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It’s a difficult question. There is a nice Northern Ireland expression, ‘I get my time in rightly’. It certainly doesn’t hang heavy. But sometimes you wonder.

Alison and I have been doing family support – hiring a trailor and going down to Glasgow on Saturday to help Mark, Steph and Eve prepare for their house move on Friday. We went back to Burntisland and Aberdour on Sunday for the ‘Sunday worship’ bit of the Mission Action Plan follow-up. There was a baptism and there are children,

Since then Sharon and I have been dealing with the e mail backlog – which had grown a bit more than is good. I have been meeting clergy and yesterday had a meeting with two Vestries to discuss housing issues for their Rector. Their small congregations don’t actually have enough money to do what they feel they need to do to house their Rector adequately – but they recognise the need to do it anyway. Churches are strange things – if you don’t do the brave thing and move forwards, you find that you are going backwards. There is no ‘steady state’ holding position.

So today I have spent the day Chairing a meeting of our Mission and Ministry Board in Edinburgh. Three big issues faced us today: the MinDiv Report on our training of clergy and Lay Readers through TISEC; the next phase of the Whole Church Mission and Ministry Policy; the development of our church-wide consultation on Human Sexuality issues which follows our decision not to adopt the Anglican Covenant.

Now I am on a flight down to London for a period which begins with the Enthronement of the new Archbishop of Canterbury tomorrow. Around that there will be a meeting of the Anglican Primates and of the Anglican Communion Standing Committee. I’ll get home again next Tuesday night.

I’ve been doing a Lent Roadshow these past few weeks. Seems to me that I need to be out there as Teacher and Guardian of the faith – giving account of,the faith that is in me. It’s part of what the bishop is for.

But of course it’s never quite like that in the Scottish Episcopal Church. I guess that there were about thirty of us there.

The first question/comment was in the area of ‘have we lost mystery and authority in our worship since we moved away from the Authorised Version of the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer?’ From there a discussion developed about how we can have worship which engenders a sense of mystery. We noted the recorded growth in congregations at Cathedrals and the attractiveness of services such as Choral Evensong to people in the so-called Post-Modern Age.

We also talked about Mark 2 of the Nine Marks of Mission – Worship which renews and transforms – and the way in which it challenges us to shape worship which is not just liturgically correct but which also leaves the worshipper with a sense that ‘something happened’ and that they have been part of something significant. That in turn led to a good conversation – talking again – about the use of silence in worship

I said again – which is code for ‘I keep saying this and nobody notices’ – that our worship sometimes lacks impact because we ‘overdose on friendliness and accessibility’

There is something here which we need to learn more about. I think it is that particular forms of worship and the denominational culture of churches and congregations may be off-putting to the person exploring church. But mystery is not. Neither is integrity – of striving to ‘be the ones that we say we are.’

We continue to work at the Mission Action Planning process. So this week I went down to our ABI Group (Aberdour, Burntisland and Inverkeithing) to see how they are getting on with the implementation of their Mission Action Plan. I’ll also be with them on Sunday morning. Like most of our congregations, these are small in number but big in vision. There is history – the ship-breaking yard at Inverkeithing. Burntisland is seeing more young families commuting into Edinburgh – the railway runs along the coast here – and Aberdour is an attractive Edwardian seaside place

It’s good to get a chance to be ‘on the ground’ with congregations – here I am with the Rector, Canon Val Nellist, and Revd Maureen Stirzaker. I’ve been doing more of this lately – it’s easy to allow the pressures to force you to sit in the Diocesan Office dealing with everything at arms length or longer. I went on to have a meeting with the Vestries and we talked about how things are.

Some themes are emerging across our congregations. Children’s work is appearing in many places – each of these congregations now has significant work with children. And there is clearly an enthusiasm for Prayer Groups,

Meanwhile the brave movement of this Group of congregations as their Rector’s retirement approaches is towards making a commitment to a full stipend and to the purchase of a Rectory. These are huge commitments and a sign of our growing confidence as a church.

And finally we talked about the impact of the new Forth Crossing which is rapidly rising from the waters of the Forth. It should remove any ‘bridge conscious’ hesitation which there has been about investment in Fife – and concern about commuting from Fife to Edinburgh. So these congregations can look forward to seeing more Edinburgh commuters – some of them young families – living in their midst. That isn’t all good news – dormitory communities can be sterile places – but an exciting future beckons

Church Leaders from across Scotland had one of their regular meetings today at the David Livingstone Centre which is at Blantyre, south of Glasgow. This is part of the bicentenary celebrations of David Livingstone’s birth. Here they are with young people from Motherwell College who staff the Cafe at the Centre

I had never been to the Centre – it turns out to be a major National Trust property in which the former mill buildings where Livingstone grew up are preserved as a museum and educational centre. He was obviously a completely remarkable person – dedicated to Christian mission and to the abolition of slavery. Like many remarkable people, he was probably also impossible – if you haven’t read it, Margaret Forster’s book ‘Good Wives?’ gives an interesting picture of his home life and relationships.

We had our Diocesan Synod in the Cathedral on Saturday. Like other dioceses, we are trying to make this meeting more engaged and engaging – seating people at round tables to try and get away from the rigidity of straight lines. We also turned over the afternoon session to Holy Conversation – known in some other traditions as Conversation on the Work of God.

It was a good day – a good day made better by the encouragement of seeing our newly appointed clergy taking their place in diocesan life.

I had prepared three pieces of material

A Sermon for the Eucharist
A Presidential Address
Introduction to Holy Conversation

The Spital Sermon is a long tradition of the City of London – a sermon preached by an Anglican bishop before the Lord Mayor of London and the assembled Aldermen and others. So we went in the Rolls to St Lawrence Jewry just beside the Guildhall and I did my best. The subject is ‘The Spread of Truth’ – not comfortable for churches or politicians or the financial sector or journalists or anybody really. And there was a lunch hosted by Dr Clare Gifford, the Lady Mayoress

This is what I said

It’s been an interesting week – some difficult meetings in which we have tried to sort out some of the historic confusions bequeathed to us from the past. And we are getting there

But a little bit of contrast doesn’t come amiss. Alison and I are now in one of the State Bedrooms at the Mansion House in London We are in London at the invitation of The Lord Mayor of London, Alderman Roger Gifford, who comes from St Andrews and is therefore more a Scot than I am. Tomorrow we go to St Lawrence Jewry for the historic Spital Sermon of which more tomorrow.

This evening we went in the Rolls with The Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress to Dinner at the Fishmongers’ Hall. Before we retire, we shall witness the historic ‘Putting out the Cat’ ceremony which goes back to the time of Dick Whittington and his cat Tomkin. Alison will of course immediately let it back in.

This is the key Ernest Bateman photograph. Eamon DeValera came to open the parish school – around 1955 – and the picture includes Archbishop George Otto Simms, Archbishop of Dublin

The parish website today at http://www.booterstown.dublin.anglican.org/index.php/the-booterstown-complex/takes some pride in the event.

The building was superseded in the mid-1950s by the present structure. Surely this must qualify for that much abused word “delightful” in its sturdy simplicity and harmony with the adjoining Church of St. Philip and St. James. Officially opened by Eamon de Valera, a man who spent so much of his long life in Booterstown, one of the treasured parochial photographs shows this normally stern-faced man enjoying, with Archbishop Simms and the then Rector, Canon Bateman, what we Irish call a “real good laugh”.

Revd Nick Green was instituted as the new Rector of St Mary’s, Dunblane, this evening. Nick and his wife Andrea join us from Middlesborough. They received a very warm welcome from the congregation. We’re looking forward to Nick’s contribution to our clergy fellowship in the diocese

I met Professor Biagini’s students who have been exploring my grandfather’s sermons. What lies behind all this is the sudden [?] interest in the story of the Southern Irish Protestants after Partition. They were, in effect, the Southern Irish Unionists – but of course their Britishness was gone. So they had to work out who they were in this new situation. My grandfather, Ernest Bateman, was ordained in 1911 and he became one of the key influences in shaping their acceptance of the new Irish state. His community had a ‘keep your head down’ ethos so there is very little written material from within this community – his archive of sermons is therefore a major contemporary resource. I went to Dublin with my mother to read them about ten years ago. I learned much about who I am – and why I am as I am from reading them!

It turned out to be one of those rather extraordinary gatherings. Some of those present were part of the same Irish diaspora as Alison and I represent – indeed we knew some of them from our exciting past in Trinity College, Dublin. Others were mainly postgrad students who simply knew everything. One, to my sister’s astonishment, quoted from memory an article written by my mother. Another was able to describe the various houses in Booterstown Avenue [where my grandfather’s Rectory was] in which Eamon DeValera stayed while on the run. For those of us who get by knowing a little about a lot, it is suddenly intimidating to be in the presence of people who do detail.

Anyway, I’ll add a photo or two when I get a moment. But for now you
you may be interested in what I said to them