Category: Blog Entry

My diary this week is as spacious as it was crowded last week.  So I have managed a cycle for the second time this week.  Stopped off on my way home from Perth and unfurled the Brompton on the village green at Pitcairngreen, just north of the ring road.  From there it is about 8 miles to Bankfoot on Route 77 of the National Cycle Route – beautiful, undulating countryside and a cup of tea before the return.  One is reminded that the earth is not flat nor does every road have speed cameras on it.  My only paws for thought was the sign which reminded me that it is all lottery funded – is this, like Covent Garden Opera, another example of the pleasures of the [let’s not say] rich being paid for by the poor?  I have never bought a lottery ticket in my life and don’t intend to.

I have become an almost compulsive thrower-out.  Having spent the last year getting rid of the domestic clutter, I have moved on to the Office.  All kitchen work surfaces are now clear.  My office is fit for the dispensing of ghostly counsel.  But the filing …  I don’t do filing well – was caught once having filed the Medical Cards under ‘H’.  It’s obvious, isn’t it?  Well, I thought so.  There are four filing cabinets full of the energy and outpourings of my predecessors – may they golf in peace.  It’s fatal to file as you go – you never get there.  I have decided that the secret is to throw out all ‘third party’ records – files to do with groups and committees which are nothing to do with the diocese.  Then you archive in the room off the kitchen anything which is more than about two years old.  Then you invent a system of dazzling logic to deal with what’s left – muttering all the time John Truscott’s mantra, ‘It is not a filing system – it is a retrieval system’   So you file ‘Services’ under ‘W’.  It’s obvious, isn’t it?

One of my friends used to say, ‘Most of us only have one sermon.  Sometimes we begin at the beginning, sometimes in the middle and sometimes at the end.’  I have a feeling that the less time I spend preparing sermons, the more likely I am to revert to preaching that sermon.  And, at least, because I am in a different church most Sundays, it probably retains a modicum of novelty value.  I have a feeling that the really bright people are reading all the time, absorb what they read and are able to use it without apparent effort to enrich and enliven their preaching.  The rest of us seem to end up striking a balance between attempting to read all sorts of stuff, even if not directly relevant, and working hard at getting right what we do.  But then, I hardly ever hear anybody else preaching nowadays …

This morning to Kinloch Rannoch.  Down the road, across the Isla, over to Dunkeld and from there to Pitlochry, Blair Atholl, Bruar and over the hills to Kinloch Rannoch.  52 miles of glorious countryside.  We arrived in time for a quick coffee and chat with some of the tourists in the internet cafe across the road – members of the congregation are involved in the management of it and of the filling station across the road.  The church has 7 members and they function happily without a resident priest – visiting clergy come throughout the summer and stay in a cottage in the village.   Seems pretty perfect to me.  We drove on up Loch Rannoch afterwards in beautiful sunshine and had a picnic beside the lake.  And then on to Rannoch Station where the road ends as it meets the railway across Rannoch Moor.  Next Sunday is Callendar in the Trossachs.  It’s tough but somebody has to do it.

Been reading some stuff about leadership today, amongst all the other things which have been going on. It’s interesting how often it comes back to the sense of humour – as in this on Commitment: ‘A sense of humour and proportion and a certain light heartedness are important here if fanaticism and obsession are to be avoided.’ I find that interesting – on one hand, the single-mindedness and focus which is required to bring about change in an organisation as fuzzy as the church; on the other, the need for a degree of self-objectivity to the point of gentle self-mockery if one is to continue to have the ability to relate to others and the resilience necessary to continue against all the odds.

‘We urge the government of the United Kingdom not to invest in a replacement for the Trident system and to begin the process of decommissioning these weapons with the intention of diverting the sums spent on nuclear weaponry to programs of aid and development.’

Church leaders here have been signing this petition – and I don’t think I would refuse to sign it.  But are we really saying that we cannot imagine a situation in which the deterrent effect of nuclear weapons might be necessary?  I was never a great fan of MAD but it played its part in preserving several generations from having to go to war.  Is this unilateralism?  It’s a dangerous world out there.  Who knows what threats may not emerge over a 30 year time span from terrorists, rogue states, emerging world powers, etc.  But then one might reasonably ask whether enormous nuclear weapons carried around in submarines are at all relevant to our defence needs.

I watch the growing debate about nuclear power with great interest.  Global warming gathers pace.  Something needs to be done.  But is the something nuclear power?  Our lifestyle produces ever more CO2 – endless miles in the Passat; constant Easyjet flights.  We seem powerless to change it.  But there must be another way.

No I haven’t read the Da Vinci Code.  No I don’t intend to go to the film – the critics say it is dreadful anyway.  Yes I did watch part of the start of Big Brother.  Even by the standards of the circles I move in, they are a pretty odd-ball lot.  No I wouldn’t take part.  And then there is the Macca and Heather tragedy – which I discussed during a brief but intimate meeting with my hairdresser this morning [see my photo above to understand why all encounters with hairdressers are brief]  Janet Street-Porter in the Independent this morning seemed to make sense – the search for a new partner to replace the former rock-solid marriage; the meeting of a self-effacing creative genius with a crusading campaigner.  One salutes the optimism of ‘too much in love to have a pre-nuptial agreement’ – sorry it ended in tears.

Sermon at St Salvator’s Chapel, St Andrews University

It’s hard to remember the time before the internet.  So, take a bow – www.oremus.org – best source of daily prayer so far as I am concerned.  You can set it up so that it hits you in the face every morning in your Inbox.  Trade secret – it also contains the best selection of intercessions you are likely to find anywhere.  I used to borrow them constantly.  The other trade secret, of course, is the location of the best sermon websites.  But I’m not sharing that.  I have to confess that I still feel the loss of Jane Williams’ Sermon Notes in the Church Times – so, I presume, do those who have to listen to me Sunday by Sunday.

I’ve had one of those days in which I seem to have achieved everything and nothing.  Letters and E Mails written.  Phone calls made.  Lists of things done in town.  A bed assembled.  Office kitchen cleared out – filled the back of the Passat to capacity.  And still there is more of the same.  The question, as always, is whether God is in that grinding detail of trivial round and common task – or waiting to reveal himself in some grand picture and design for the future.  The reality, I suspect, is both.