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So today’s the day. Belfast hopes that the new Titanic Centre will do for Belfast what the Guggenheim Museum has done for Bilbao.

And not just Belfast. Southampton too – and of course Cobh in the far south of Ireland which was the final point of departure of Titanic on her voyage to America. Here in Ireland, it became something of a nostalgia-fest – an opportunity to revisit the story of Irish emigration to the US. I’m old enough to remember being taken to see the big ships calling in Cork Harbour and to get a flavour of what emigration meant in the 1950’s

You probably haven’t read the speech of President Michael D Higgins in Cobh. He is an elected President – but above politics. So this is in my view a brave and magnificent statement of what has happened in Ireland. No whimsy or nostalgia. Just a sharpness which shames other political and church leaders ..

‘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 the hubris which accompanied belief in what proved to be an irrational version of the economic. In addition to those who are materially impacted by the crisis, it leads to a collective loss of confidence, a questioning of previously unchallenged assumptions and an erosion of trust in institutions. In the humbling aftermath of that crisis, there is not only an opportunity to learn but a requirement to reflect – to address the erroneous assumptions that led to failure, to mobilise support around an alternative vision for our Republic and to put ourselves on course for a future which is sustainable and embraces us all as equal citizens.’

Easter Sermon

This is my sermon from St Ninian’s Cathedral this morning. As seems to be the trend with Cathedrals at present, there were lots of people. We did our best with a beautiful building and great music

I see, by the way, that my favourite Benedictine Monks in Rostrevor have updated their website. I often meet people who are ‘thinking about spending a little time with a religious community’. The new webcam will allow upon to join them at worship. No quite ‘retreat in the comfort of one’s own home’ but getting there. The website is www.benedictinemonks.co.uk

You may be interested in my Platform piece for The Scotsman

We had our Chrism Mass in the Cathedral today. it’s an important moment – all our clergy and Lay Readers gather to renew their ordination vows. This is what I said

Spring has come to Blogstead Episcopi – apart from the snow of today. You will want to know that out here we garden only in full eucharistic vestments.

The reality of course is that this was a tree-planting on Sunday at St Mary’s Dunblane to mark the accreditation of the congregation as an Eco-congregation.

Extraordinary really. I think I used just to hear and enjoy the music. Now I go for my annual ‘fix’ of Bach St John or St Matthew Passion and it turns me inside out. Tonight it was St Matthew with the Dunedin Consort in Perth Concert Hall. Mists of tears.

But why?

Old and tired and uncomfortably aware of frailty? Aware of how much crucifying goes on around the church – both that I have my hands as a friend once said ‘pre-drilled’ and that I bang in a nail or two myself.

I know that it’s the story of people like us fumbling about and not knowing – until like Peter we realise and weep bitterly. I know too that the key moment for me is the arrest in the garden. You need to recognise the moment when they come to take you away – the moment when everything is at stake – the moment that can’t be finessed away. Everything else depends on that point of discernment.

I thought about Richard Holloway’s preoccupation with the llne, ‘He saved others – himself he cannot save’. And I remembered his remarkable exposition of the meaning of the Passion in the middle of a performance of St John Passion in the Concert Hall a few years ago.

And as I stumble about in the tears, I ask myself why it is so seldom that worship does that to me. The performance this evening was deeply worshipful. It was as my colleague Grace used to say ‘brisk with spaces’. It had huge involvement and commitment – great ranges of expression in light and shade and pace. And the Evangelist gave me that rare feeling at one point that the ground had opened up and was going to swallow me.

Enough.

Fortunate it is that my Polo runs on just the occasional sniff of diesel. Because it sounds as if that ability is going to be tested fairly soon. Those of us who live in the rural community and need to get about a bit are particularly vulnerable to fuel shortages.

But I can’t tell you how much I dislike being invited to panic. I particularly dislike being invited to panic in the name of common sense.

I’ve spent quite a bit of my life reassuring people that the world isn’t going to come to an end no matter what the green hordes or the orange hordes do. So I’m not going to worry about a fuel shortage.

Just so long as I can get to Donegal on Easter Sunday evening …

Saturday. I arrive with a sense of relief having spent most of the week sitting around meeting tables in Edinburgh. We’ve been grouping meetings together to save travel time and cost – but the cumulative effect is mind-numbing. I got the odd e mail out under the radar, as it were, to see if anybody was interested in negotiating a ransom to get me released. But nothing.

And then it’s Lady Day. So I spent this morning with our Mothers’ Union branches and had that wonderful sniff of Christmas which today gives in the midst of Lent.

And this is what I said

Welcome to St Patrick’s Day – a day for thinking about identity and belonging. I had an early-morning text from Alison who was walking this magnificent beach – Killahooey Strand – in bright sunlight close to Blogstead Na Mara in Donegal. She seemed pretty much at home. Not long afterwards, I was out cycling the lanes of Perthshire around Blogstead – Campmuir, Burrelton, Saucher and the rest. Wave to the farmer getting on with the ploughing .. magnificent circle of mountains all around stretching over towards Angus with little bits of snow still on the tops. I felt at home too.

Irish – with my surname? What they used to call Planters’ Spawn more likely. And like many people in Ireland as it began to grow healthier, I took to giving myself a dual identity. It’s quite common now to say that you are Ulster-Scots – people whose thinking is orientated East-West from Antrim to Ayr. I’m more of a North-South thinker and feel myself to be Irish-British. That’s different from British-Irish. And I don’t find it hard now to say, ‘We in Scotland … ‘ so that’s clearly in the mix as well.

I suppose that’s part of the reason why the whole Six Nations thing passes me by. Not just that I never really – to my parents distress – got the point of competitive team sport. More that I am inherently suspicious of linking it to nationalism. Same problem with the Olympics. Citior, altior, fortior is fine with me – but why link it to national identity? Still one of the more remarkable aspects of Irish life is on view today – apart from the churches, I think that Irish Rugby may be the only organisation which treats the whole of Ireland as one.

But I digress. We dug out the family christening mugs with a view to inscribing one of the old ones for Eve at her baptism in Hamilton in June. I found myself looking at my great-aunt Helen’s christening mug. She was Helen Brookman. I remember her well. She lived in Finchley and was a devotee of Mrs Thatcher. She was clear-minded and warm-hearted – one of the generation whose future husbands were lost in the slaughter of the First World War. Quintessentially English. But turn the mug over and on the bottom it says ‘Helen Bertha Bruckmann’. For the reality is that she was German and her family, like many others including the Royal Family, anglicised their surname before the First World War.

Mongrels all of us. And safer that way.

Today’s statement on the news that Archbishop Rowan Williams is stepping down:

“I heard with great regret the news that Archbishop Rowan Williams is stepping down from the office of Archbishop of Canterbury. In the depth of his spirituality and the richness of his intellect, he has been an inspirational figure. Those gifts have enabled him to be a positive influence in society far beyond the boundaries of the church.

“Archbishop Rowan’s time as Archbishop of Canterbury has been marked by great difficulty. To be the person who is called to foster and to embody unity will always be a costly ministry. He has fulfilled that ministry with a wonderful grace and personal warmth.

“In the Scottish Episcopal Church, we are grateful for times when he has visited and enriched our life. On a personal level, I shall miss his friendship and support and wish Rowan and Jane many years of happy and fulfilling ministry.”