Last Sunday we gathered for the Ordination of Nerys as a priest – in St John’s Perth where she and her Rector Graham are working with the congregation in the re-ordered building to build something new in the life of our church.  Like me, Nerys is a Celtic migrant, this time from Wales.  She has had a remarkable ministry in Dunblane as a lay person and lay reader – much of it among children and families.  And it was always clear to me that some of the energy in that ministry arose from the sadness and loss of the Dunblane tragedy.

But vocation is about being prepared to move on.  So here is Nerys on a new journey – convinced that this is how it should be but not knowing the destination.  And the Celtic just crept back in – ‘without oars or destination’

The development of our clergy and all involved in ministry has been very important these last few years.  We have study days and training sessions.  We provide ‘buddies’ for new arrivals.  We have Peer Supervision Groups where clergy and lay readers can support one another.  We have Ministerial Review – sometimes called Appraisal.  Today we have been enjoying the second of two days of Summer School which is arranged with St Mary’s College and the School of Divinity at St Andrews University.

So here we are listening to Ian Bradley, Tom Wright and William Hyland – all talking about aspects of worship

Fortunate indeed!

Anybody who lives rural Scotland has to get used to dreadful broadband speeds.  Here at Blogstead, we have just over 1 Mbps.  We are literally at the end of the copper wire line from the exchange at Kinrossie.  It doesn’t matter too much for  regular emails and the like.  But it makes on line meetings impossible – and puts IPlayer out of reach as well

Our new neighbour decided that up with this he would not put.  And he found the answer – not with BT – but with EE’s 4G mobile broadband.  So suddenly we have between 15 and 30 Mbps and don’t quite know what to do with it.

I don’t know how good their coverage is in the rest of Scotland but it is worth checking!

Our little church in Ballintuim is one of the beauties of our diocese.  Up to Bridge of Cally from Blairgowrie – carefully avoiding the weekend bikers who seem determined to risk life and limb on these beautiful roads which are lined with very solid trees – and then up the glen to Ballintuim.  Today of course the wind was ripping the branches from the trees as we drove.

The congregation here is delightful.  They think they are a small congregation but it is quite possible to go there and find fifty people in church.  They have been gradually moving towards our ABC group but they still receive some of their ministry from visiting clergy who come and stay in the church cottage.

So when I went there this morning, I found Anne Marie and Isabel who are Anglican religious sisters who do a house for duty in Dorset.  If I had known about them before I got there and had a chance of a chat, I could have scrapped the sermon and had a dialogue with them.  They are on their own next Sunday!

I wrote this statement for the SEC website yesterday:

The heartfelt thoughts and prayers of people in Scotland and all over the world are with the people of Nice and France today. Once again it has been demonstrated that ruthless killers who care nothing for their own safety can in seconds kill, maim and destroy – and take away the well-being of those who find themselves witnesses to terrible events. Civilised societies invite us to come together, to enjoy and to celebrate. But we become hopelessly vulnerable as we do so.

It is also part of a civilised society that we should try to understand what gives rise to such barbarism – not to sympathise but to understand. Abhorrence numbs our minds. But unless we struggle to move beyond that abhorrence, we shall never grasp even the edges of what this means – and we shall never defeat it.

We hold in our prayers today those who have been bereaved and injured, members of the emergency services and medical staff. We also prayerfully hold in our hearts those who carry the responsibilities of political leadership. For they are responsible both for the safety of their citizens and for the protection of the values of our open societies 

Always in these moments one struggles with an instinctive reaction which seeks to dehumanise those responsible.  In effect, the horror is so great that it can only be contemplated and explained by saying that it is beyond explanation.  Hence the tendency during the years of violence in Northern Ireland to refer to ‘mindless violence’ when it was nothing of the kind.  ‘Mindless’ could not possibly mean that the people who committed it were not responsible.   Moreover the roots of such violence were plain to see in a deeply troubled society.  

In his Orwell Lecture in 2015, Archbishop Rowan Williams criticised sections of the media for ‘dehumanising’ Islamic State.  Instead, journalists should ‘attempt to understand our enemies’.

‘Somehow the obstinate attempt to make sense of those who are determined to make no sense of me is one of the things that divides civilisation from barbarism, faith from emptiness. You have to try.’

It is one of the delightful ironies of Ireland that here on the northern edge of Donegal we are to the north of most of Northern Ireland – yet are in the Irish Republic.  The reason for that is simple.  When the line was drawn to delineate the partition of Ireland, three of the counties of the historic province of Ulster were left out of Northern Ireland – to make sure that Northern Ireland would have a permanent protestant/unionist majority.  So when we head for Blogstead Na Mara at Dunfanaghy, we cross the Irish border just outside Derry/Londonderry – sometimes called ‘stroke city’.  The casual visitor could easily miss it.  There is a slight change in the road surface, speed limits are suddenly in kph.  And the petrol prices continue to be expressed in sterling but the prices are Irish – so diesel is suddenly 99.9p per litre.
I’m old enough to have seen several phases of life on the Irish border.  When I was a child growing up in Enniskillen in the west of Northern Ireland, I remember the IRA border campaign of the mid-1950’s.  And there was the period when crossing the border meant a long queue to get a stamp in a book.  During the Troubles, it often meant a long wait, some questioning and a search.  My best memory is of travelling alone with cats to Donegal on Easter Sunday evening during a foot and mouth epidemic.  The Irish Police politely asked if I would take the cats out and get them to walk across a disinfectant mat.

Since the Belfast Agreement, the border has been quietly becoming like other borders in mainland Europe between member countries of the EU – hardly visible at all.  Derry has gradually been regaining its position as the main town for the whole north-west of Ireland including Donegal which is across the political border.

So it is not surprising that in the EU Referendum the Foyle constituency – which includes Derry – recorded the third highest vote in the UK for ‘remain’. Nobody knows – but that vote reflects a real concern that this softening border with its confusion of fuel prices will become a ‘hard’ border between the EU and a UK which has embraced Brexit.

‘There were four cottages over there.  The telegraph boy came to every single one of them’

That was said to me in the course of an everyday pastoral call in my parish in Portadown.  The Somme remains very real to me because it was very real to that community.   Thousands of soldiers from every part of Ireland lost their lives – but the Northern Irish losses were concentrated in the Ulster Division.

Ireland has a way of holding history in such a way that it has power in the present.  It’s where history and myth interact.  The Somme has been like that – particularly in the way it lay at the heart of the Orange Order parading disputes around Drumcree.  For some it was a Service which gave rise to an unwelcome parade.  For others it was a very special thing – a commemoration of the loss of the ‘sons of Ulster’.  To let it go would have been a betrayal of memory of past sacrifice and loss of present identity.

So much of this is about things which are of symbolic importance.  And, while it is possible with great determination to negotiate the substance of things, it is difficult to negotiate symbolic issues.

I felt that many people on all sides of the debate went home from our General Synod with some contentment about what we had done. Some came up to me quietly at the end to say that they appreciated the way in which the process had been shaped.  
My own words of appreciation were about the tone and mood of General Synod – and in particular the graciousness of those who believed that conscience and more meant that they had to vote against the proposed canonical change in respect of Marriage. Several voices from that group expressed appreciation of the specific provisions both canonical and pastoral which had been put in place. The intention of that was to make clear that, even if our church makes a specific decision about the proposed canonical change, we will remain a church whose diversity and mutual respect embraces those who cannot support it.
If we had had more time – and it would have needed a lot of time – we might have undertaken a discussion of the various terms used to describe how we belong together as a church. It’s about the nature of our koinonia. I heard ‘unity in diversity’, of course. I also heard ‘walking together’ and ‘being kind to one another’. They express a continuing commitment to one another in the Scottish Episcopal Church. Not just one day in General Synod, this commitment needs to be lived in graciousness and mutual respect every day.
As many of you know, I approach these descriptions with a degree of caution. On the Anglican Communion front, my heart was warmed by the ‘bonds of affection’ description of the ties which the Communion to cohere without the benefit of a single, central authority. But in the end I think that ‘bonds of affection’ are not quite the same thing as relationship which can sustain difference.
So here is what I think is the situation:
The SEC is in process of considering a change to our Canon on Marriage. The second reading may or may not be approved in 2017. If it is approved, that will represent a decision about our attitude to Same-Sex Marriage.
But our church understands that the ‘other view’ doesn’t disappear just because the General Synod may make a decision. Indeed in this case, the ‘other view’ is held by a majority of members of Anglican Provinces across the Communion. That is a compelling statement – except that the Anglican Communion makes decisions within and through the Instruments of Communion and not by majority voting,
Therefore our commitment to ‘walking together’, ‘unity in diversity’ and the rest mean that we shall continue to be a church which holds differing views of marriage within our life. We shall have a clear position based on the canonical position. But we shall hold, honour and respect a diversity of view in our shared life. And we need to do that every day.

It so happened that I was due to give a Thought for the Day this morning on BBC Scotland. So this is what I said:

So now we know. There is some sense of an end point. But this leave result really marks the beginning of a long period – a time for working out of the implications of the choice which the people have made. That will occupy us for years to come.
It’s another beginning too – the beginning of the process by which we find healing after a bruising Referendum Campaign. It’s part of the way we do things that there are some issues so important that we should ‘let the people decide’. But as the campaign has run its course over the past weeks and months, there has been growing concern about whether that has led to a tendency to over-simplify complex issues and to political debate which has at times been fractious and angry. We may regret this – but it also shows how important this choice has been.
So now we have to put it all together again.
Faith can be about many things. I believe that it’s particularly about how we deal the painful past and find healing – in less religious language it how we let go and make a new start. You can probably hear in my accent a bit of Northern Ireland – where I was one of many who worked to lay to rest the legacy – not just of a short and bruising Referendum campaign – but of hundreds of years of bad history.
To say that ‘that was then and now is now’ isn’t enough. You have be able again to recognise the ‘other’ person as somebody of integrity – that person whom you may have thought and maybe said was lying or scaremongering or bringing in issues which were nothing to do with the matter in hand.
That means relationship – lots of coffee and talking which is serious and quiet. It means that, in the period of difficulty and uncertainty into which we are entering, our elected representatives express clarity but have the courage to be flexible.
To fight the political battles with passion – that’s what politicians are for. But they must also build the agreements which bring measured and ordered movement. That’s what the people who have voted now need.

This is the Report which I gave on the Primates Meeting 2016 at our General Synod last week.

This was an important moment – and one of those points at which one attempts to deliver at least two messages which don’t quite fit together.

First – and most obviously – our General Synod was about to discuss and vote on the First Reading of proposals for changes to our Canon on Marriage which would make same-sex marriage possible. So it was important for Synod members to understand exactly how that would affect our relationship with the Anglican Communion. In short, the consequences which were determined in respect of The Episcopal Church of the United States will also apply to the Scottish Episcopal Church. They are set out in the text of my Report.

The proposed changes were coming to General Synod following the decisions which we made at General Synod 2015 – so that process would not change. But it seemed to me important to give Synod members information which would allow them to decide whether or not this would affect their personal voting choices.

I also wanted above all to try and do this without stirring feelings about the Anglican Communion in general and the Archbishop of Canterbury in particular. Some of the press of course tried to do just that. As I said in my Report, I don’t believe that the Primates Meeting has the authority to do what it has done. But I have to accept that it – and Archbishop Justin – were acting to try and preserve the unity of the Anglican Communion at a very difficult time. Archbishop Justin was very generous with his time when I went to London to see him. There is no position of leadership in the church – neither his nor mine – at present which is not complex and conflicted. I wanted to make sure that he understood that we not intending to act in a way which was careless of our diversity. We remain friends and colleagues.

I tried to say in General Synod what needed to be said in as dispassionate a way as I could. I could have said more about the Communion issues which bear on the situation in which we now find ourselves. Archbishop Josiah, Secretary General of the Anglican Communion, has affirmed the autonomy of the provinces. But the challenge is how we define the duty and respect which the provinces owe to one another and to the whole. That is variously described as the tension between autonomy and catholicity and as the process of reception through which a province can understand whether an initiative which they wish to take commands acceptability across the Communion. None of this is an exact science.

Nor is any of it static – it’s all moving all the time as the provinces gradually shape their responses in different ways to human sexuality issues. Both internally and externally we in Scotland must model the relationships which we hope to see.