Category: Blog Entry

Spent this morning at a ceremony in Forfar at which the Freedom of Angus was conferred on the Black Watch.  I’m always struck by how alike church and army are – same sense of timelessness, same pecking order, same arcane rituals …  What interested me today was what I assume was the subtext – marking the [painful] change in the status of the Scottish Regiments under which they are all now part of the Royal Regiment of Scotland.  In the period before I moved here, I tried to inform myself about a number of local issues – so I connected myself to the Scottish Regiments website.  And in there I found fairly unpleasant expressions of their bereavement and loss of identity – very familiar to me from my experience of Northern Ireland.  So today was a piece of well-managed ritual which helped people to move on and accept that the new future doesn’t wipe out what they valued about the past.  I wandered amongst the veterans afterwards and we talked about their service in Northern Ireland in the early years of the troubles – dreadful times but, I suspect, not nearly as dreadful as Iraq today.

Now that Frozenweb’s geeks have revived my blogging corpse, I am faced with the daily space again. As you may have noticed, I have no problem talking about nothing in particular on a daily basis – indeed, talking about myself in the presence of others is probably what most of us like doing and what the blog medium provides.
So a quick update on the major issues while I play myself back in. Popppesja is googling ‘house martin’ to find out when their migratory patterns will take them far, far, away from here. While she takes a deep interest in the local bird life, she has been reduced to hiding from them under the patio table because they swoop on her constantly …

We had an Institution last night in Cupar, Fife, when Anne arrived as the new Rector. Great hope, optimism and joy all round, after a long vacancy. If you haven’t been to Cupar, it is a beautiful small town in the middle of Fife. The drive home last night – heading west towards the red sky and the setting sun [10.15 pm] was extraordinary.

For the rest, while Adrienne is kind enough to say that she finds my blog funny – I hope it is the right bits that she finds funny – life out here at Blogstead Episcopi has a slight feel of trench warfare about it at present. But, after all, are bishops not there to resolve the unresolvable, reconcile the irreconcilable and plumb the unfathomable?

So now I have restarted, I’ll add something a bit more serious later on.

Frozenweb which hosts this blog seems to have been affected by global warming these last few days.  But no matter.  Click on the link ‘Biskupi Blog’ on the right of the screen and you will find the Scottish Episcopal Church’s outreach into Eastern Europe.  Having peaked at 3% of the churchgoing population in Scotland, we’ve decided that our brand of liberal catholic churchmanship will go down a storm in Poland.  Faith and Order Boards are being set up throughout Poland and we are looking for the Polish translation for Local Collaborative Ministry.  We expect shortly to establish the first fan club for Poppesja as her furry fame extends to the east.

Interested today that Sunday trading is not to be extended further.  The man from Ikea seemed disappointed.  I have sympathy with the issue of staff having freedom of conscience about working on Sunday – but, for the rest, I suspect that this is an issue where people have simply voted with their credit cards.  The only reasons for opposing it seem to be residual sabbatarianism and some nostalgia about lost patterns of family life.  Locking up Ikea on Sunday morning is unlikely to drive people towards churches for spiritual therapy because they can’t have retail therapy.  The churches need to find other ways and other times of involving people.

Which allows me to sashay neatly towards ‘Decluttering – a Spirituality of Less’ by Andrew Barton which he kindly sent me.  Andrew inserts the occasional comment here – including the nicely-aimed one about Ikea selling flat-pack mitres.  This is Grove Booklet S97 and an interesting examination of modern society, consumerism and decluttering as ‘a process of contemporary life that can be employed in order that our relationship with God be more apparent to those around’  I found his description of the consumer society interesting – he was too early for the sterling consumerist performance of the WAG’s at the World Cup.  I can recommend it.

Meanwhile I find myself storing up memorable phrases which pass my way in Perthshire as they did in Portadown.  The accents of course are very different – in rural Perthshire they tend to be a bit patrician and parade ground.  Two gems which I particularly enjoyed were, ‘It was around the time he rebuilt the Tiger Moth’ and ‘It’s a snake-barked hickory.  I grew it from a nut’  I am, of course, in trouble myself.  Like most musical people, I tend to pick up accents.  So I am having to watch myself – my ‘a’s are beginning to lengthen as in Glenaaaamond.  I hope that my stay in Donegal in August will retune me.

It makes you think … in retrospect, parish ministry seemed to be about being part of a community while retaining enough distinctiveness to be able to stand apart, challenge …  Bishoping seems very different.  It’s a very peripatetic lifestyle.  And then you come home to deal with a series of problems which you wouldn’t be trying to deal with if anybody else could solve them.  Then there’s the future to think about.
I still think that there are aspects of leadership which can be learnt and practised.  I mean things like heading towards conflict rather than away from it – without necessarily being combative in manner or determined to win at all costs.  Or bringing to a situation enough clarity of mind and analysis as to enable a resolution – but not so much clarity as to necessitate uncomfortable loss of face for others.  Or knowing that, even if you don’t know which option is right, it’s better to choose something rather than nothing.  And not taking it personally when people bang and shout – while hoping that they do the same for you.  And being firmly rooted with a trust that there is a grace-ful way forward – knowing that you won’t find it if you just stand still.

But then, while those things are in some measure functional, they are rooted in values and quality of mind and heart …

I forgot to mention one of the strangest things about the consecration – behind the video camera and an array of flat screen TV’s worthy of a World Cup Final was my old friend, Alex, of New-Way Video, Portadown.  I used to star in his wedding videos but he also had cornered the market in Drumcree – filming the parade and selling the result in large quantities to Orangemen.  How did he come to be in Christ Church, Dublin?  What skills did he learn as police and Orangemen laid hands on each other at Drumcree which would serve him well at a Consecration?
You may have noticed that Dublin Airport was closed for two hours by a bomb scare.  Ryanair responded by cancelling my flight.  I regret to say that I did what sensible parents do in those moments – rang Mark in Glasgow and he booked me a ticket on the last Aer Lingus flight to Glasgow before the queue had even formed at the Ryanair ticket desk.  But I still had the car park ticket for Edinburgh and was due to collect Poppy in Edinburgh before returning to the airport to meet Alison who was arriving from Belfast.  Meanwhile Anna arrived in Heathrow from Kuala Lumpur and found her flight to Dublin also long delayed.

So it’s feet [carbon free] on the ground for a while.  And, in the study leave so kindly provided by Ryanair, I read Steven Croft’s material, Focus on Leadership – and was suitably challenged by the suggestion that successful leadership in the church is much more about character and values than about skills – the journey to the interior being what makes possible effective engagement with the world outside.  I accept that – but I still believe that there are functional, skill-related aspects of leadership which can be consciously learnt and practised.  Of which more another time.

So at the end of two hours of episcopal ordination in Dublin, the question was, ‘Has O’Neills of Suffolk St changed under pressure from the new Ireland?’  To which the answer is, ‘Not really.’  When I asked for a pint of stout, the barman required simultaneous translation – behaving as if that was the first such request he had ever received.  Scottish accent?  But once we had got over that cultural and linguistic hurdle, things went just fine.  Indeed everything seemed just as normal – the only slight innovation being the presence of a Chinese girl behind the bar.  Even that most important facility in all Dublin pubs, the gents, seemed intact.  And admiring it, I remembered standing in there to relieve myself at some length and the customer next to me saying cheerily, ‘Sure it’s only rented to you.’

Meanwhile, I moved amongst friends old and new at the tea afterward the service and told them that I was really sorry to have left, that I was suffering major cultural dislocation, that the language barrier was insuperable, that I didn’t understand the jokes – but otherwise I was just fine.

We’re here for the consecration of the new Bishop of Cashel tomorrow.  Poppy wasn’t invited so has gone to stay with our Simon in his apartment in Edinburgh.  Reports suggest that city life suits her.  Haven’t found that authentic Irish pub yet – maybe we should follow some of the groups of hen party people in rabbit ears?  We walked down through Temple Bar and across the new Millennium Bridge and into a new area which is entirely Italian.  The new Luas tram system passing at the end of the street completed the impression of being in Amsterdam or Berlin rather than Dublin.

It is extraordinary here at this time of year.  We’ve just driven back from Glasgow, arriving just after midnight.  There is still plenty of light in the western sky and it is just on the dark side of twilight.  I know that it gets light just after 3 am.  It’s been wet today but normally it is dry almost all the time.  The great field of barley outside our back door is already starting to turn golden.  Of course, the polytunnel is everywhere here because of the long tradition of growing soft fruit.  So unlike the climate in mid-Ulster where I could never be sure that I would have time to cut the grass when it wasn’t raining – and that it wouldn’t be raining when I had time to cut it.

It’s been one of those whirlwindish periods.  Yesterday ended at an education awards ceremony in St Andrews which, by coincidence, included seeing Melanie Campbell receiving her award.  Regular readers of www.limpingtowardsthesunrise.blogspot.com will be familiar with her starring and executive role in that particular soap opera.  We must give some thought to our version of Father Ted’s Golden Priest Awards.  Today was a rapid trip to London for the 150th Anniversary AGM of the Mission to Seafarers.  The Princess Royal was there – the Archbishop of Canterbury preached about storm and calm – we got to sing a verse of Eternal Father, strong to save.  And then there are the noises off.  In the tube, I got a ‘Hi Father’ from an American who introduced himself as an IT Manager for EBay who lives in San Jose and is on his way to Fatima.  If I hadn’t had to get off at the next stop, I would have checked him out to see if he would run the Diocesan Website.  He was obviously ‘sent’ but three stations too late.  I was also fascinated to hear John Humphries on Today this morning interviewing the Moderator about his Public Meeting shared with the Cardinal as part of the campaign against the renewal of Trident.  To the southern mind, this was obviously a piece of Scottish eccentricity – no idea that there might be many people here who feel strongly about it.  And finally, today’s Independent charts another measure of the problems being experienced by the Irish tourist industry.  Basically, Ireland is not Irish enough any more.  The nicotine-encrusted Irish pub of old is now a sanitised international smoke-free zone with global warming patio heaters outside.  Certainly the Oyster in the main street of Dunfanaghy – where one New Year’s Day one of the patrons at the bar asked me what day it was shortly before he fell senseless off the barstool onto the concrete floor – is now an ‘out of the box’ Western saloon with plasma screens.  I shall check out my favourite Dublin pub – O’Neill’s of Suffolk Street – over the weekend.  It is a rabbit warren of snugs and bars in which it is said that Brendan Behan used to dodge his creditors.  I’ll report back.