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Another moment in an interesting week was the annual meeting between church leaders and the First Minister.  He’s engaging and very well-informed in dialogue – and generous with his time.  The subjects which the group brought to the conversation were marriage, vulnerable children and Christianity in public space.

Two reflections on the meeting.

One is that this kind of encounter is difficult because it’s hard for others not to assume that all church leaders agree about everything – or that there is a single ‘Christian voice.’  That in itself inhibits dialogue.  The other is that I suspect that politicians are used to people turning up and putting very sharp points – or simply asking for the money.  As you would expect, church leaders arrive and put points which are too nuanced for their own good …

We had a bit of unexpected spare time so dropped into the Tate Modern – to find ourselves confronted by Damien Hirst’s Beyond Belief.  This skull – described as serene – is covered with 8601 diamonds.  It’s a reflection – as it were – on themes of life and death.  Baptism?

So here’s something a bit different.  I ended up as the third of the Primates of the Celtic Churches to preach at the Festival Service of the Sons of the Clergy – which gives support to clergy and their families – in St Paul’s Cathedral on Tuesday.  The number of people present would put any member of the Scottish Episcopal Church at risk of agoraphobia.  There were Cathedral Choirs to right and left and all sorts of pomp and ceremony.  Alison got to sit beside the Lord Mayor at dinner afterwards – able to discuss cats with Dick Whittington’s successor.

Here’s the Sermon

It’s a rare thing – a privilege truly – to sit bemitred in or on the cathedra and say to somebody, ‘Do you believe that you are truly called to the office and work of a bishop in the Church of God?’  It’s one of those questions which expects an answer in the affirmative – but no less real for that.

So as the now Bishop John of Edinburgh answered those awesome questions on Saturday – and afterwards – I reflected on the extraordinary nature of the office.  The hopes invested in you are excessive to the point of unrealistic.  The potential for leadership and for pastoral pain are equally remarkable.  For myself, I think I find that the spiritual demands of the office grow heavier with each year which passes.  And I go through periods of feeling that I am putting a puny finger of authority in the dyke which holds back a deluge of ecclesiastical chaos.

The swings of role and location are also extraordinary.  One moment as difficult in personal encounter as it gets – tomorrow preaching in St Paul’s Cathedral in London.

So all I can hope for John is that other telling phrase, ‘grace to perform it’

I lost some of my rhythm this week – and lost the compelling need to communicate my innermost thoughts with the world.  Or maybe I just didn’t have any innermost thoughts this week.

So just in case, here is a Sermon  from a Service held by one of our Area Councils in Cupar – and a Thought for the Day on wealth and poverty

 

Thought for the Day about wealth and poverty.Ser

 

Good day today – we welcomed Mark Russell, Chief Executive of Church Army, and gathered together some of our facilitators, Liaison Officers and clergy.  As we’ve moved forward with Mission Action Plans, we’ve gradually come to be more aware of the vocational dimension of all this.  Which sounds a bit grand – but it actually is a ‘binding together’ dimension to it all.

Mark and I had never met – which is strange because he attended Portadown College and grew up in that remarkable community the day before yesterday.  So we had a sort of Northern Ireland – or Norn Irn – exiles thing which was mutually refreshing but not of the slightest interest to anybody else.  But he was great.

It was one of those things in the diary which I might have persuaded myself to treat as disposable at the beginning of a busy week. But it turned out to be a very interesting day.

We turned up at STV at Pacific Quay in Glasgow and very hospitable they were. We were given a chat and a tour – and introduced to the STV Local network of websites which at this point seems to cover much of Scotland but not yet Perthshire.

Then we got involved in a discussion with young people. Some of them came from Holyrood School Glasgow and were with us in STV. Others joined in through the Glow Programme of Education Scotland’s intra-net facility. And that’s when it got really interesting – for two reasons. Firstly most of us are used to dealing with journalists who ask questions. But young people who ask, ‘Why is religion and spirituality important in Scotland today?’ expect answers which make sense to them. And then the discussion which followed created more animation in the religious leaders than I have seen in a long time – I think because we actually began talking about faith and its importance.

So a good day and I was glad that I went!

A Thought for the Day on the Titanic and spirituality

I’ve just been back in Ireland for a post-Easter break. It was hard to miss the Titanic Centenary – built in Belfast and final departure from Cobh in the south. It was a sort of nostalgia-fest. Some of it was Belfast pride – apparently the tee shirts in Belfast say, ‘Well it was all right when it left here’. And some of it was about the tragedy of Irish emigration in the 19th century and the diaspora and all that. Here in Scotland we know about both of those.

Presidents – like bishops – are expected to say suitably benign things on this sort of occasion. But Ireland’s new President, Michael D Higgins, broke that rule. Reflecting on the foolish pride which claimed that the Titanic was unsinkable, he said,

‘We in our time have experienced the sense of crisis which occurs when something deemed unsinkable – in our case a speculative economy – is confounded not only by circumstance and error but by hubris

I think that there is a universal quality to that kind of leadership. It’s beyond politics – some would say it is spiritual but that risks getting confused with religion. Let’s just say that it fearlessly addresses things which are always part of human life everywhere. To smooth over the Titanic disaster with nostalgia demeans the reality of the loss. Better to name arrogance, pride, stupidity and wrongheadedness for what they are and for what they cost.

But there is another side to that kind of leadership. It’s positive and creative in its challenge. To be a successful society requires good leadership, good politics, consent. But good community like good family needs values which are beyond that – and they too have a spiritual quality. I’m thinking of generosity, readiness to sacrifice, willingness to go the extra mile, to forgive, let go and move on.

Those things are usually costly – but they give, shall we say, a quality of life which is blessed with an unsinkable buoyancy.

We had a great week at Blogstead Na Mara in Donegal. There was a slight problem on our return when the ferry was cancelled. We ended up on the longer, slower route. Poppy suffered the slight indignity of having her insulin injection on the car deck as we prepared to disembark

But here are some bits of the real Ireland

The crowded Irish beach – this one at Falcarragh just along the coast

Someone who was obviously prepared to trim my limited hair resources en passant as It were

This one is my favourite – obviously standard issue for undertakers in Donegal. ‘Wake!’ on its own would have a suitably Easter feel. ‘In progress’ suggests that it may take some time.

I can’t spell f.f.fuschia. Nothing stops a fuschia hedge growing in Donegal – and nothing stops a donkey eating it

And finally. Old Andrew died a while ago. He lived a subsistence lifestyle just across the valley and his 14 acre farm and what he represented are about to go under the hammer. I always remember going up to see him after Christmas one year when a mighty storm had blacked us out. ‘Do you have electricity, Andrew?’ I asked him. ‘Yes’ he replied. ‘I have the electricity’. ‘Is your electricity on, Andrew?’. ‘No’.

In the shed beside his cottage was his bicycle. This is the shed across the lane with the bicycle before that and the one before that.

I’m a fairly occasional visitor to Ireland – indeed our post-Easter week in Donegal is the longest we’ve spent there in a while. It’s always tempting to try and work out what is happening – just so long as you know that you are probably wrong. So here are two impressions

The first is that things have moved on in terms of economic crisis. Ireland was never Greece. People didn’t take to the streets as the economic screw was tightened. There are signs that the Household Tax of €100 – modest considering that there are no rates or Council Tax – may be one too many for some people. Something like one third of households haven’t paid and there are a lot of ‘Can’t Pay – Won’t Pay’ posters around

But, more importantly, moving on seems to mean that people have taken their vengeance on a failed political generation and are now directing their anger at one another. It’s about recognising that people were prepared to continue voting for politicians whom they suspected to be both incompetent and corrupt – just so long as the good times kept rolling.

The second is really fascinating. The Association of Catholic Priests has commissioned an opinion survey among Irish Catholics. That is in itself a remarkable development. Ireland is still overwhelmingly Catholic but 75% now say that Catholic teachings on sex are not relevant. The figures suggest that the majority view is that priests should be allowed to marry and that women should be allowed to become priests. But 35% of Catholics attend Mass weekly or more often. Rural Irish churches are still full – to an extent which Scottish Piskies could hardly imagine