Category: Blog Entry

This is really the moment [moving tomorrow] when one should take a blogbreak.  It’s become a bit like one of those mad committee roleplay exercises where various characters keep rushing in with ever more difficult challenges to be sorted out – now.  Or like those flat American voices doing the shuttle countdown.  As launch time draws nearer, all the warning lights flash red.  And they say, ‘Well, we’ll just let her go anyway.’  So if our supporting cast of lawyers, builders, bankers and others all say ‘Yes’ at the same time, we’ll be on our way.    By the way, Poppy has been reading the Deed of Conditions and notes that poultry, ducks, pigeons, rabbits, bees, etc.  are forbidden and that we are allowed to keep only ‘normal’ household pets.  As a Burmese aristocat, she doesn’t ‘do’ normal.  She also notes the lack of a specific clause forbidding d*gs but she will sort them out later.

These are the moments [3 days to moving] when the injunction to travel light on the Christian pilgrimage sounds a bit hollow.  So it’s flatpack furniture erected.  Curtain rails straight, level, centred ..   Why is it that, however hard you try, they are never quite right?  At least the books never got unpacked from the last move – along with many of our other bits and pieces.  So we are looking forward to meeting some old friends again.  Do I move the clutter on my desk as it is .. or shove the stuff in the drawers …   At least the weather is dry.  The place will be a sea of mud if it rains.  Travel light in wellington boots.

Moving day minus 4 and heavily into the flatpack.  I particularly relish the challenge of the Ikea stuff which comes with instructions in pictures without words but with Swedish subtitles, as it were.  It’s a sort of Porvoo-related challenge of intelligence and patience.  Meanwhile, I am working my way through the equally challenging ‘Free of Charge’ by Miroslav Volf, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Lent Book.  Not easy but good, I think.  He works out the issues of relationship with God from first base.  And he includes the killer question, ‘What do you have that you have not been given?’

I did express concern that blogging was becoming over fashionable.  I saw that the Met was attempting to curb the anonymous blogging activities of disgruntled officers – wonderful names like ‘Cough the Lot’ and ‘Bow Street Runner’  Today’s paper is full of the new genre of the ‘sexblog’ in which mainly women [I thought it was usually men who boasted about their prowess …but times change] tell all.  Still .. I’m not anonymous .. I do maintain a Bridget Jones index although my categories are slightly different from hers.   But I’m not aware of anybody else fighting for the episcopal bloggers’ niche market.  So I’ll keep going for now.

Another of those days of contrast.  Sailed into Llandaff Cathedral this morning as part of a flotilla [or should it be ‘scope’] of bishops to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the Provoo Agreement.  Great sermon from the Archbishop of Uppsala.  He might have been preaching about the Hard Gospel and sectarianism – that if, we love in others only that which is like us, it is as if we look in a mirror … and God is able to love in us what is unlike him’  So feet on the ground back in Edinburgh.  Hands and knees in the car park to tape up the undershield of the car again and get home without it dragging on the ground.  And then home to where the oil has run out and the foolish virgins are firmly in control.   Poppy is consulting her union representative as the ambient temperature has fallen below required levels.  But carpets go down in the new house tomorrow so there is hope …

I’m at a meeting of church leaders as part of the development of the Porvoo Agreement. This links together the Anglican Churches of the British Isles with the Evangelical Lutheran Churches of Scandinavia. The meeting could have been in Copenhagan or Oslo … but it’s ‘Hello Cardiff’. At times it does sound rather like an ecclesiastical version of the Eurovision Song Contest. But, as always, these gatherings are fascinating. We all face similar problems. Some – particularly those funded by Church Tax – have resources beyond the dreams of the modest little SEC. But others, such as the Lithuanians, have far less than we do. What you learn is that you can’t put a price on faith, energy, creativity and commitment. And maybe, when it comes to churches, less is more.

All very well these gospel injunctions to ‘travel light’.  Moving house date is still moving about a bit in spite of heroic efforts of others and ourselves to tie it down.  Friday [7 days] now looks likely.  Today’s problem is that we are going to run out of central heating oil and pilgrim people need to keep warm.  Minimum delivery is 500 litres – if you want it by the bucketfull, forget it.  Jobsworth, health and safety …  Ponder wistfully the limited nature of internet shopping.  Could one not get 100 litres of oil as an attached file and download it straight into the tank?  The phone is now live so pilgrim people should soon be able to send and receive E Mail provided wireless network can be made to work in the new setting.

Must be something to do with my struggles in the snow on Sunday and Monday – or maybe my long-lived and long-running Passat is still coming to terms with the question I was recently asked, ‘Do you require accommodation for your driver?’ But both last night and the night before parts of the undershield banged down onto the road. Last night I ended up crawling around with a torch underneath the front of it on the hard shoulder of the M90 and then drove home the last 15 miles with it scraping on the ground – trying to avoid man-hole [inclusive language again!] covers which might rip it off finally. Thank you to my kind and friendly garage for sorting it out. Strange that one can view the Day of Judgement with relative equanimity but problems with car or internet connection count as a Major Crisis. Time to get things into proportion!

I spent yesterday in prison.  I go because prisons and prisoners are important.  And I go to learn about chaplaincy in the context of a prison.  I find it very hard to describe how I felt about this one.  It’s as if there are multiple strands.  There are dreadful crimes, multiple deprivation, people with a history of drug abuse, human misery in all its forms.  But there is also an institution which seems to work – there is obvious humanity and respect in the way in which it is run.  And the Chaplains have found that position which is what makes the role special – moving freely at every level and respected at every level; representing and modelling Christian faith but not prosletysing; not part of the ‘system’ but part of what makes it work as a community.  I spent some time looking for the origin of that quotation, ‘You can tell the state of a country by the state of its prisons’ but couldn’t find it.  I was very glad I went.  I also ponder the extraordinary nature of a job which allows me to visit a prison and Gleneagles Hotel in the same week …..

It’s the 10 Anniversary.  One of the events that you remember where you were when you heard.  I was sitting on the quayside in Belfast waiting to take my daughter to visit universities in England and Scotland.  My child – safe – with me.  One feels the need to mark and remember – but a desire not to trespass.  One of the parents said tonight that he hoped to ‘move on but not forget’.  That sounds very healthy to me.  People say that time heals – but I don’t really believe it.  Sometimes it makes the feelings of loss more acute and brings to the surface damage hidden at the time.  I visited the Cathedral just before Christmas – saw the memorial and was deeply moved by it.  Remember the families in your prayers