So the Spirit placed me this morning in the pulpit at St Andrews, St Andrews attempting to  proclaim the resurrection – when all around me they were dealing with the ‘little death’ of their Rector Bob Gillies’ election as Bishop of Aberdeen.  It reminded me so much of my own departure from Seagoe – where one recognised the twin realities of these moments: ‘they want me to be their bishop’ and ‘I’m going to have to clear the attic after all.’

And then we moved on to have a congregational meeting about the sexuality issue and its impact on world anglicanism.  It was fascinating – not least because that congregation in a university town is itself world anglicanism in microcosm.  I learned a lot.

On the way home, Alison and I had a cycle in Tentsmuir Forest – which lies between Tayport and Leuchars.  Very beautiful and very deserted – we met a fox having a Sunday afternoon stroll.

Well today’s significant moment – once I got home from Confirming 41 [that’s forty-one] young people at Glenalmond – was the election of Bob Gillies as Bishop of Aberdeen. Bob’s friends and colleagues here will be delighted. He has the most extraordinary level of integrity and commitment.  All over this church, there are people whom he has nurtured in vocation and ministry and difficult situations to which he has brought a healing touch.

But there was a sort of inevitability about this election – Bob’s reading of the licence at Institutions in his role as Dean [23 days today since his installation] was acquiring a cult following.  Sadly, I felt that last night’s performance at the Institution in St John’s Perth had a sort of ‘fin de siecle’ air to it. It was so over the top – addressing almost empty galleries left and right, sternly admonishing clergy and bringing to the use of the word ‘and’ a menacingly nasal quality which was positively intimidating – that it really left him nowhere to go but upwards. I shall have to choose a new Dean who will not upstage me.

Ecclesiastical appointments and elections are strange and personally painful things. Three people were not elected today and will do as most of us have done many times – accept the movement of the spirit and go into church tomorrow morning to carry on with ministry.  My thoughts are with them.  I’ve been there.  Life was so simple as a curate before I tripped over the bottom of the ecclesiastical greasy pole. I should have stuck to reading Trollope rather than acting it out.

Rather a breathless rush today.  We did a 7 am start to drive to Keswick for the Memorial Service for Penny.  Penny was the wife of my cousin John and a remarkable person – an artist and a supreme enricher of the lives of her family.  As John told the congregation, ‘Not many people would receive a terminal diagnosis and move on to conduct a bible study on heaven.’

Back to Perth in time for Patrick’s Institution at St John’s, our church in the city centre of Perth.  It’s a great moment for the congregation and for us as a diocese – as we receive another bright, active and experienced young priest.  The Vestry and congregation did everything possible to make Patrick and his family welcome.  I felt a bit wistful and sentimental as I watched Patrick and Alison and their two young children making the commitment to the kind of long term ministry which will give their children stability as they grow up – and I thought about 1986 when Alison and I made exactly the same kind of commitment to Seagoe Parish with our young children.  Parochial ministry is almost never easy.  But it is the richest background imaginable against which to work out your family life and child rearing.  At least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

I’ve been travelling around a bit today – up to the beautiful house which the diocese owns and lets to clergy and others at Croftcarnoch.  It’s up on a wonderfully alpine hill above the A9 between Pitlochry and Blair Atholl and there are highland cattle on the road up to it.  Why didn’t I bring my camera?  Strange about the election – which is actually quite intense.  But in Ireland, either North or South, there would be three election posters on every lampost.  Here – almost nothing.

The house martens are back – swooping and diving on Poppy as if they had never been away.

I had my appraisal today.  Since it’s becoming the norm for clergy to have some form of appraisal or ministerial review, it’s important for me to do the same.  Why important?  Because however much clergy move towards the world of Job Descriptions, etc., there is so much of ministry which has to be worked out as you go along – so much that is creative, self-starting – so much that is rooted in personal make-up and talents as well as defined by task – so much space for the development of obsession, neurosis and the ability to go quietly and decently mad.

Anyway within the privacy of the blog, I can tell you that we didn’t discuss: the length of my sermons; any of the criteria for bishops set out by the Papal Nuncio and recorded by the Irish Times just after Easter – physical appearance, hereditary diseases, love of celibacy, affection for convential ecclesiastical attire.  Nor did we discuss that set of concerns about busyness which I have mentioned before and which is, I think, attributable to the late Robert Runcie.  That is the difference between being obviously busy/not obviously busy/obviously not busy.

But in the unsuccessful attempt to find where that quote came from, I discovered that the late Tom Driberg – Labour MP, gay man, spy – used to put together obscene crosswords for Private Eye with clues like enema and erection.  One of the winners was recorded as Mrs Rosalind Runcie – a remarkable lady who stayed with us once when she was giving a charity concert in Portadown.

 

I called in to have a look at the Walled Garden – another of the undiscovered gems of Perth. This is in the grounds of the Murray Royal Hospital and is run by Perth and Kinross Voluntary Action [PKAVS] as a series of projects with former psychiatric patients. They have gardening and carpentry and paint recycling and painting .. and best of all is the cafe with big buns. They work with about 45 people in the various projects. I thought it was a beautiful place – quite unlike the rather ‘interim’ state of the Blogstead gardens at present … where I continued to dig today while Spice stared fixedly through the gap in the fence for fully an hour hoping to catch a glimpse of Poppy.

Well, since we read this article in the Guardian about Oilseed Rape, our rural idyll here at Blogstead is no longer.  We are at present surrounded by a sea of canary yellow.  The deer are using periscopes and Poppy vanishes altogether.  The article cheerily tells us that ‘oilseed rape crops receive on average three herbicides, two fungicides and two insecticides during the course of a growing season.’  So when my Chaplain and I take the morning air in the lime tree walk, we wear full chemical warfare outfits.   The irony, of course, is that much of the crop goes to make biodiesel as part of the journey towards a cleaner and purer world.  Another example of brindling, I think.

So this afternoon I found myself in the middle of the Eucharist which ends a Cursillo Weekend.  People kept sort of half apologising that I might find its exuberance a bit hard to cope with – if only they knew about  some of the more extraordinary worship experiences which lie in my past and, indeed, those from which one yearned only to be released.  Obviously a very intense experience for the participants and an amazing level of support from former participants – the 4th Day.  I told them about the rather devastating question put to me on the phone last night be one of my former colleagues, ‘David, do you still believe in Jesus?’  It was the ‘still’ that troubled me.  Does she think it stops at Episcopal Ordination?

I feel helpless as I think about that community.  People talk about moving on – and maybe that makes sense on the level of standing up and going through the motions of daily routine because the alternative is what …. ?  But on the deeper levels, this kind of tragedy reverberates through the years and the generations in people and families.  And the ‘Who didn’t do what?’ witch-hunt gathers pace.  Of course we need to know.  But I can think of many times in Northern Ireland – another highly-stressed and gun-laden community – where I encountered people who were deeply angry, embittered – people whom I would have thought of as ‘scary’ – who plainly had at least a potential for violent outburst.  But which ones and when?  It’s the scale of the tragedy and the fact that it was not caused by disaster – natural or otherwise.  So people are denied any kind of closure or satisfaction.  They just have to carry it around with them.  Pray for them.

Well, as it turned out, not even the prospect of the College of Bishops and Standing Committee was enough to tempt me from my sick bed.  I did have a brief outing later in the afternoon for a hair cut but that was about enough.  Otherwise I’ve been filing and shredding and sending E Mails – Irish politics is all about making sure you do the right shredding before the other lot take over.  We’ll just have to see whether the AGM of Mission to Seafarers is enough to tempt me out tomorrow.

Poppy of course is enchanted by this new way of life which she regards as providing her with the 24/7 care to which she is entitled.  She has become very adventurous in her outdoor excursions.  The house martens have not yet returned to annoy her and she seemed foolishly indifferent to the very large bird circling ominously over the trees beyond the field.  Alison tried to get a picture of her stalking some pheasant but failed.