Category: Blog Entry

Last night was one of those moments.  Down in Dollar, we celebrated a new ministry as Jeremy arrived with Christine and their two children.  As I’ve said before, I have been in ministry so long that I have lost any sense that I might be doing anything else.  But Jeremy and Christine could be doing other things – and they have chosen to do this.  And so last night was full of hope and expectation.  As well as the Dollar choir, there was the choir from St Peter’s, Lutton Place, in Edinburgh and the choir from the Parish Church.  Jeremy was welcomed into the area and the ecumenical gathering of clergy by Susie – a Southern Belle with a voice like a brace of barber-shop quartets – the local parish minister.  The Church of Scotland amazes me by its breadth.  We’ll come back to that another time.

Tax – how I hate it.  Don’t like paying it – but much more don’t like sorting it out.  Caesar is welcome to it, so far as I am concerned.

Interesting how a week sort of takes a theme to itself.  My own agenda, of course, but it’s interesting how it is spoken by a range of people …  It often comes down to what is really the craft of priesthood.  That always sounds a bit unworthy [crafty?] but it isn’t meant to.  It’s about exercising authority in obedience and taking leadership in a way which facilitates the leadership of others and setting boundaries and dealing with those who cross them.  There is something of the entrepreneur in it – with a certain amount of assertiveness.  The only absolutes are the presence of love and the absence of fear.

I think I remember a time when everything went quiet in the time between Easter and Harvest – a sort of post-resurrection torpor in the life of the church.  But it’s not like that any more.  It seems just as busy in mid-summer as at any other time – but it’s been interesting.  Confirmation in Aberfoyle on Sunday with a congregation which then divided itself among three venues for lunch.  Then the opening Eucharist of the second of the Glenalmond Youth Weeks with a baptism and two confirmations.  Spent yesterday clearing my letters and E Mails backlog.  Today began with 7 am in Dundee for Thought for the Day where Jenny was standing in for Dot,  pushing buttons in the studio and hoping that everything would come to life.  Then breakfast in Tesco’s cafe – with the first Sudoku of the day – because I was going on across the Tay Bridge into Fife and the Bishop of London wouldn’t let me drive home in between – even tho’ the faithful Passat is a diesel miser.  And an interesting day visiting clergy in Fife in the sunshine.

Poppy, by the way, is now in Belfast.  She expects to have a brief holiday in Donegal at the end of the month but will not be returning to Perth until after I have preached at the 150th Anniversary of Mission to Seafarers in Belfast in October.

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We did a house opening and dedication on Saturday. Blogstead Episcopi was looking its best. The combine harvester had just dealt with the barley field out the back. We invited some of the brave people who have invited not just us but, in many cases, entire congregations to lunch when we have visited. That tells you something both about the size of our congregations and the size of their houses. +Bruce, in the first major act of his retirement, did the dedication – may its effect permeate sideways through Marybelle’s house to his own at No 2.

And so life moves on. There are the big issues of sexuality, secularisation and sectarianism – to name but a few. But life seems to come down, as always, to the problems of dealing with the house, dealing with the office, sorting out the finances, laying to rest difficult history. And the kingdom, I suspect, is to be found somewhere in between the two.

Another encounter with the [very polite] Tayside police in Perth late last night. 36 mph and the right headlight not working on dipped beam. The classic Northern Ireland response is, ‘Why don’t you boys go and catch some terrorists?’ – but it’s wiser not. I watched them check the tax and the tyres – over 25000 miles since I got a complete set in Macon last summer so it’s nearly time – and I went on my way rejoicing. Pity the church doesn’t do guilt-inducement convincingly any more – it’s heady stuff. By the way, in case you ever need to know, the French for wheel-balancing is equilibrage.

I gave a lift to a young student from the Czech Republic on the way into Perth this moming. He had enough English to tell me that he had been working very hard and that he had earned what was in his terms a lot of money. If I heard him right, he had earned £400 in 20 days working 12 hours a day. I hope that isn’t what he said. Out at Blogstead, we like our strawberries fresh, succulent … and cheap.  Churches have an increasing focus on rural issues and the needs of the rural community – I wonder if this is in there?

Advert in this week’s Church of Ireland Gazette:

‘Postal tuition in solo singing’

Suggestions for other subjects which might appear on the curriculum?

It’s been what they would call in Ireland ‘a real soft day’ Almost forgotten what rain was like. And the harvest is just about to begin out here at Blogstead Episcopi. The reaper and binder is sitting outside my study window. And Kilvert’s fresh-faced country maids are all poised to do what fresh-faced country maids do around harvest time. But nothing is happening and it’s all gone soggy. Once it starts, we’ll have to keep Poppy in for a while …. don’t ask.

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Got my carbon pawprint down to a fairly light tread today. The secret is the fact that Megabus calls at the Park and Ride at the Broxden Roundabout on the outskirts of Perth – free parking, no messing with traffic and £6 return to Edinburgh. All went well on the outward journey. I unfurled the Brompton and was in the Office just over an hour after leaving Perth. On the way back, there was a major accident on the road out of Edinburgh – everything was diverted down the back road to Cramond – and it took 3 hours to get from Edinburgh to Perth. The charm was, of course, in the way in which a random group of people stuck on a bus began to become a community. The delightful 74 year old lady beside me – she doesn’t do Soduku, by the way, and I thought she looked young for her age – told me all about how she used to go to church and why she left and how she misses it. I hope she’ll come back. Behind us was a guy who was a psychiatric nurse in Dundee and across the aisle was a girl from Shetland with her young daughter who was bursting to go to the loo but the bus didn’t have one and neither did the one in front so she just had to cross her legs and pray hard. It was great – I wouldn’t have missed it.