End of a busy week – surprisingly I only caught the floor as it came up to meet me on one occasion – and I’m not saying when that was. Like many clergy, I’m fine so long as I am rushing about from place to place. But long meetings are dangerous. So we went out at the end of the afternoon and had a walk by the Tay where it flows at the bottom of the Blogstead Gardens. [Open May-September Home Baking All proceeds to Father Jack’s fund for distressed vintners]
Looking back over the blogathon for the last week, I seem to have been moving around a lot. So welcome to Kingussie which is just south of Aviemore – about two thirds of the way between Perth and Inverness with lots of snow along the way this morning. I’m here for the interviews conducted by the Preparatory Committee – part of the Canon 4 process for the election of a Bishop for Moray, Ross and Caithness. The process is one of those fascinating meeting points between vocation and assessment – with a side measurement of the extent to which potential candidates appreciate the seriously spread-out nature of the territory north of Inverness. Kingussie reminds me of Donegal – pubs with music so that those who arrive here on Day 4 of their Lochs ‘n Glens Holiday [assemble in the lounge with luggage at 7.45 am sharp] go away feeling that they have been in touch with the real Scotland.
Well I emerged blinking into the sunlight after two days of Doubt and Disorder Board – to be closely followed by two days of potential-bishop-interviewing. So there was nothing for it but to do some more of digging up the recently laid turf in what is to become the formal garden here at Blogstead Episcopi. So I worked away at it – viewed with some curiosity from the middle distance by a group of deer. Poppy, meanwhile, kept me company. She is now pretty well restored to her former vigour – although the vet thinks that she may have had some kind of slight stroke.
Meanwhile it’s all in my mind’s eye – the scent of lavender, the well-clipped yew hedge and the velvet lawns where I shall walk with my Chaplain in the mornings as we mull over the affairs of the diocese and those minor canonical adjustments which make so much difference to the smooth running of matters ecclesiastical. It reminds me of Hornblower and his 1st Lieutenant taking a turn on the quarter deck. My recollection is that the 1st Lieutenant could only turn when the Captain did. Which should allow me to dump my Chaplain in the yew hedge.
Another day in the engine room, I’m afraid. Our Administration Board deals with finance and budgets and the management side of things – management and church remain something of an oxymoron around here. But we do our best and we’re getting there steadily.
And then on to another oxymoron, the Faith and Order Board. This deals with the sort of stuff you can really get your teeth into – like where the commas go in liturgy and in intricacies of revision of the Canons which govern church life.
Meanwhile the papers are full of the Paisley/Adams pictures. Yesterday I was feeling very moved by it all. And I can appreciate that what we are looking at is the result of courageous political leadership on both sides. It has that ‘Berlin Wall Coming Down’ quality. I always believed that it would come and that, when the moment arrived, it would be quite sudden. Today the sadness kicks in as I watch two extreme politicians making a stilted peace in the relational wasteland which they themselves have helped to create. The worst thing is the way in which the troubles have been prolonged unnecessarily – the generations of able young people who have left to build other communities in other places. I think of the way in which Ian Paisley built his power base by dividing other parties and other churches – condemning as traitors those who would have made peace sooner. And as I look at Gerry Adams, I think again of the haunting criticism directed at Sinn Fein leadership at the time of the Belfast Agreement by Bernadette McAliskey when she said, in effect, that they too could have settled sooner. Wikipedia reports her as saying acidly that ‘IRA volunteers had not died to create “a common teaching qualification”‘
Tony Blair – always referred to as Mr Blur in a Portadown accent – and that ‘hand of history’ stuff. Well, maybe this time the tectonic plates of Ulster politics really have shifted as Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams sit down together. I am always saddened by the political reality that the deals are almost always done by people of the right. Why? Because there is a sort of unavoidable reality which always brings the two sides back to the same place – deciding whether or not to work together. And that applies no matter who the politicians are. And politicians of the right – if they can avoid what Brendan Behan always called ‘De Split’ can’t be outflanked, shafted, rubbished, undermined by anybody else. But I think there has been real political leadership during the last few weeks – and that usually means people saying difficult things to their own supporters. Read for yourself what Ian Paisley’s people are saying and then move on to Gerry Adams and Sinn Fein.
Kelvin helpfully points us towards some very interesting stuff on blogging from Gaping Void. It’s about what happens when the internal dialogue of your group [what you talk about yourself] is out of alignment with your external dialogue [basically your ability to relate to the bit of the world you need to relate to.] And the suggestion is that blogging is one of the things which may help to get things at least closer to the kind of alignment which is needed. The most obvious sign of that mis-alignment for us is the way in which the age profile of church membership differs from that of society as a whole. But Gaping Void reminds us that this is just symptomatic of deeper levels of un-connectedness.
We celebrated Lady Day today – commissioning Lesley, our new Diocesan President, new Trustees and new members. Before we all went into the Cathedral, we had what they called a Holy Hour – a sequence of readings, music, interviews and images which brought together aspects of the work of MU and the commemoration of the ending of slavery. It was extraordinarily effective – we may be a small diocese but we are rich in talent and imagination. And then into church where we used everything from Taize to Hail Marys.
So I got on the train for Inverness at Dunkeld this morning. And it didn’t move because the points at the end of the platform had stuck – single track railway. So they sent for the man with the lever – wish I’d had my camera – a sort of Atlas-type metaphor for ministry. It was a one Sudoku delay.
Still reading back numbers of the Church Times. The ‘Back to Church’ Sunday at end September looks interesting. Except that you can’t go back unless you know what church you are staying away from – and that’s a problem in a very mobile society. I listened with some interest to Bishop James Jones of Liverpool on Thought for the Day this morning talking about Adam Smith of Kirkcaldy – but also about a Carbon Fast for Lent
And – to move from fast to feast and return to the list thing again – the recipes:
Chile; Spag Bol; Firecracking Sausage Casserole; Prawn Stirfry; Chicken Stirfry; Chicken and Penne; Roasted Mediterranean Vegetables; Chicken Curry; absolutely nothing by Lloyd Grossman
London today on the red eye at 0645 for the Council of the Mission to Seafarers. I don’t normally turn up but, since we’ll be looking for money from them at their next meeting, I thought the least I could do was to turn up when I wasn’t, as it were. And it was over at lunchtime so I headed for an internet cafe to try and catch up on some written stuff. It felt very bizarre – the place was full of nubile Spanish students who seemed to be chattering about their relationships on Instant Messanger while simultaneously talking on Skype to Mama back in Sevilla telling how much they were missing her. It’s fortunate that the new generation is so good at multi-tasking and doesn’t get the two mixed up. I sat in the middle of it all in full episcopal kit – not the mitre – writing about vocation and ministry. Time to get a life, I suspect. Tomorrow is Inverness for another bit of the bishop-appointing process for the Diocese of Moray. The more I see of it, the more I wonder at what working of the divine will or expression of the divine sense of humour landed me where I am.
Meantime Poppy has been reading Isaiah 40. She’s not quite ‘eagles’ wings’ yet – still distinctly wobbly but improving. She can jump on and off the computer desk which is more than I can do.
If it wasn’t so late, I would be exploring another of the list things that I like so much – books read/unread, etc. This one is the suggestion that most of us only have four recipes. ‘Nonsense’ I said and then started listing my limited personal repertoire. No doubt my colleagues are well into double figures. Of which more another day.
Spent some time today working with others on our processes for responding to and fostering vocation – and all the training and nurturing that belong with that. Of all the things that I find myself involved with, I know that I find this the most difficult. When somebody says with utter certainty, ‘I believe that God wants me to be a priest’ – and it doesn’t seem quite so certain to me – it’s difficult. And as we become more and more aware of the need to think about the age profile of our future clergy, we begin to think about how we can encourage and engender vocation.
The arthritis, sadly, seems to be afflicting Poppy. After her mouse hunt in the family room overnight, she suddenly seemed to be having difficulty jumping. She did leap onto a fence and fall off the other side while I was washing the car on Saturday. So the vet thinks she may have an injury or the onset of arthritis. So after X ray and other excursions into expensive private medicine as befits a cat of her age and status, she is now much better thank-you.
