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We’ve been hosting a reunion of my year group of the College for Bishops of The Episcopal Church in the US. In America, it’s commonly known as ‘Bishop School’. I spent a week in each of three years from 2009 with this group and we became firm friends. Not everyone could come – but here we are with Robert the Bruce in the ruins of the Cathedral in St Andrews

Reading from the left:

Dennis Drainville, Bishop of Quebec; Trevor Williams, Bishop of Limerick and Killaloe in the Church of Ireland; Brian Thom, Bishop of Idaho; Ron Cutler, Bishop of Nova Scotia; Eugene Sutton, Bishop of Maryland; Scott Mayer, Bishop of Northwest Texas.

We based ourselves in Edinburgh so that they could get full value from the Scottish-American links. We did a walking tour on Saturday, got involved with congregations on Sunday and had a day in St Andrews on Monday.

The highlight for many was a dinner in the New Club hosted by Bishop Brian and Lissa.

We cast our net wide in this diocese. This is Revd Christine Scott, who is a priest of the Diocese of Waikato and Taranaki in the Province of Aotearoa. She has been with us for the past few weeks – spending part of her sabbatical taking a look at how Casting the Net goes in our diocese.

How did that come about? Well, a range of contacts. Our own Karen and Philip Gaskell met Christine in New Zealand. I have contact with Archbishop Philip Richardson which goes back to our Bible Study Group at the last Lambeth Conference and to the ACC meeting in Auckland in 2012.

Christine has been spending time In our congregations – finding out what works and what doesn’t work. The challenge is the same whether e context is Perthshire or New Zealand. It’s about how to help small and faithful congregations to find new hope and confidence. She has been gracious enough to say that she thinks we aren’t doing too badly at that …

The Church of Scotland is welcoming and hospitable to ecumenical guests at the Assembly. They are particularly keen to halve their guests taking part in debate.

Today saw the Report of the Theological Forum – introduced with much grace by Revd Prof. Iain Torrance. They are proposing a mixed economy model in responding to Human Sexuality issues. So this is what I said:

Moderator

Thank you for calling me to speak. I thank you all for your hospitality and for the privilege of being allowed to speak on this issue. You would need to have a heart of stone not to be moved by the stories of the pain and the ruptured friendships as congregations have chosen to leave the Church of Scotland.

Every church community is looking for a way forward on these issues. We have just had a successful conference in Pitlochry. The facilitation group was led by Hugh Donald of your Place for Hope organisation. So you are helping to resource us and we are grateful for that.

The Theological Forum proposes a mixed economy in the context of ‘constrained difference’. It seems to me that we are now recognising some important things:

We live in churches which have diversity of faith, life and practice. It is actually a principled position that we should as churches continue to express, affirming that diversity with civility and restraint.

We are reaching the point where we recognise that we should not attempt to unchurch one another in response to Human Sexuality issues

Moderator – in your sermon on Sunday in St Giles, you helped us to see that we need to learn to live with unresolved questions and with a degree of provisionality. In our tradition, we sometimes talk about the need for a space in which we can move into a deeper catholicity.

I have a life commitment to reconciliation. You can hear it in the Northern Irish strand of my accent. In the worldwide Anglican Communion I serve as Convenor of the Reference Group for Continuing Indaba. Indaba is a Zulu work which expresses the commitment to hold together in relationship while we discuss and resolve difficult issues. We talk about ‘honest conversation across difference in the cause of mission’

In the cause of mission. So much of the energy of the churches has been drained away in conflict – so much energy can be released if we model to the world to which we are sent in mission our ability to deal with these deep differences.

I have one concern. I learned in the past that that, when the conflict eases, so does the urgency about finding solutions. Mixed economy can easily become separate economy. We need to practice diversity with engagement.

I commend the steps you take today. We look forward to sharing this journey with all our ecumenical partners.

Moderator John Chalmers has been saying all week at the General Assembly that the Kirk needs to have some of its ‘mother church’ feeling knocked out of it. There is a feeling you are entering a world – kind, warm and welcoming. But a distinct culture which is sufficient onto itself.

People here talk constantly about ‘doing things ecumenically’ and they genuinely want to do that. But too often – deep breath – that means inviting other churches to join in what they have already decided to do. When we in response are less than enchanted with that, the result is hurt and misunderstanding – which is much to be regretted.

‘Doing things ecumenically’ means to us meeting on equal terms and starting from the beginning to define what we hope to do and how to do it. The Kirk is the National Church – that means that we can hope and expect that it will take the initiative ecumenically. But it has to be on the basis that we start from the beginning together.

And communication between churches is dreadful. We need to have an instinct to share what we do all the time, all the time, constantly, instinctively

We are all small churches now in the context of Scottish society. We need to work together instinctively and wholeheartedly and constantly

There is one area of real ecumenical progress which we should celebrate. A while ago I attended the launch of a Learning Agreement in Galloway between the SEC and the Kirk. It is a local coming together in response to a shared understanding of need. Next month in Perth, the clergy of our diocese will come together with the ministers of Perth Presbytery to look at issues of ministry and the sustaining of vocation – a local coming together in response to a shared understanding of need.

In both we are well beyond ‘nodding and smiling’ ecumenism into a relationship where we help one another to tackle the difficult stuff. I rejoice in that and look forward to more

Still going …… I wish I had been able to give more time to it but other things kept intruding. Interesting to see the beginnings of a debate about whether the Assembly should meet every two years – certainly a full week every year is an extraordinary commitment. But you do need regular meeting to keep people in touch and to keep business moving.

Over the years, I’ve come to like and respect the Church of Scotland and its people. At their best, they have a sort of wholesome earnestness about them – something which Piskies couldn’t do no matter how hard they tried! The outgoing Moderator, Very Rev Lorna Hood, has been excellent – particularly in her ecumenical commitment. The new Moderator, Rt Revd John Chalmers, has become a friend. Life in leadership in churches is not easy these days and we have a warm and mutually supportive relationship.

The Assembly papers are in a book which is something of a door-stopper. Not exactly a page-turner. But brave. Things are difficult for the Kirk as for all of us. A critical shortage of ministers is matched by a serious decline in numbers. They are doing their best to address it but they don’t hide from any of it.

And then there is ecumenism ..

Time for a quick visit to New York.

It’s one of my favourite places – although I’m finding the noise hard to deal with.

We went to the new 9/11 Memorial which is just about to open fully. The two spaces which mark the footprints of the twin towers are markers of now-empty space. And all the more poignant for that. Around them are the names of those who died. Many were from the NY Fire Department.

Over the years .. I remember being take to lunch in the Windows on the World Restaurant in 1989. We came as a family in 1998 and walked on the top of one of the towers. I brought a parish and diocesan group six months after 9/11 and we came and looked at the empty space. Terrorism on that scale had particular resonances for us. I had forgotten until today that people would stand on the pavement and applaud as a fire truck went by.

Things do sometimes get a little bizarre

They sent us back to Nashville Airport in the stretch limo. Sadly no time for a diversion to Memphis to do the Elvis stuff. I guess that it was three times the length of my VW Polo and probably guzzled at least three times the fuel.

We’ve been having a good day at the Graduation Ceremonies at the University of the South. If the jet lag stays away, we’ll enjoy the dinner this evening. The links with Scotland remain as strong as ever. I spoke to a number of students who would like to come and have placements in Scotland.

I can’t get the sermon to upload into the blog on the IPad – but here is the first section of it for now:

I’m delighted to be here and I thank you warmly for the honour which you bestow on me today. The historic links between the Scottish Episcopal Church and The Episcopal Church here in the US are strong and deeply felt on both sides. I am Irish – born in the south and raised in the north – a member of the Church of Ireland. But Scotland is my adopted home and I am passionate about the distinctiveness of Scottish Episcopalianism. These are the small, Celtic churches of the British Isles – churches which are not established or state churches – churches which are deeply rooted but travel light.

If you don’t know about the links between the Episcopal Church and the Scottish Episcopal Church, here is a thumbnail sketch. If you go to many of our churches – I’m thinking now of our little church at Kilmaveonaig in Highland Perthshire near the village of Blair Atholl – you’ll find two pictures in the porch. One is of the baptism at Stonehaven Gaol. A mother holds her child up to the barred window of the gaol to be baptised by an Episcopalian Priest. It expresses the penal experience of the Scottish Episcopal Church following the failure of the Jacobite Rising of the 1740’s. The other is the consecration of Samuel Seabury as the first bishop of the Episcopal Church in the US in 1784. Seabury was consecrated by three Scottish Bishops following refusals by the bishops of the Church of England. Through those events, the future Anglican Communion was shaped as the group of provinces we see today – autonomous and independent. Yes we are bound together by history. No I don’t know whether Scotland will vote for independence in the coming Referendum

There was a nice saying in my parish – ‘Well, it’s a wee outing for you’

So I’m off to Sewanee, Tennessee, to receive an Honorary Degree at the University of the South. So we are flying to Newark and being picked up by the limo company in Nashville. We is Alison, our daughter Anna and myself. We hope to be there in time for a dinner party this evening. I’ll be preaching at the graduation ceremony tomorrow.

I’d tried to fix myself some tartan in honour of the occasion – all measured, fixed and ordered in Perth. But a disaster of failure to deliver and wrong sizing ensued.

I am at this point the ghost of Bishop Samuel Seabury who was consecrated in Aberdeen in 1784 by the Scottish Bishops as the first bishop of the Episcopal Church of the United States of America. I checked out the detail when I met Bishop Ian Douglas of Connecticut and Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori earlier in the week in London. It was a key moment in the life of the American and Scottish Churches and a seminal moment in the development of what became the Anglican Communion. An honour for our church.

It’s not often that things work out like this. But an invitation to preach for Saturday’s Service at which my former colleague, Arthur Barrett, became Rector of Raphoe and Dean of Raphoe one such. Raphoe? About 35 miles from Blogstead na Mara in Donegal and close to the border at Strabane and Lifford.

In his ministry in the Church of Ireland, Arthur has been exploring my family history – Booterstown in south Dublin where my grandfather was Rector for over 30 years and Rossorry outside Enniskillen which was the first church I was brought to as a child. Strange what you remember. The Rector was Archdeacon Pratt and I remain convinced that Morning Prayer each Sunday always began with ‘Brightest and best are the suns of the morning’ Those were the days of course when a child was set outside to sit in the car during Holy Communion. We have moved a long way.

Anyway this is what I said