Just happened to trip over this – as it were – in the car park of our church in Kilmaveonaig – Blair Atholl – this morning.  I always feel that there is hope for people when they display a capacity for self-parody!

It was a very slushy and slitherly drive – but the coffee and panettone were very welcome when we got there.   And on to Holy Trinity, Pitlochry where the little burn that flows noisily through the churchyard was running strongly.  It amazes me that people would go to church at all on such a day.  Did they not know that I was coming?

Tomorrow we move on to the Clergy Conference in the plush surroundings of the Green Hotel, Kinross.  About 30 are signed in so it promises well.

View this morning from the Cranmer wing at Blogstead. We’ve been having proper Scottish cold these last few days and the faithful Passat and I have been picking our way o’er moor and fell. This is the view towards Shiehallion near Kinloch Rannoch. Wonderful place … we do have one or two congregations looking for Rectors at present. But clearly people will feel a stronger call to grittier realities in ministry .. Although there is plenty of grit on the roads here.

And the view from my study window:

Not much of a one for the New Year Resolutions – the daily battle does me without adding the burden that a ‘great leap forward’ might be attainable.  So I was delighted to get hold of my favourite ‘Independent’ today after missing a couple.  It offers ‘A New You’ supplement – the easy way to make 2008 the best year of your life – The No Diet Diet.  Fortunately it has already reached No 4: Seeing the Results – so I can bask in outcomes without worrying too much about process.

It’s all very … awareness; responsibility; emotional intelligence; assertiveness; social intelligence.   Wouldn’t argue with much of it – indeed life in the church would be much easier if we could all handle ourselves as this suggests.  Except that for me it doesn’t add up to a model of being with and for others.  I particularly liked some of the bits of the Awareness section: ‘Listening for sounds that you’re not normally aware of – this could be anything from birdsong to the sound of the central heating firing up.’  Welcome to 2008

I called in today on the Islamic Centre in Stirling on a visit arranged by Rev Dom Ind. We met Iman Arif Hansrot and some of the members – we were warmly welcomed and were glad we went. It’s fascinating how an experience like this can be both foreign and familiar – religious communities always have a great deal in common. I carried away the remark of one of the members of how egalitarian the community at prayer was – people kneeling shoulder to shoulder. And I watched a child among them, simply absorbing and doing as the adults did.

Meanwhile, on a rather unrelated tack, I continue to wrestle with the inter-relationships of Blackberry, Palm and laptop.  The Palm has unilaterally declared itself a resident of Perthshire.  When asked to put in ‘Rev’ in the title field – something which it does regularly – it has taken to auto-completing with ‘Rear-Admiral’

Home at last – getting too old for 10 pm at Cairnryan and 1.30 am at Blogstead – after spending New Year partly in the back of my mother’s cupboards and partly in a little light socialising. Now fighting off a cold and – disaster of disasters – loss of voice. Great shape for conducting a wedding in Lymington on Saturday.

Meanwhile the random, diminutive, couch-surfing Mexican-with-the-enormous-suitcase, Luis, was introduced to the New Year delights of Portadown – particularly Knocknamuckley and Ballymacrandle – by Mark and his friends – including a major Karaoke Magic Mike session on a giant plasma screen. I must remember to get the religious music disk and borrow it for the Clergy Conference …

Happy New Year to all our readers. New Year’s Eve was spent visiting various Civic Amenity and Recycling Centres in the Belfast area in weather of unsurpassed dreadfulness. I also managed a Radio Scotland Thought for the Day.

Meanwhile, congratulations to the priests from Halifax who are using a calendar to promote vocations to the priesthood. At least they aren’t taking the Calendar Girls ‘bare-it-all’ route – at which the mind begins to play with the various images which might emerge in the SEC version – modesty concealed by various strategically-placed stoles, scarves and .. ahem .. mitres.  Our own dear PDO would, of course, have to lead off as January’s child.

But the intention is serious enough – because it pays proper attention to the importance of providing good role models if younger people are to be attracted to the idea of priesthood.  Yes indeed.  I can see all sorts of bright young people who might look at my life and say, ‘Yes I’d like to be just like that.’  There is a ‘chicken and egg’ about all this. Unfortunately if too many of our clergy begin ordained ministry in middle age, our church will tend to be middle-aged as well – since we apparently work best with people ten years either side of our own age.

We’re on another rapid trip to Belfast to do our bit in the preparations for my mother’s move to Cambridge.  Yes of course we could make room in the faithful Passat for a random Mexican called Luis whom Mark’s friends Johnny and Danny stayed with when they visited .. the secret is Couch Surfing which means that the resourceful traveller can stay anywhere in the world at any time.  So Luis – who turned out to be a lecturer in Psychology and a very nice guy – came along with a suitcase rather larger than himself and took the Stena with Poppy and the rest.   No doubt he is writing the experience up in his blog even now.  So if the Anglican Communion should crumble over the next while, I won’t be short of a couch in any part of the world ..