Category: Blog Entry

This has been one of those days when one wonders.  I’ve driven 270 miles … big carbon footprints all over the planet.  I’ve managed two meetings – one about homes for the elderly and the other about the Mission to Seafarers.  And at 9 pm I ended up in Ikea in Glasgow [this is a recurrent theme] attempting to change the 60 cm sliding kitchen shelves for 50 cm – all part of the struggle to move house in three weeks.  One of the great blessings of a secular society – I can walk around the returns section of Ikea dressed as a bishop and people either don’t notice or kindly assume that that’s what suits me today.

The smudge of ash on the forehead on Ash Wednesday …  in much of religious practice today, the news is always good, always brighter, better, newer.   It is refreshing to be part of a tradition of faith which is capable of  the change of gear from Mardi Gras to Ash Wednesday.  And as I knelt to receive it, I though again of the power of ritual action.  And I thought too of Ireland where everything points towards something else – in Ireland the smudge of ash would be an unintended marker of religious division.  It would mean ‘Catholic’ rather than ‘Protestant’

So the next thing is to see how I get on with the Jesuit Media trial podcast download of ‘Pray as you Go’ – daily prayer for your MP3 player. I assume that this is about encouraging me to pray better – not that my MP3 player says its prayers or that I pray for it. It should work well now that I have the MP3 player set up to work in the car.  I did once attempt to learn Italian by using tapes in the car but it got dangerous when I had to wave my arms around to do the accent. This should be all right unless I close my eyes. I’ll let you know how I get on.

My parish sometimes seems a long way back – today we travelled over 50 miles into the Trossachs to visit the congregation at Aberfoyle. It’s amazing to get there and find a cohesive and friendly congregation busy making brave plans about its future – and we all went to lunch in one of the houses beside the lake.  People are amazingly kind and hospitable.  Our friend John who has been with us over the weekend is a train buff – kept talking about the old line from Stirling to Crianlarich which passed through Aberfoyle. And then we walked across the cattle grid at the entrance to the house and found that it had been made from the old railway lines. Perhaps there may yet be a railway resurrection?

I keep meaning to fake the timings of my postings.  Irish people are notorious for not going to bed early.  But here we are – Saturday night – tomorrow’s sermon for Aberfoyle [in the Trossachs] written in full script – pondering what it means, following this week’s Church Times article, to have a new virtual identity as the ‘blogging bishop’.  I suppose it could be worse.  On the other hand, it could be better.  Maybe this is the new medium through which it is possible to communicate with all sorts of people in all sorts of places and to ‘get across the boundaries of the church’.  Or maybe it is  an excuse for talking to oneself rather than talking to real people.  Only time will tell.

Just back from Dundee where I attended the 25th anniversary of the consecration of my Catholic colleague, Bishop Vincent Logan. I must sit down with him – he could tell me some things I need to know. As always, one feels completely at home – the worship, the people, the robes, the friendship. And yet we still have the madness of being unable to share the eucharist – the sacrament of unity – together. And then there are the more subtle and wonderful differences. We have nothing to match the exoticism [and broken English] of the Apostle Nuncio. And I am always fascinated by all the busyness around the altar – people moving all the time like a sort of fluid tableau. And close to me were the people doing the signing – one of them with the most wonderful red/orange hair. The ballet of the hands often seemed to express the spiritual truths of what was going on far better than the words. Maybe I should learn to preach in sign language alone. More use, probably, than the course in Powerpoint that I have been contemplating.

It’s been a day of catching up – an apparently endless series of phone calls, E Mails and letters  ….  push, push, encourage, support, nudge, praise, cajole … trying to manage the everyday and not lose touch with the possibility of being creative.  And all the time I am uncomfortably aware that, in this strange, strange way of life and leadership role, silence is more to be prized than speech, listening than talking, vulnerability and humility more than forcefulness and certainty.  But tomorrow is another day.

After my wistful ‘not cycling’ of yesterday, today was even worse.  I added another bit of ‘healthy mind, healthy body’ stuff to our discussion of future meetings of clergy.  More wistfulness.  Maybe we could sing, or do relaxation or be holistic in some way.  I began to reminisce about the period when the whole of Northern Ireland seemed obsessed with step aerobics.  ‘I don’t do Pilates’ said a voice.  And it was over as soon as it had begun.

Set out today on a series of commitments at opposite ends of the diocese. Not good planning when distances are big – but you can’t get it right all the time. Another wonderful bright day – snow on the mountains and string quartets on the MP3 player. Took the Brompton folding bike in the [unrealistic] hope that I might cycle on a bit of the National Cycle Network which wanders all over the diocese. They must have known I was coming when they planned it. But I did get a look and will come back – just where the road to Cupar leaves the southern shore of the Firth of Tay, there is a wonderful little road which skirts the hillside above the shore – runs through Newport and Tayport – into the Forest Park just north of Leuchars and then to St Andrews along the route of the old railway. Another day, perhaps, particularly when the weather is warmer.

We’ve been in Yorkshire this weekend and took ourselves to Vespers at Ampleforth.  Part of the magic of it – if that isn’t inappropriate – is that they spend no time on most of the things to which we give great importance.  No concern for relevance or variety or immediacy or particularity or communication or explanation or strategic planning  ..  They process in out of the middle ages.  They do what they have always done and they process out again.  It’s very refreshing.  I couldn’t help looking into their faces and wondering.   With some, you just wouldn’t know.  Others had those faces which mature but don’t age in that sort of ‘lived in’ way that the rest of us have – difficult to tell what age they were.  And some of the older ones had that aura which means that they had given themselves totally to it.  It makes you think …