Category: Blog Entry

Action for Churches Together in St Andrews – Pentecost Sunday

Pentecost with Confirmation – St Ninian’s Cathedral, Perth

Thought for the Day – BBC Radio Scotland

Off to Balquhidder [where?] for a spot of chamber music – part of my gradual reawakening in that department. Another sign too of my vastly improved work/life balance since moving to Scotland.  It was great – Elgar’s Serenade for Strings, a Bach Brandenburg Concerto and some other bits and pieces.  I’m so out of practice these days – Mrs Vanacek would speak to me most sternly in her middle-European tones.  But I allow myself to be tugged along in the slipstream.  She used to say to me, ‘You are like person who plays violin in phone box’  Interesting then as I drove the 37 miles back towards Perth to find the two cars in front of me stopped at a fairly dangerous corner.  What was happening? Just a spot of road rage as the driver of the front one got out, stood in the road and berated the one behind.  I could understand how people get shot in such moments.  He needed some Scott Joplin on the MP3 player.

It turned into something of an SEC bloggers’ night out.  It’s interesting to meet people whom you think you know because you read what they choose to blog about in the night hours ..  The service was, of course, extraordinary.  Wonderful music – a real treat – and many signs of Kelvin’s flair for liturgy and the big occasion.  Well – there was one completely OTT moment.  To sing Parry’s ‘I was glad’ as Bishop Idris led Kelvin to his stall?  It’s fine in Westminster Abbey when you are wearing a crown and stuff.  So what would have been better?  Not ‘Sheep may safely graze’, I think.  As always, I ponder my belonging and not belonging.  It was liturgically a long long way from Portadown!  But a great gathering of the SEC family and I feel increasingly part of that.

Never left the house today – apart from going to Burrelton to get the papers so that I could look for a subject for my debut on Thought for the Day in the morning. I find Scotland a little difficult – so much less news than I am used to. But then, thankfully, there is no war going on either. And then E mails, letters and phone calls ad infinitum – 40 incoming E Mails today on subjects ranging from Perth to Myanmar. But at least, when they are all done, there is a certain feeling that the God of the details has been well served and everything is in everybody else’s in tray. The Voip phone is still not right – the WiFi connection to my study over a distance of about 10 feet isn’t all it should be. It improved a bit after we removed the brass tray which was leaning against the bureau in the hall but it is weaker than it should be. I can hear beautifully but the speaking is a bit intermittent – a good balance, don’t you think?

Sermon at the Installation of Very Rev Kelvin Holdsworth as Provost of St Mary’s Cathedral, Glasgow

All this talk of the why’s and wherefore’s of preaching leaves me pondering.  The very word ‘preach’ [and indeed ‘sermon’] leave you below the line before you have even climbed into the pulpit.  What I also find is that there is a huge difference between what I am most used to doing – which is preaching every Sunday to the same group of people – and turning up somewhere as a ‘one-off’ to attempt to add some lustre to a special occasion.  The Sunday by Sunday thing means that what one says in the pulpit picks up and reflects on what we have been saying to one another in other settings – and it can contain an element of ‘I know what you are thinking …’  The special occasion thing is much more difficult because you are relationally in something of a vacuum.  Strangest of all – particularly in the light of comments about punchy exegesis – is the fact that people almost never comment on content.  This may be because there is no content worthy of comment …  What seems to matter is whether the sermon is read from a script or spoken without notes.  Which, if I remember correctly, is how David Cameron became leader of the Conservative Party.

News today of the biodegradable plastic bottle for water. After three months, it just isn’t there any more. Surely this is a most useful trend for all the inconveniences of life. Other nominations?

‘Bishop – what we really need is to get the age of this congregation down a bit …’ I’m almost certainly not the only bishop to whom that was said this morning. It was said in the context of a faithful congregation, a church lovingly restored … So I said what I always say when I want to be reassuring: ‘But, of course, you have to remember that the average age of people in a rural community is significantly higher than it is in the cities …’ True. But not as high as that of the average rural congregation. So, to go one layer further down …. I might have said, ‘The age profile of the congregation is unlikely to change unless you review the way in which you worship.’ But then I should also have said what I also know to be true, ‘Even if you alter the way you worship, that will not of itself draw younger people into active membership of your congregation.’ It just isn’t as easy as that. There is no single answer. It is partly to do with a new kind of authenticity and integrity in church communities – so that their roots go down deeper into the realities of both life and spirituality. It involves new ways of forming relationships and building networks in this very secular society. There is a need for a sort of entrepreneurial spirit which sees opportunities of growth and grasps them with both hands. If only I could describe that in a way which would answer the question, ‘So what should we actually do?’

Interesting to find happiness on the agenda suddenly.  David Cameron [taking time off from knowing all the words of Benny Hill’s ‘Ernie’] has been exploring it as a broad political objective – and as I write this I have playing in my mind the dreadful Ken Dodd song and the much less dreadful Morcambe and Wise, ‘Bring me Sunshine’.  I think I can fairly confidently produce examples of what makes people unhappy.  But … is happiness a christian concept … did Jesus die happy … is there happiness in taking up the cross and following?  I recently met a friend who is ill and who said, ‘I am thankful for all that I have received’.  She meant, I think, children, grandchildren – and I felt that I was in the presence of a happy person.  I think there is happiness/contentment in finding integration, wholeness and balance in life and thankfulness seems to be one of the signs of that.  Surprisingly, happiness doesn’t seem to have anything much to do with wealth.  And unhappiness?  Easier, I think.  My two nominations would be … firstly anything which involves self pity and secondly an obsessive commitment to the defence of one’s self-interest, real or imagined.