Word reaches me that my former parishioners are pleased that I haven’t forgotten them – but how could I? So here is the third Thought for the Day for BBC Northern Ireland

Meanwhile I’ve been struck by some mighty bug which has turned me inside out and destroyed even my already limited capacity for conscious thought. I feel like one of those opera singers who dies noisily and continuously while singing some great aria. But a meeting between the Standing Committee and the College of Bishops tomorrow morning should revive my spirits and set me up for the weekend.

On my way through Belfast, I recorded three of Thought for the Day for BBC Northern Ireland – being broadcast yesterday, today and tomorrow. It was an interesting task to find something to say and to avoid all the dangers of being disconnected/out of date.

This is Tuesday and here is Wednesday

I had a look at the Letterkenny Mail today and full of interest it was.  Firstly it has a Polish column – which tells you something about the new Ireland.  Upcoming events in this part of the world include the Karaoke Ireland Championships which are being held at the Voodoo Lounge in Letterkenny and the 50^th Anniversary Congress of Alcoholics Anonymous.  No sign of the Father Ted look-alike Contest – but then I haven’t enough hair.

Meanwhile, I’ve been re-reading old favourites as I tend to do in Donegal.  I’ve gradually been revisiting Susan Howatch’s novels about the Church of England – this time Absolute Truths where the Bishop ‘purrs along as effortlessly as a well-tuned Rolls Royce.’

Susan Howatch is described as ‘every bit as good as Trollope’ by the Liverpool Echo.  She seems much more interested in the theology – Trollope is mainly interested in the purity of ecclesiastical politics – and she seems fascinated by the idea that disaster lies in wait for smooth clerics.   But if I had to choose, it would be Trollope because he captures the real cynicism of which the ecclesiastical world is capable.

I’ve dipped into Arthur Ransome’s Swallowdale – and must do  something about getting a set of Biggles here.  Life would then be complete.

 

Well so it goes on.  I met the first Ferrari of the season in the lane today.  He probably had the Sat Nav programmed to locate the most expensive houses in the area.  This is madness on all sorts of levels.  As Ian rightly points out, the other side of it is young people with two hour commutes because they can’t afford to buy houses in Dublin.  Can it make sense for so much of the national wealth to be poured into static assets like housing? 

Meanwhile, the Irish Times explores the issue of Scottish Independence under the headline ‘Tartan Tide gathering momentu.’  It sets about a series of comparisons between Ireland and Scotland – similar population size; similar cultures; same economic challenge of building an economy on the edge of Europe beside a big neighbour.  But then it points out that between 1980 and 2005 GDP growth in Ireland averaged 5.2% while in Scotland it was 1.8%.

I’m agnostic on the Independence issue.  What the Irish Times fails to do, I think, is to demonstrate that the ‘missing link’ in the Scottish economy has been independence.  It does suggest that for Scotland to control its own fiscal policy would make all the difference.  But the link isn’t clear.  After all, for the first sixty years of independence, the Irish economy was stagnant and at times close to bust.  It is only within the last two decades that Ireland has ceased to export the cream of its young people

I’m still wallowing in nostalgia for the old Donegal.  In an old cottage across the valley, Andrew lives a simple life.  One New Year, we arrived to find all in darkness as the extreme weather had wiped out the power supply.  I asked Andrew, ‘Do you have electricity?’   ‘Yes I do,’ was the reply.  ‘Is your electricity working now?’  ‘No it isn’t’

Meanwhile the front page of today’s Irish Times carries a report of the qualities being sought by the Papal Nuncio in his soundings as part of the search for a new Bishop of Down and Connor.  Interesting reading: physical appearance; health; capacity for work; family background with particular reference to any possible hereditary condition; intellectual endowment and practical skills; temprament; judgement and balance; sense of responsibility; ability to establish ties of friendship.  It goes on: loyal obedience to the Holy Father … ; esteem for and acceptance of priestly celibacy as put forward by the magisterium of the church; respect for and observance of the norms governing divine worship and ecclesiastical attire.’

Our own Canon 4 sets out how a bishop is to be appointed/elected – but gives little guidance of this kind.  More helpful are the Anglican Communion guidelines as to the competencies required.  Meanwhile, in the absence of any better guidance, one just gets on with it.

Well I did get one whiff of the old Donegal today.  I was cycling middle child’s teenage mountain bike [not one of your aluminium-frame jobs – more like a five barred gate on wheels] back to Blogstead Na Mara from Dunfanaghy Village.  Suddenly I got this overwhelming whiff of turf smoke.  If you have never smelt it, it is extraordinary.  It can be blowing a gale – and it often is – and the smell is so pungent you will get it anyway.

But then it was gone.  And I wove my way through exhaust smoke of the serried ranks of BMW’s, Merc’s and Four by Fours [same guy as was picking the flowers in Perth, I am sure] queuing up to buy the new houses.  Two sets on offer here – 5 ‘energy saving houses’ just down the road.  That means two solar panels on the roof and no view.  Meanwhile the three houses across the valley from Blogstead are almost complete.  The price is 675,000 euro – for a holiday cottage – where it rains a lot – I know it has a view of Blogstead but ….  For those who find currency exchange challenging, that means that you could put five children through Glenalmond College for the same price.  Or buy 70 red VW Golfs just like the bishop’s wife drives.  [The Pope’s grey one is more expensive] Now which would you choose?  I think what I find most astonishing – but I didn’t point it out to the flash car drivers – is that it is  unlikely to the point of inconceivable that they could hope to get their money back should they decide to sell.  That’s what they call a bubble.  Meanwhile, the earthen floors, straw mattresses and oil lamps of Blogstead Na Mara will do us for now.

One emerges from the tomb – as it were – pondering the mish mash of life on the other side.  Poppy was reasonably content with the Poets’ Lounge on the P&O Express to Larne. 

I’m still thinking about the man who parked his Range Rover [now there’s real prejudice!] at 4.45 pm yesterday on the road between Perth and the M90 and helped himself to a bunch of municipal daffodils from the verge.  And a happy Easter to you, sir.  The sooner we have those talking lamp-posts in Perth the better.  I could have used my mitre as a megaphone and had a go myself. 

Like everyone else, I have been pondering why it was wrong to allow service personnel to sell their stories to the press.  Well, just to start with, it is distasteful to profit from circumstances in which other people are dying.  The weasel words of the 2nd Sea Lord in his interview on the World at One today were just disgraceful – media pressure, money …  He made Max Clifford, who was interviewed after him, sound like a paragon of restraint and integrity.  Whatever other navigational issues were involved here, there is certainly a weakness in the moral compass department.  Who knows where it will end?  Clergy who have been croziered by the bishop coming out and selling their stories … what next?  Which brings us smoothly back to Denis Healey’s  famous remark about being attacked by Sir Geoffrey Howe as ‘like being savaged by a dead sheep.’  And that in turn seems to have some link back into pastoral ministry.

I note a slight reduction in SEC blogging activity this week.  We’ve all been busy this week and you reach the end of Holy Week with a familiar tiredness – more emotional and spiritual than physical, I think.  Tho’ there’s a bit of that as well

Today was encouraging – a great throng in the Cathedral this morning – lots of excitement and trumpets and incense – and this evening at a Choral Evensong in Dunfermline in a church which showed the signs of huge effort going into expressing the Holy Week story in flowers and collage and ..   As always, one tries to find the words

We laid to rest today Alan the old priest. He was warm and gentle. He was playing the organ in church just a few weeks ago. He sang hymns right to the end. The creeping onset of Alzheimers seemed simply to reinforce the gentleness – accelerated the exuberance with which he shared the Peace – and did nothing to diminish the hymn singing.

We laid him to rest in the graveyard at Callendar – in the shadow of Ben Ledi to the sound of birdsong – as Alison the Rector said ‘in a new grave in which no one had yet been laid.’ It was a beautiful, calm, sunlit day. On the breeze, one could hear the whisper of ‘Well done good and faithful servant’. And maybe even beyond that the sound of stones poised to be rolled away.

I used these words which haunt me

“What though he standeth at no earthly altar
Clothed in white vestments on that golden floor
Where love is perfect and no step can falter
He serveth as God’s priest for evermore”

Said to be from the writings of
John Sinker, first provost of Blackburn Cathedral (1931)