Category: Blog Entry

Still mulling over the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity .. of which I have seen remarkably little sign this week.  My fault as well.  I picked up a report on the teaching of philosophy as part of RE teaching and wrote Monday’s Thought for the Day about it.  I could make a perfectly good case for faith schools and for teaching RE though a particular denominational framework.  But it does seem to me to make a great deal of sense to approach through the great [and often unanswerable] questions of life and to offer faith as a way of putting a tentative framework of meaning around them.

Comes as a surprise to find that the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity is 100 years old this year. I’ve always been a committed ecumenist – in Northern Ireland it seemed particularly important to hang onto that vision and to use the Week as a pretext for doing things which might not be possible at other times. There were things we couldn’t do – pulpit exchange with Catholic clergy would have been difficult – but we used to exchange lay members of our congregations to bring greetings, read scripture and lead prayers. It was very important and life would have been much harder if we hadn’t been able to model better pictures of relationships in that way.

Regular readers will know that I am unhappy about the present state of ecumenical relationships. At the level of local churches, clergy and congregations, my experience of Scotland is that they are excellent. But at the institutional level, things are more difficult. I think that the sad reality is that churches are preoccupied with institutional survival in a challenging environment and the desire to move towards unity is fairly far down the list of priorities.

I suppose it’s worth mentioning that, having moved on from the Clergy Conference, I managed a twelve hour day in the Diocesan Office.  Definitely time for the ‘get a life’ department.  If you want to know: Standing Committee followed by Management Group for the Review of Journey of the Baptised followed by a contribution to the Ministries Reflection Course.  I felt the Kingdom of God just rushing towards me all day.

Today I went to Edinburgh for a meeting – I managed some e mails and other stuff from the train on my laptop.  The Blackberry stopped receiving them for a while but I surmounted that.

Best bit today was the Institution at Forfar.  End of a long story.  There wasn’t enough money to make an appointment but the Vestry gathered round and exercised some real leadership.  The income rose by 125% and the rest is history.  Welcome to Andy McCafferty and Norma.  We hope you’ll be happy among us.

To say that the Clergy Conference was great seems to me to qualify one instantly for the ‘get a life’ department.  But it was.  We had over 30 there at one point – which for us is a remarkable turn-out.  Tim Sledge and Rona Orme of the Diocese of Peterborough were quite remarkably ‘tuned in’ and put some flesh on the bones of the Diocesan Review for us.

We were in the luxury of the Green Hotel in Kinross.  Indeed I suspect that I had the bridal suite – four poster tho’ not, I think, mirrors in the ceiling.  Strange thing was that it didn’t seem to have lights in the ceiling either so that I was stumbling around in the romantic gloom trying to find my laptop to keep up with the E Mail.  But it makes a great difference to have space and comfort – all the relationship-building which is really the major benefit of these events has much more chance to happen.

I slipped in another Thought for the Day  for BBC Scotland on Monday morning – on presuming consent for organ donation

Just happened to trip over this – as it were – in the car park of our church in Kilmaveonaig – Blair Atholl – this morning.  I always feel that there is hope for people when they display a capacity for self-parody!

It was a very slushy and slitherly drive – but the coffee and panettone were very welcome when we got there.   And on to Holy Trinity, Pitlochry where the little burn that flows noisily through the churchyard was running strongly.  It amazes me that people would go to church at all on such a day.  Did they not know that I was coming?

Tomorrow we move on to the Clergy Conference in the plush surroundings of the Green Hotel, Kinross.  About 30 are signed in so it promises well.

View this morning from the Cranmer wing at Blogstead. We’ve been having proper Scottish cold these last few days and the faithful Passat and I have been picking our way o’er moor and fell. This is the view towards Shiehallion near Kinloch Rannoch. Wonderful place … we do have one or two congregations looking for Rectors at present. But clearly people will feel a stronger call to grittier realities in ministry .. Although there is plenty of grit on the roads here.

And the view from my study window:

Not much of a one for the New Year Resolutions – the daily battle does me without adding the burden that a ‘great leap forward’ might be attainable.  So I was delighted to get hold of my favourite ‘Independent’ today after missing a couple.  It offers ‘A New You’ supplement – the easy way to make 2008 the best year of your life – The No Diet Diet.  Fortunately it has already reached No 4: Seeing the Results – so I can bask in outcomes without worrying too much about process.

It’s all very … awareness; responsibility; emotional intelligence; assertiveness; social intelligence.   Wouldn’t argue with much of it – indeed life in the church would be much easier if we could all handle ourselves as this suggests.  Except that for me it doesn’t add up to a model of being with and for others.  I particularly liked some of the bits of the Awareness section: ‘Listening for sounds that you’re not normally aware of – this could be anything from birdsong to the sound of the central heating firing up.’  Welcome to 2008

I called in today on the Islamic Centre in Stirling on a visit arranged by Rev Dom Ind. We met Iman Arif Hansrot and some of the members – we were warmly welcomed and were glad we went. It’s fascinating how an experience like this can be both foreign and familiar – religious communities always have a great deal in common. I carried away the remark of one of the members of how egalitarian the community at prayer was – people kneeling shoulder to shoulder. And I watched a child among them, simply absorbing and doing as the adults did.

Meanwhile, on a rather unrelated tack, I continue to wrestle with the inter-relationships of Blackberry, Palm and laptop.  The Palm has unilaterally declared itself a resident of Perthshire.  When asked to put in ‘Rev’ in the title field – something which it does regularly – it has taken to auto-completing with ‘Rear-Admiral’