Category: Blog Entry

We’re having a week off and decided to visit Scotland with friends.  Today was a walk around the hills above Loch Tay – at the Acharn Falls: ‘From Acharn, on the south shore of Loch Tay, the path rises through beech-woods past a narrow gorge where the Acharn Burn plummets over the Acharn Falls. Above the falls the route follows Land-Rover tracks over open moorland providing superb views, then passes an ancient tumulus and stone circle before fording the burn. Returning, view the falls from the gallery of a hermit’s cave.’

And tomorrow we’re going to unfurl the Brompton folding bicycles at the top of the hill outside Killin and cycle to Pitlochry on the National Cycle Route.  Imagine actually living here!

One of the interesting spiritual ideals during the first 1000 years of Christianity was the peregrinatio or “voluntary exile”. Those particularly devoted to the Lord would voluntarily leave their own home and undertake dangerous journeys to various places. Some Celtic Christians, especially some from Ireland, practiced an extreme form of this. They would get into a small boat, without oars or rudder or any other way to steer the boat. They would take no food or water. After praying they would cast themselves off from shore trusting the Lord to use the wind and the ocean currents to take them wherever He wanted and to provide for all their needs.

I like the idea of that – travelling without oars or destination.  But it’s not for me really.  We had the first meeting of the Implementation Group for the Diocesan Review last night – it’s really more a group which keeps everything on track – making sure that the Spirit leads us into all truth along a carefully charted course.  But I suppose I do have to admit that, for me, the joy of it is that ultimately I don’t actually know what the destination is.  I know the direction and the values which define the journey – but not the destination.

One thinks a bit about ministry – moving from Alan’s episcopal ordination in Belfast through the excretory realities of Easyjet to Glenalmond Commemoration day to Tembu’s Ordination.  And while it is important to be able to see some kind of common thread running through all this, I long ago found that the secret is to try to be 100% present wherever and whatever it is.  The problem with that is that I can’t remember where I was half an hour ago.

Tembu’s ordination in Dunfermline on Sunday was quite an event – the full details as ever are on the wee small hours blog   I never quite know what people expect – but it was clear that, for some who were there, it became a powerful and unexpectedly moving experience which will alter their perception of vocation, ministry and the deep things with which ministry deals.  It’s back to expectations again – higher the better IMHO.

I’ve been heading home – head full of all the high-flown stuff of episcopal ministry after the consecration of Alan as the new Bishop of Connor.  In fact the service did allow plenty of time for reflection – so I pondered the way in which a bishop has the best and the worst of it.  One has all the opportunities in the world to encourage, guide, strengthen, praise …. but one also ends up dealing with stuff that others either will not or cannot touch.  And maybe that’s all part of the binding and loosing in ministry.

So it was [literally] down to earth with a bump after our Peeasyjet flight landed this evening.  A rather forward young lady standing in the aisle said to me, ‘Unless I get off this plane really quickly, I’m going to wet myself.’  And her rather restless demeanour suggested that she meant nothing less.

Meanwhile I’ve been continuing to ponder David Campbell’s description of my customary hard-nosed toughness .  I think he may have been referring to my ‘innocent as doves’ manner of promoting the Diocesan Strategic Review in Crieff.  I always think I’m a bit of a wimp – maybe I have to learn to see myself as others, etc., etc.

But, to my absolute delight, I met a nice man at the back of the room who pointed to his nose and said to me that ‘We had something very much in common’ – referring to my own not-insignificant hooter.  ‘Time for a bit of spin,’ I thought – and suggested some suitable epithets such as aquiline or Ciceronian.  The nasty and brutish ‘hard’ never crossed my mind.

Quick visit to Belfast for the consecration of my old friend Alan Abernethy as Bishop of Connor.  The Holy Spirit has done well this time.  He has some very difficult stuff ahead of him.   I think my scenery is better than his too!  And, of course, I get to meet the old friends as in, ‘You’re looking really well … you haven’t got a Scottish accent … could you not do something about your hair …. a wee bit of weight?’  Meanwhile my major preoccupation in my various travels is to keep the E Mail going uninterrupted so that those who are not blog readers think that I have never been away.  So I wage constant battle with other wifi’s and outgoing mail servers, etc.  Perhaps episcopal ordination will bestow on Alan the ability to deal with all this.

Mark also arrived here this evening from Glasgow ready for the start of the 4 Peaks Challenge with a group of his physiotherapist friends in aid of the orphanage in Thailand where he worked before Christmas.  Just in case anybody feels like a bit of hillwalking, this means that between Friday afternoon and Saturday night they will do ‘on the trot’ Slieve Donard, Snowdon, Scafell Pike and Ben Nevis.  Mad.

been pondering Kelvin’s meme question – about blogs I would like to read if they were written.  Poppy’s dark brown Burmese and inter-faith musings would be an obvious possibility.  Ian Paisley and Martin Maguinness would be worth reading – they are both such morally ambiguous figures.  If you blog every day, the ambiguities sort of come to the surface.  So Tony Blair would also be a good candidate.  In the posthumous blogging department, I would go for Bishop Trevor Huddleston – who died in 1998.  For me, he embodies the tradition which links catholic spirituality with social justice.  He led the campaign in Britain to develop apartheid-consciousnessness.  His blog would have shown us, I expect, that greatness belongs in a special combination of things – keeping a moral and spiritual focus in the everyday while also managing to see the Gethsemane moment when it comes along.

Meanwhile, I’ve been down to the sea in ships again with the Mission to Seafarers in London – where I travelled to ground level this morning in Schindler’s Lift.  His blog would also have been worth reading.

mission-to-seafarers-london-607.doc

Another Diocesan Review meeting – in Crieff this time.  I remain surprised by the [large] number of people who turn up, seem genuinely interested and ask fairly searching questions.  The raising of expectations is, of course, something of a two-edged sword but surely a risk worth taking.  The opposite is, of course, a way of ensuring that nobody is ever disappointed.

Meanwhile, in the safari park, I have today narrowly missed two of the Flopsy Bunnies.  There were two woodpeckers on the Blogstead fence this morning.  And a pheasant strolled through the garden late this afternoon.  Alison has put lurid tape on the fence to alarm the deer – and Poppy is doing her best on the lion poo front.  After all, she is related.

Two powerful images from my Sunday.

I gathered up my crozier this morning from the corner of the church where I had parked it and discovered that it had acquired the most enormous cobweb right across the aperture.  What does this tell me?

We shared in Nicki’s Ordination to the Priesthood in St Andrew’s St Andrews this afternoon – a great moment for her and her family.  And I was also thinking of Carlton and Barry – both members of my parish who were ordained today.  We were never as good as we should have been at fostering vocation – so two in one day is very special.  But – to go back to Nicki’s Ordination – when we came to the sharing of the symbols of priesthood, I found myself positively assailed by a kaleidoscope of images of what ministry has meant to me. Maybe it was because this is the 31st anniversary of my ordination as a deacon.  Or maybe it was memories of people-ministry that I don’t get to do as I once did.  May it be as enriching for Nicki as it has been for me.

Weather today just dreadful.  But it’s impossible not to be aware of how extraordinary it is here at midsummer.  I drove home from Bridge of Allan on Thursday evening – still air with mist resting in the valleys.  I could have read the paper out on the patio at 11.45 pm.  And the special thing is the strange quality of the apparently endless twilight.  Unlike David Campbell, I have little knowledge of what happens in the early dawn.  But I was prowling around at 4 am this morning and it was fully light here.

The meeting in Bridge of Allan was great – 38 people turned up, representing a significant proportion of the total membership of the Scottish Episcopal Church.  It was really a very interesting meeting – particularly the exploration of the link and tension between spirituality and strategic planning.  I find myself constantly discouraging people from using the word ‘change’ – because that tends to invite people to man the barricades.  Much more it is about faith, hope, mood, trust – the things which detach us from the need to protect the past and enable us to trust the uncertain future.

But back at Blogstead, there are other more empirical  agendas.  Ian is insisting that I cycle with him over two days from Callender to Aviemore.  I think that a better knowledge of Scottish geography might suggest Aviemore to Callender since altitude is more important than the prevailing wind.  Anyway, I’m in training on Bamm Bamm’s mountain bike.  Which explains why I was wearing my Darcey Bussell e-z-y-fit black lycra cycling tights when +Bruce called in to discuss our tactics for the coming Ballintuim Mitre Croquet Tournament.  Apparently the secret is to manipulate the handicapping system so as to maximise the number of ‘bisques’ which one has.  And, of course, in 2008, the Tournament will be played as Bicycle Croquet or Fahrradkrocket.