Back in Belfast again, I’m afraid.  This time it’s to open a Garden Party to mark the 100th Anniversary of my Primary School outside Enniskillen.  Could they not find a footballer or pop star, I wonder.  Anyway, I’m going to meet Beatrice Crawford, my very first teacher in school.  It was only 51 years ago.  Of which more tomorrow.

Northern Ireland is as interesting as always.  Why, one wonders, does the P & O have a Bureau de Change since both Scotland and Northern Ireland are in the sterling area?  Maybe it exchanges accents or attitudes or historical time zones rather than money.

I also picked up today material from what is now the Centre for Contemporary Christianity in Ireland – used to be ECONI.  If you are interested, you’ll find them at www.contemporarychristianity.org  There is an interesting debate going on about how much truth the new Northern Ireland can cope with.  The South African model of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission suggests that progress is inextricably linked with the availability of truth.  The question is how much truth the fragile political process and political institutions in Northern Ireland can cope with at this stage.

We went into church this evening in Auchterarder for Andrew’s Institution as the new Rector.  Clear bright light over Glen Eagles and the Ochil Hills – slight touch of colour in the trees for the beginning of Autumn – perfection.  I brought a sermon and definitely preached this one.  The Vestry and congregation have done well in the 10 month vacancy but they’re glad to see new leadership arriving.  The settling in period is always a bit strange as people take the measure of one another – I remember greeting the first time somebody told me what they thought in clear and simple language.  I regarded it as my arrival point.

As I welcomed Andrew to Scotland in my Irish accent, I did ponder the fact that this church does not seem to be producing all the clergy it needs.  Small churches need people coming from outside but there’s a balance in these things.

We had a bit of a ‘do’ – what they’d call in Ireland a ‘thrash’ – or maybe a wake – for members of the Cathedral Chapter last night.  We’re losing Bob Gillies and David Campbell, borrowed by the Diocese of Aberdeen and Orkney and by Fettes College respectively.  We’ll miss them.
Poppy thought better of it and moved two doors down to Blogstead Emeritus for the evening.  She finds it more sedate down there and they seem to have more time for her.

We took the opportunity to run the annual Chapter Scrabble Competition – this year on a Cranmerian theme.  I thought the Precentor had a particularly smug look in his eye as he put ‘indifferently’ right across the board for a killer score.

This morning we were with St Columba’s, Aberdour. At least, we were once I had got to the right church. This is another of the communities along the southern coast of Fife from the Forth Bridge. It’s a lovely church and it’s on the way back from hard times. There were just over 35 of us with Val the Rector and myself. I do get a bit anxious about the average age of some of our congregations – but I had to put that ‘on hold’ when I met St Columba’s secret weapon called Dot ‘n Sally who have been members of this congregation since 1938 and 1962 respectively. Nothing they haven’t done to help keep this congregation alive over the years. What was the smallest this congregation had reached in their memory? Two. And without the faith of people like them, it would probably have disappeared altogether.
I brought a sermon.

Mention of Princess Diana reminded me of that extraordinary Sunday morning ten years ago when – as I am sure many clergy did – I told people what had happened during the night.

And, as this was my first Sunday back from holiday, I remembered my fondest ‘welcome home’ story. I slipped into the Parish Office before I went into church just to check that there was nothing lurking on my desk that I needed to know about. Forewarned is forearmed and all that. On my desk was the will of a lady who had moved from the parish some time before – leaving the parish a not-insignificant amount of money and expressing the hope that she might be buried in the churchyard. I went into the Vestry and asked my colleagues as casually as I could the two questions, ‘Has she died?’ and ‘Was she buried in the churchyard?’ To which the answers were Yes and No respectively.

I haven’t yet beaten the E mail and the post.  It isn’t gaining on me but it hasn’t submitted gracefully either.

And out of the haze emerge all the things that need to be pushed along – the next stage of the Diocesan Review, the Conference on Mission Priorities on October 6, the second phase of the Stewardship Programme, four vacant congregations going through the process of appointing new Rectors, the website, the Ministerial Review Programme, worship development, BBC scripts to be written ..  And, in between, one tries to find out, explore and do whatever it is that all this is about.

Coming back from holiday is strange.  In the parish, I sometimes felt that I was sort of punished for having been away – as if all sorts of crises stored themselves up for the week after I came home.  It’s different now.  I don’t think it would make much difference if I stayed away for another while.  But I come home to a tidal wave of E Mail and post – probably take me about two weeks to get on top of it again.

Meanwhile there are interesting things going by – I read the response of Catholic bishops and others to the change of view on abortion by Amnesty International – but I missed the original debate which changed that view.  We’re going to have pictures of dead bodies on the cigarette packages – and there were wrecked cars on display outside Ikea yesterday.  It’s a bit like the hell-fire sermons of old and, I suspect, not much more effective.

Well we got home last night to find that David Kydd and his helpers from New Futures at CATH [Churches Action for the Homeless] had completed and installed the Pergola.  Well done to all of them – various trailers and climbers will soon be exercising themselves all over it.  It will make a fitting entrance to the Lime Tree Walk.

Our trip home was enlivened by the refusal of P and O to allow Poppy to relax in the lounge.  She had a choice of somewhere under the back stairs or the car – she chose the car.  She also shared our astonishment when – about a mile short of Blogstead – we found ourselves having to stop because an owl was standing in the middle of the road.

Time to go home.  The weather hasn’t been great – but nobody goes to Donegal for the weather.  The social pace has been frenetic and most of the books are unread.  We finished with a preaching trip to Riverstown on the far side of Sligo where Arthur, one of my former colleagues, is the Rector – small congregations but lots of children.  So there’s promise for the future.  The journey there interweaves all sorts of strands of Irish history – the Spanish Armada, Yeats, Lissadell, the Gore-Boothes and Countess Markiewicz.  Both Alison and I carry childhood memories of the lovely little village of Mullaghmore overlooked by Classiebawn Castle, home of Lord Mountbatten.  It’s impossible to go there now without remembering the IRA attack which killed him in 1979 – a day with one of the highest losses of life in the Troubles both there and in Warrenpoint.

And then its time to clear up.  It will be a while until we’re back for more than a fleeting visit.  We knew somebody who was reputed to comb the shag pile carpet towards the door as he left – wooden floors make that unnecessary at Blogstead Na Mara.  But a quick salvo of systemic weed killer on the paving and gravel may keep the growth at bay for a while.

I’ve been reminiscing about the confident days of the Catholic Church in Ireland – forgot to mention the great Father McDwyer of Glencombkille who developed a remarkable co-operative movement in a remote valley in Donegal..

The Irish Times reports the slightly less confident sermon by the good and gentle Archbishop Sean Brady at Knock Shrine.  He speaks of those who claim to have set Ireland ‘free from the shackles of religious faith’ and who are now silent ‘in the face of the real captivities of the new Ireland’.  I wonder who makes that claim? 

It seems to me he rather misses the point by getting caught up in talking about Tarot Cards, etc.  But there is an important discussion – as appropriate in Scotland as in Ireland – about the contribution of churches to a society which has shaken off the ethos of a dominant church and moved rapidly to being quasi-liberal/secular.  I’m not sure how useful it is to say that ‘many Irish people have not so much rejected their faith as become distracted from the faith.  People are seeking to control their future rather than entrust their future to God’s promise and plan.’

I suspect that the horse is well out of the stable on that one – indeed today’s Independent reports that levels of personal debt in Britain now exceed the total size of the economy – suggesting that people actually have a blithe disregard for the future. 

It seems to me that the point is much more to do with the danger that a secular and increasingly value-free society may actually become relaxed about freedom and justice issues – may become more individualistic and less community-minded.  It seems to me that the issue is really about values and where they come from – when the position of a church and churches is no longer central to the ethos of that society.

Hectic – holidays at Blogstead Na Mara set a cracking pace. It’s the social round, the gardening, the reading, the crossword, the piano.

Two strands of Irish life catch my interest. The Rose of Tralee competition finished last night with victory for the New York Rose. The Irish Times conducted a rather sniffy discussion about whether it was taking place in a dome or a ‘tint’ – tent to you and me. Whatever the venue, it remains one of the more distasteful fixtures in the Irish calendar – deeply patronising because it seems to invite highly intelligent young women to act as if they were stupid. May Ireland’s new maturity bring it to an end soon.

I should have mentioned the Fastnet Race as it went by – out from Cowes and round the Fastnet Rock off West Cork. Visitors to my Facebook profile will see the picture of my visit to it while sailing down the south coast of Ireland with friends. It is a splendid and wonderfully spooky place. We sailed out there on a calm day – what it must be like in rough weather I cannot imagine. We visited the memorial – on Cape Clear Island – which marks the tragedy of the 1979 Race in which 15 sailors died.

Tried to buy trellis in the garden centre today.

‘Do you keep trellis?’

‘Yes of course’

‘Could you show me where it is?’

‘We’ve run out’

‘Will you be getting more?’

No’

Only beaten by my conversation in the power cut with Andrew in his cottage:

‘Andrew, do you have electricity?’

‘Yes’

‘Is your electricity working?’

‘No’