Category: Blog Entry

Lots of reporting of the Registrar General for Scotland today.  He says that, ‘The proportion of births to unmarried parents (including births registered solely in the mother’s name) has continued to rise, reaching 47.1 per cent in 2005 compared to 33.7 per cent ten years earlier and 18.5 per cent in 1985.’  It wouldn’t be quite fair to say that this is another sign of how secular a society Scotland is.  But the conventional organisation of churches assumes a society which has now almost vanished – in favour of very flexible and mobile ways of living and a high level of personal choice in how relationships are organised.  I don’t particularly regret that change.  But it represents a real challenge for churches which, in their heart of hearts, would like to believe that a stable parish system was still possible.

We’re doing a lot of work on our Stewardship Programme at present – part of the Year of Stewardship which we hope will, among other things, improve our struggling finances.  Why is it that we behave as if everything we do in the church has to be designed from scratch every time?  Wouldn’t do that with a car or a plane or with brain surgery, after all.  So carrying as I do campaign medals from many a stewardship programme – pledge cards, visiting lists, training programmes, gift aid declarations and all – I’m trying hard to set out a ‘How to do it’ with seeming to do so.

Greetings also today to the Northern Ireland politicians and the voters on Election Day.  Even if I was still living in Northern Ireland, I wouldn’t have had a vote today even though I lived there most of my life.  Why?  Because I am a citizen of the Irish Republic.  Why?  Because I am content to be so – but also because my parents were born in the then Irish Free State after the partition of 1922.  And, before somebody points this out, I did have a vote in Westminster elections.

Spring is coming and we’ve decided that it’s time to start doing something with the garden here at Blogstead Episcopi.  Some may fancifully think that we’ll be laying out a series of interlocking gardens – formal, informal, cottage, sunken, etc. – through which I and members of the Cathedral Chapter will stroll as we discuss important ecclesiastical business.  But it’s not quite like that.  We have to create something which will cope with the fairly severe climate here .. and something which leads the eye out into the remarkable stretch of countryside in which we live … and which isn’t too demanding to keep.   And we’re getting lots of helpful advice from those who really know about these things.

Not often one has a ‘great day out’. But today’s outing to Dublin with Kenny and David was just that. We did some serious business with our opposite numbers in the Diocese of Meath and Kildare about reviving our diocesan link. I’m finding it easier to view the Church of Ireland as at least partly an outsider – not least because the social and economic changes in Ireland are so enormous that my insider knowledge is already seriously out of date. Business done, we headed into Temple Bar in Dublin where a pub with music provided some welcome shelter from the rain. And then home with Ryanair on what I would say was the bumpiest flight I can remember in a long time. And the landing …. no trickling the Camel over the trees on a wisp of throttle and gently settling down onto the grass of the runway.  If Biggles had slammed the Camel down like that, I am sure the undercarriage would simply have collapsed.

Another of those heavy-duty Sundays.  Birnham/Dunkeld – beautiful place with a Beatrix Potter Museum – followed by Strathtay where there is a lovely little church with banks of snowdrops all around and the sound of the Tay just round the corner.  Lovely people as well.  Tough but somebody has to do it.

Tomorrow three of us are off to Dublin to do some organising of our diocesan link with the Diocese of Meath and Kildare.  I’m never all that keen on Ryanair – particularly since the recent revelations of Biggles-type flying under pressure of quick turnarounds.  Biggles of course would approach this wearing the oil-stained flying jacket – face drawn and strained from too many dawn patrols and sorties over the Isle of Man – eyes lined from squinting into the sun looking for Baron Richthofen’s Circus of Fokker Triplanes.  Not forgetting of course the ‘I’ve been hit!’ moment when a seagull came back into his face through the prop of the Camel.  I hope to get the first Sudoku of the day done before the pilot gives that last little blip of the throttle and allows the 737 to skim the trees and settle down easily onto the grass of the runway.

One of my colleagues in the parish – she knew a thing or two about how to shape worship – declared to me that we needed to be ‘brisk with spaces’.   I think she meant that the spaces became meaningful and usable because of what surrounded or framed them.

We had our Diocesan Synod today and I think wisely settled for just ‘brisk without too many spaces’.  I still remember my first encounter with a Diocesan Synod and wondering simply what purpose could possibly be served by such a turgid event.  Today’s was much better than that – people said what they needed to say, we encouraged one another and we went home into the early spring Perthshire sunlight.

In my experience, the kind of talking which changes minds and hearts, which engenders hope and vision, which gives confidence and energy, which opens up new agendas  … doesn’t happen at Synods.  It happens when people have space to speak, listen and be heard in a sympathetic setting.  Or maybe just space for the Spirit.  We need both kinds of meeting but rather more of the latter.

Interesting survey of 2000 people’s Top Ten Books – and maybe a bit unbelievable.  I’ve managed three of them – the Bible, Nineteen Eighty Four and Pride and Prejudice.  I have a long list of books I ought to have read but never will.  James Joyce’s Ulysses will always head that list – has anyone ever managed to read it? – closely followed by War and Peace.  My own best books?  Well – anything by William Trevor, particularly the Short Stories which are near-perfect in their economy and agonising in their content.  Of everyday reading, I think Ian McEwan is very good, particularly the opening pages of Enduring Love, and Sebastian Faulks’ Birdsong is extraordinary.  I have a growing affection for more modern classics – books like the Catcher in the Rye [which I gather Bill Clinton re-reads any time he doesn’t have anything more pressing on hand] and the Riddle of the Sands.  I don’t possess a copy of the Father Ted scripts – after all they are oral tradition.  And, of course, Arthur Ransome and Biggles continue to occupy their own unassailable position in my heart.

Tomorrow it’s the Inner Wheel – or maybe the Inner Link or the Outer Circle or the Elliptical Orbit or the Downward Spiral.  For Perth has lots of them and I’m gradually working my way through.  Last time was the episode when I couldn’t get the powerpoint to work and I asked, ‘How long do you want me to talk for?’  And they said ‘Forty Minutes’  No problem.  Sometimes it helps to be Irish.  It won’t happen again – the secret weapon is to hit Fn and one of the F keys.  Don’t ask which one.

Of course, I secretly enjoy meeting these groups.  After all, only a minority of the members will be members of the Episcopal Church – so it’s a useful opportunity to build some relationships.  I can also point out to all those loyal members of the C of S that bishops have a really useful function in the church – IT’S SOMEBODY TO BLAME

I’m still ploughing through George Lovell’s great tome ‘Consultancy, Ministry and Mission’.  Sorry to say ‘ploughing’ because it is not a light read – but it simply is the very best.  He suggests that it is of the nature of work which is rooted in vocation that it particularly benefits from time spent attempting to look at choices, to define, to shape ..  It makes me ponder one of those things which I suspect that I am not really supposed to think aloud.   – that working experience in other spheres is not all that readily transferable into the work of ministry as we might like to think.  Sometimes it undoubtedly is – to the great benefit of the ministry.  But sometimes the lack of working boundaries and the ill-defined relationships and the wide field on which the work is set out .. are just too much.  And the result is frustration and disappointment.

This is the view from the west wing of Blogstead na Mara in Donegal. When we were last here after Christmas, this hillside looked pretty much as it must have done for the last fifty years. Now a huge terrace has been created where nothing was before and three houses are going up faster than you could ever imagine. This photograph was taken this morning – the roof was on by teatime. The price? The locals say 650,00 Euro each. Just behind and to the left of the new house is a small cottage with half its roof gone. Mary who now works in the supermarket grew up there in a family of four. You may wonder where all this money comes from. And you may also ponder an economy where the Irish Construction Industry claims that up to 30% of the economy is in the construction industry. I suspect it is more in Donegal.

Meanwhile, now that the Irish/English thing has been sorted out so decisively in Ireland’s favour, I am glad to report that the Irish Times says that the dispute over which of the Aran Islands should host the Father Ted Festival has now been settled by a football match – in which the supporters shouted, ‘Go on, Go on!’