic church provided a moral compass has gone – let’s not talk about the confessional state – and no common set of values has been found to replace it.

Tomorrow it’s back across the snowbound Glenshane Pass into Northern Ireland. The story there is that the Northern Ireland Executive hasn’t met for four months. If the will of the people is for peace, the political class is failing them – still tending to look outside to Britain or America to help them to make the compromises which are essential in a working democrary. Of which more another day.

A brief sojourn in Blogstead na Mara among the unsold houses, the unfinished developments and the unstarted developments which are the sad detritus of Ireland’s economic boom.  The developers will go bust – and maybe the banks too.  And the pity is that the houses were ever built because the landscape is spoilt for ever.  We’re on our way to celebrate the Civil Partnership of the children of old friends – so that will be interesting.

We got stuck on the quayside at Cairnryan in the gales for nearly five hours.  Poppy gave up reciting her pedigree under her breath and found me a book from the back of the car – Sadie Jones’ ‘The Outcast’ – billed as a ‘Richard ‘n Judy Summer Read’.  Turns out to be a very very uncomfortable read – of a bereaved child for whom everything goes wrong – of the dreary ’50’s – of self harming.  And he sees the church as the place where he is most patronised by others and where the hypocrisy of the community is at its greatest.  So he burns it down.

Speaking of which, we did as many second-homers do yesterday – went to church.  With a comment in the Visitors’ Book from somebody in Perthshire welcoming Prayer Book Matins.  And we said Psalm 1 ‘which tells us where true happiness can be found in alternative half verses.’  But we’re made very welcome there every time we go.  We know people and it’s good to be there and have a natter at the gate afterwards.  Worship, community, belonging … all sort of muddled up together.

Well it was a William McGonagle night on the Tay Bridge as we headed for St Andrews this evening.  This was the third evening which Alison and I have run in different parts of the diocese – using material from the Lambeth Video Diaries with some of our own photos and looking at Anglican Communion issues.  I am surprised by the numbers – must have been around 50 people there this evening.  Since we were in St Andrews, people use big words when they ask questions – so I had to work hard to keep up.  The level of interest and knowledge amazes me – is it a ‘small church’ thing that the Anglican Communion matters to our people?  Or is it the Seabury connection which means that we feel we have a historic connection with the Communion?  Whatever the reason, we had an energetic discussion about autonomy in communion, gracious restraint, federation or curia or communion, moratoria, covenant, holiness and justice paradigms.  Exciting, don’t you think?

Still gently fretting about Obama – and afraid that he might not win.  Have you read his book – The Audacity of Hope?  I approached it expecting to find a piece of campaign pulp.  But it’s a very intelligent, thoughtful and elegant statement of his political philosophy.  I take some comfort from the widely-expressed view that Sarah Palin has become a liability outside the republican heartlands – I suggested some time back that she would cost McCain the election.  But I suppose what niggles is this … that the polls in Northern Ireland were almost always to the left of what happened when people went into the polling booth.  So the polls tended to overstate the strength of the centre ground.  But when people went into the polling booth …

But of course there are other fascinations in there.  Sarah Palin’s passing from the political scene will remove an obvious way in to talking about creationism and fundamentalism.  And then I found myself wafting home in the faithful Passat late one evening from somewhere or other listening to an erudite Radio 3 discussion about the irrationalist tendency in American politics and religion.  Well irrationalism isn’t confined to America – but that’s for another day.  But the egg-headedness of the discussion rather reminded me of that lengthy and wordy lecture I must deliver some day …  on the use of silence in worship.