One of those days when there is nothing to be said.  One goes into church, listens to the story comes out and goes home.

Meanwhile, since it is also Friday and therefore cat-blogging day, here is a picture of Poppy who is very much better thank-you.

Today was one of those days which included pretty well everything.

We started at the New Futures Centre – it’s a workshop in Perth run by Churches Action for the Homeless in Perth. We’re supporting CATH in our Lent Appeal. The workshop is where David Kydd and his staff help their ‘service users’ to get used to the rhythms and the dignity of work. They are going to make a pagoda for the Blogstead garden – I think it will probably form the centre-piece of the Japanese sunken garden.

And we had a look at Sandy’s beautiful garden – an oasis of peace in the middle of an industrial estate

The afternoon ended in the slightly posher but no more beautiful surroundings of the Gleneagles Hotel in the Big Tent for a follow-up meeting to the ‘Make Poverty History’ campaign – addressed by Kofi Annan, Gordon Brown and Hilary Benn

And in the middle our Chrism Mass – where our clergy and I affirmed our Ordination Vows – and pondered this extraordinary way of life where a commitment to justice, to the poor and to people can take one in the same day from Sandy’s beautiful garden to Gleneagles.

Bit of variety today. I ended up at the Open Day for the new Visitors’ Centre at Perth Prison. This has play facilities for children and space for family members – many of whom will have travelled long distances – to wait either for their visiting time or for their transport home. I have had a bit of contact with the world of prisons over the years – mostly as a member of the Board of Visitors at Crumlin Road Prison in Belfast. That was interesting – is that the right word? – because the prisoners were mainly paramilitaries who did not regard themselves as criminals and had their own command structure, etc., within the prison. I found the conditions in Perth Prison pretty bad when I visited last year – the present rebuilding programme should improve things considerably. But what I really can’t cope with is the number of people whom we lock up in this society. It just can’t be right.

Thought you might like to see this lost Perthshire lamb which we met on Saturday

I thought I would get a bit of shepherding practice in but the lamb seemed fairly unimpressed.

There are two interesting inversions in church life.  The first is that it’s the ‘second level’ events which seem to gather most support – and vice versa.  So if you want to meet the crowds, turn up at Harvest or on Mothering Sunday.  The second is that the further up the ecclesiastical greasy pole you appear to be, the less you seem to have to do at the important moments.  So my colleagues in the diocese are all preaching erudite sermons on the Atonement at present as we move through Holy Week.  I’m clearing the backlog of letters and writing a paper about reform of Canon 64 and other pathways to the Kingdom.  But Cinderella will go to the ball later in the week.  Our Chrism Mass on Maundy Thursday when the clergy and I renew our Ordination Vows  is always extraordinarily moving – an annual reminder that the fires of vocation do burn bright no matter how much cold water is chucked over them.   I’m doing a Three Hours in St Andrews –  fulfilling my annual  requirement that I should be moved to tears by the  crucifixion story.   And then there’s the Easter Sermon.  Of which more another day.

I found myself today face to face with the appeal literature for the building of the new Parish Centre back in Northern Ireland. The design was worked out in the last two years of my time there. I still think it will be an impressive building which will lift parish life onto a whole new level. But it took a bit of persuading for some people to make the move from seeing the building as a social and recreational space located at the edge of the site to seeing it as a mission-shaped building linked to the church. So my thoughts are with Terence, my successor, and the parishioners as they set about raising £1,355,900. But then I do have one or two challenges of my own around here.

On a more mundane level, I note that Seagoe Parish Church is still using the same font as in my time – Comic Sans 11 pt – really time to move on to something more protestant like Geneva.

End of a busy week – surprisingly I only caught the floor as it came up to meet me on one occasion – and I’m not saying when that was. Like many clergy, I’m fine so long as I am rushing about from place to place. But long meetings are dangerous. So we went out at the end of the afternoon and had a walk by the Tay where it flows at the bottom of the Blogstead Gardens. [Open May-September  Home Baking  All proceeds to Father Jack’s fund for distressed vintners]

Looking back over the blogathon for the last week, I seem to have been moving around a lot.  So welcome to Kingussie which is just south of Aviemore – about two thirds of the way between Perth and Inverness with lots of snow along the way this morning.  I’m here for the interviews conducted by the Preparatory Committee – part of the Canon 4 process for the election of a Bishop for Moray, Ross and Caithness.  The process is one of those fascinating meeting points between vocation and assessment – with a side measurement of the extent to which potential candidates appreciate the seriously spread-out nature of the territory north of Inverness.  Kingussie reminds me of Donegal – pubs with music so that those who arrive here on Day 4 of their Lochs ‘n Glens Holiday [assemble in the lounge with luggage at 7.45 am sharp] go away feeling that they have been in touch with the real Scotland.

Well I emerged blinking into the sunlight after two days of Doubt and Disorder Board – to be closely followed by two days of potential-bishop-interviewing. So there was nothing for it but to do some more of digging up the recently laid turf in what is to become the formal garden here at Blogstead Episcopi. So I worked away at it – viewed with some curiosity from the middle distance by a group of deer. Poppy, meanwhile, kept me company. She is now pretty well restored to her former vigour – although the vet thinks that she may have had some kind of slight stroke.

Meanwhile it’s all in my mind’s eye – the scent of lavender, the well-clipped yew hedge and the velvet lawns where I shall walk with my Chaplain in the mornings as we mull over the affairs of the diocese and those minor canonical adjustments which make so much difference to the smooth running of matters ecclesiastical. It reminds me of Hornblower and his 1st Lieutenant taking a turn on the quarter deck. My recollection is that the 1st Lieutenant could only turn when the Captain did. Which should allow me to dump my Chaplain in the yew hedge.

Another day in the engine room, I’m afraid. Our Administration Board deals with finance and budgets and the management side of things – management and church remain something of an oxymoron around here. But we do our best and we’re getting there steadily.

And then on to another oxymoron, the Faith and Order Board. This deals with the sort of stuff you can really get your teeth into – like where the commas go in liturgy and in intricacies of revision of the Canons which govern church life.

Meanwhile the papers are full of the Paisley/Adams pictures. Yesterday I was feeling very moved by it all. And I can appreciate that what we are looking at is the result of courageous political leadership on both sides. It has that ‘Berlin Wall Coming Down’ quality.  I always believed that it would come and that, when the moment arrived, it would be quite sudden.  Today the sadness kicks in as I watch two extreme politicians making a stilted peace in the relational wasteland which they themselves have helped to create. The worst thing is the way in which the troubles have been prolonged unnecessarily – the generations of able young people who have left to build other communities in other places. I think of the way in which Ian Paisley built his power base by dividing other parties and other churches – condemning as traitors those who would have made peace sooner.  And as I look at Gerry Adams, I think again of the haunting criticism directed at Sinn Fein leadership at the time of the Belfast Agreement by Bernadette McAliskey when she said, in effect, that they too could have settled sooner. Wikipedia reports her as saying acidly that ‘IRA volunteers had not died to create “a common teaching qualification”‘