Category: Blog Entry

It’s all been a bit hectic – getting back from Donegal on Thursday was one of those trips which seemed like a good idea at the time. We ended up on the Stena HSS at 10.30 pm with Poppy sitting in her carrying basket on the table in the lounge. I felt that she might have expected to be in a custom-made Louis Vuitton carrier on a Cunard liner. But you can’t have everything. We landed at 12.30 am and headed for Perth. Do you know that dawn began at 3.10 am?

The lady who sold me my Irish Times this morning certainly didn’t have much time for Charlie Haughey, former Taoiseach.  And nor did I.  David McKittrick writing in this morning’s Independent says he was Ireland’s Richard Nixon.  To that I would add that he was more like Ireland’s Silvio Berlusconi. It is offensive that such a man should be given a state funeral.  His financial corruption was comprehensively established – but, like General Pinochet, he always seemed to be too ill to answer to it.  He was lucky to escape prison.  He was sacked from the Irish Government on allegations of gun-running for the IRA but staged a remarkable come-back.  To me he simply expresses all that was most wrong with the old Ireland – a moral ambiguity about  both violence and finance.  In many ways, this state [of which I am a citizen] has made huge progress – becoming a prosperous, modern, european state – and some claim that he played his part in laying the foundations of that.  I find that difficult.  This is an unfortunate throw-back to the past.

Brief visit to Donegal to see the sea and check that the house is all right.  We’ve got the hot water working again but the lawn-mowing arrangements seem to be under strain.  Poppy is enjoying being able to run about but there are no sheep around for her to worry.  Met Colm the local painter [and decorator] in the supermarket.  He complains the new houses are being built so close together that you could shake hands with your neighbours.  He used to complain, in his capacity as Chair of the Dunfanaghy Development Committee, that the sewage arrangements for all these new houses were inadequate and that if everybody answered the call of nature at the same time we would be in trouble.  The pace of development is quite amazing.  Some of the planning decisions look at little surprising – but then we are marking the passing of Charlie Haughey today.  Would that the great Irish tradition of inadequate planning would die with him.  As always there is a tension.  I saw a report recently that tourists were going home dissatisfied – that Ireland is no longer particularly Irish in the tourist sense.  On the other hand, we are looking at the first generation of young people for whom there have been jobs and homes here without the need to emigrate.  And there are jobs for others as well – 10% of the population is now non-Irish.

Strange but good to be back in Holy Trinity, Belfast, after nearly 30 years – my goodness, I am getting on a bit.  Surprisingly, there were lots of people whom I remembered.  Correction – there were lots of people and it surprised me how many of them I could remember.  Learning things?  How utterly dreadful that phase of the troubles was.  How amazingly brave was the ministry of my Rector, Jim Moore.  I hope he will write it up – if he doesn’t, I’ll start writing it up here!  How much of what one learns in ministry one is unaware of – until suddenly you recognise its value years later.  I think I learnt that good pastoral relationships were wonderful to live with – but are really there to be put under stress for the sake of the gospel.  True?

50th Anniversary of Holy Trinity Church, Belfast

I often think about the distinction made [was it Robert Runcie] between the degrees of busyness.  To be ‘obviously not busy’ seems undesirable.  So does ‘obviously busy’.  Best is ‘not obviously busy’ – because it suggests some element of control and also of space to deal with the unexpected.  I’ve been reading Abbot Christopher Jamison’s [of ‘The Monastery] book ‘Finding Sanctuary’  He, of course, hits the busyness thing where it hurts by suggesting that it is an option which we choose.  And of course it has the effect of closing off the option of exploring stillness and silence.  Guilty as charged, I think.  Part of me fights back and says, ‘Well, it’s all very well for him in his monastery …. ‘   I have a feeling that part of the answer lies in attempting to work in bursts of very intense activity.  Clergy tend not to have clearly-defined work/not work boundaries.  So the danger is that we sort of pick at it all the time.  So sometimes it may feel like busyness but it is actually a lack of discipline about when and how we work

I’m just taking a little ‘time out’ from the meeting of our General Synod – the post-lunch ‘grave-yard slot’ proved a bit much.  So I have slipped upstairs, plugged into one of the power sockets for the heaters on the wall and [Yes!] I’ve hitched a free ride on somebody’s WiFi nearby.  I do hope they don’t mind a bit of episcopal blog-hiking.

Synods are funny things.  Very friendly – we are a small church spread over huge distances.  Because we are small, we find it quite difficult to disagree.  So we sometimes find substitute or surrogate issues – commas in the liturgy, for example – which allow us to fall out without falling out. Because of the make-up of this church, we have many very capable and articulate people – so there are some very impressive things going on.

But the main reason why clergy have problems with meetings like this is that we are used to moving around all the time – to stay in the same place for more than an hour or two is nearly intolerable!

In my [not sufficiently] mis-spent youth, good weather was always a sign that it was exam time.  Nowadays it signals the onset of General Synod.  All church gatherings of this kind are, of course, impenetrable to the novice or the outsider because they function by something akin to parliamentary procedure.  In Ireland there was always a sort of ‘up from the country’ and ‘across the border’ feel to the Synod – with a pinch of ‘checking up on what those ones in Dublin are up to’.  Scotland feels rather different.  Last year I was too new to have much sense of belonging – this year I’m looking forward to being blamed for something as a sign that I have now arrived.  At least there is a Starbucks across the road – and a very sociable dinner on Friday night.  So there is hope.  But I’m still taking my laptop and some work to be getting on with just in case there might be a moment or two which is less than enthralling.

Glad to see that the latest edition of Inspires offers a caption competition for a photo of me in Tornado at RAF Leuchars. I suspect entries may well major on the ejector seat aspects of the situation – or the difficulty of getting the canopy shut over my mitre. The moment brought back all my reading of Biggles – although the Tornado was some distance removed from the Camel.

Readers of this blog will gradually [?] realise that, while I may say a bit about issues and problems that I face, I seldom say much about what I actually do.  But I think the second major meeting of our Diocesan Review Group which happened today is worth a mention.  Sometimes people see this kind of process as being, ‘What shall we put on this blank sheet of paper?’  I tend to see it the other way round.  No problem filling the sheet of paper with all sorts of ideas, plans, visions, strategies.  What I enjoy most is the refining and whittling away process out of which emerges gradually the architecture of the strategic plan.  Rather like seeing sculpture as the process by which the work of art is slowly revealed from the solid block of marble.  We’re some distance – and a lot of consultation – off that yet.  But it’s great to see the enthusiasm and the growing belief that it is possible to make decisions and see change happen.