I went on some church visits in Edinburgh today with Dom.  Our aim was to explore how worship is developing in different types of congregations within the SEC.  We’re partly exploring how we would shape an agenda for worship development with our congregations.  I find it surprising that, with all the focus that there has been on becoming inviting churches, etc., etc., there seems to have been less concentration than one might expect on worship.  Our worship is primarily eucharistic.  But that can be a piece of culture which, at worst, defines us on a ‘take it or leave it’ basis.  At best, the eucharist becomes a meeting place for people of all sorts of different traditions and none – and offers the integrity and reality of worship which may meet the needs of some of the people who are searching for the spiritual in our secular society.  But how?

Our clergy met today with Cecelia Clegg of the Centre for Theology and Public Issues to look at ‘applied spirituality’.  No I’m not sure either.  But it became a searching and very productive discussion about what happens in the interface between ourselves, our ministry and our spirituality.  And we talked about guilt – about how we beat ourselves up over things and allow others to make us feel guilty.  It’s hugely refreshing not to have to struggle to preserve the fiction that everything is just fine all the time.  Thank-you.

We’ve just had the second of a series of meetings across the diocese to look at our Strategy Document. It’s seems remarkable to me – about 25 came last night in Coupar Angus and another 35 in the Cathedral – as well as a meeting I had with Mothers’ Union Trustees. Life for some of our congregations is difficult but I find people both hopeful and delighted to be given hope and listened to. It’s very encouraging. I try to tell them that this is not about picking particular changes off the shelf and thinking that they will ‘do the trick’. It’s more a commitment towards growth, an inner buoyancy and trust which somehow oils the spirit-driven wheels of change and helps us to make the right choices.

Meanwhile here at Blogstead, our neighbour at No 3 [she-who-sleeps-between-two-bishops] is concerned that the newly-planted gardens will be eaten by the deer. She tells me that I must attach some gaudy and tinselly strips to the fence to discourage them. Or maybe I could just stand around in cope and mitre for a while?

It’s sad to see Scotland at the bottom of the league table behind Iceland, Norway and Ireland.  Scotland still gives me the impression of a society which works – small and cohesive communities; beautiful scenery, etc.  One of the markers of quality of life for me is the number of people who choose to stay in Scotland for their holidays.  In Northern Ireland it was always, ‘Last one out please turn off the lights’  But there is no doubt that there is shocking deprivation – my recent flight to the Costa Brava from Prestwick was a bit of an eye-opener and our Mark’s career as a physiotherapist at Monklands will bring him face to face with it.  But there seems to be an increasing readiness to ask hard questions about why Scotland’s economy seems a bit moribund and to look beyond the sloganising about ‘our oil.’

Interesting visit to our church in Alloa yesterday – it’s kind of catholic, charismatic and evangelical all at the same time.  They had three confirmation candidates.  They have no stipendiary clergy and in their strong commitment to the Community House, they probably have as much or more community engagement as any of our congregations.  They’re lovely people and they just did the practical thing of putting a fully-fitted kitchen in one corner of the church.  Why not?

No sooner back from General Synod – a complicated operation involving Brompton, car and 40 minute delay on the Forth Bridge – and it was straight into the planting of the Blogstead Gardens.  I am still bruised from my encounter with the rotivator last weekend.  So it was something of a relief to be laying out the lavender walk and thinking of my successors who will stroll there on sunlit mornings after saying the Office with their Chaplains.  By the way, has any member of the clergy ever anywhere moved into a church house where the garden has been maintained?  In our four previous houses, the gardens were all in a completely disastrous condition.  Why?

Hope to emerge blinking into the light after General Synod later today.  It seems more at ease with itself these days.  When I stand back and look at it, there is an astonishing level of competence on view from those who slog away at the developmental and management life of the church.  Indeed one ponders whether the competence is in inverse proportion to the size of the church.  There was a very good dinner last light – full of episcopalian bloggers too busy pondering how they might chronicle the event to be able to enjoy it themselves.  Ivor Guild made a wonderful and nostalgic speech about some of the great figures of the past.  Pity there are no characters like that around nowadays.  But then again ….

My mother set out for Portadown today to leave her two cats – Mac the Siamese and Sue the British Blue – at Elaine’s cattery while she goes to my nephew Connor’s confirmation in Cambridge on Sunday.  So how did she end up serving a customer in an organic fruit and vegetable shop in Moyallan?

Well – one thing does tend to lead to another.

General Synod sort of looms up on the horizon at this time of year – with the same feeling of being locked up or locked away as I used to feel with summer exams.  I always find the inactivity difficult – clergy are, I think, used to moving from place to place as a way of keeping ahead of trouble.

Meanwhile the IT angst continues.  The printer is now working.  Mozy’s big download ran for 18 hours and then crashed within 90 minutes of the end.  They say it can be resumed if it is running within a download manager but that doesn’t seem to be so.  Time for an external hard drive as well as Mozy, I think.

This is absurd.  The IT angst continues.  For a person who is supposed to live in the ‘in between time’, I feel absurdly dependent on getting my past back.  I have all the E Mails back and the other stuff is coming.  The computer is at present working through a 33 hour download.  It arrives in 7-Zip compressed files which seem to need a crowbar to get them open.  But how unsettling it all is.  Dependency.  That’s what it is.

Well I survived Trinity Sunday. I regard it as the most difficult Sunday in the year for the preacher. I’d settle for a draw.

We were in Holy Trinity, Stirling – another church with growing numbers of children and their parents – or is it the same set moving around with me? And the children are involved in ministry too. I reached the back of the church at the end of the service and found a little girl whose task seemed to be to push in a wedge to hold the door open. Seemed pretty important to me.

And finally – today is the 40th anniversary of the death of Arthur Ransome – the author who has provided for many of us children an environment as safe and comforting as the Anglican Church. This is the classic passage from the start of Swallows and Amazons:

Roger, aged seven, and no longer the youngest of the family, ran in wide zigzags, to and fro, across the steep field that sloped up from the lake to Holly Howe, the farm where they were staying for part of the summer holidays. He ran until he nearly reached the hedge by the footpath, then turned and ran until he nearly reached the hedge on the other side of the field. Then he turned and crossed the field again. Each crossing of the field brought him nearer to the farm. The wind was against him, and he was tacking up against it to the farm, where at the gate his patient mother was awaiting him. He could not run straight against the wind because he was a sailing vessel, a tea-clipper, the Cutty Sark. His elder brother John had said only that morning that steamships were just engines in tin boxes. Sail was the thing, and so, though it took rather longer, Roger made his way up the field in broad tacks.