Another of those heavy-duty Sundays.  Birnham/Dunkeld – beautiful place with a Beatrix Potter Museum – followed by Strathtay where there is a lovely little church with banks of snowdrops all around and the sound of the Tay just round the corner.  Lovely people as well.  Tough but somebody has to do it.

Tomorrow three of us are off to Dublin to do some organising of our diocesan link with the Diocese of Meath and Kildare.  I’m never all that keen on Ryanair – particularly since the recent revelations of Biggles-type flying under pressure of quick turnarounds.  Biggles of course would approach this wearing the oil-stained flying jacket – face drawn and strained from too many dawn patrols and sorties over the Isle of Man – eyes lined from squinting into the sun looking for Baron Richthofen’s Circus of Fokker Triplanes.  Not forgetting of course the ‘I’ve been hit!’ moment when a seagull came back into his face through the prop of the Camel.  I hope to get the first Sudoku of the day done before the pilot gives that last little blip of the throttle and allows the 737 to skim the trees and settle down easily onto the grass of the runway.

One of my colleagues in the parish – she knew a thing or two about how to shape worship – declared to me that we needed to be ‘brisk with spaces’.   I think she meant that the spaces became meaningful and usable because of what surrounded or framed them.

We had our Diocesan Synod today and I think wisely settled for just ‘brisk without too many spaces’.  I still remember my first encounter with a Diocesan Synod and wondering simply what purpose could possibly be served by such a turgid event.  Today’s was much better than that – people said what they needed to say, we encouraged one another and we went home into the early spring Perthshire sunlight.

In my experience, the kind of talking which changes minds and hearts, which engenders hope and vision, which gives confidence and energy, which opens up new agendas  … doesn’t happen at Synods.  It happens when people have space to speak, listen and be heard in a sympathetic setting.  Or maybe just space for the Spirit.  We need both kinds of meeting but rather more of the latter.

Interesting survey of 2000 people’s Top Ten Books – and maybe a bit unbelievable.  I’ve managed three of them – the Bible, Nineteen Eighty Four and Pride and Prejudice.  I have a long list of books I ought to have read but never will.  James Joyce’s Ulysses will always head that list – has anyone ever managed to read it? – closely followed by War and Peace.  My own best books?  Well – anything by William Trevor, particularly the Short Stories which are near-perfect in their economy and agonising in their content.  Of everyday reading, I think Ian McEwan is very good, particularly the opening pages of Enduring Love, and Sebastian Faulks’ Birdsong is extraordinary.  I have a growing affection for more modern classics – books like the Catcher in the Rye [which I gather Bill Clinton re-reads any time he doesn’t have anything more pressing on hand] and the Riddle of the Sands.  I don’t possess a copy of the Father Ted scripts – after all they are oral tradition.  And, of course, Arthur Ransome and Biggles continue to occupy their own unassailable position in my heart.

Tomorrow it’s the Inner Wheel – or maybe the Inner Link or the Outer Circle or the Elliptical Orbit or the Downward Spiral.  For Perth has lots of them and I’m gradually working my way through.  Last time was the episode when I couldn’t get the powerpoint to work and I asked, ‘How long do you want me to talk for?’  And they said ‘Forty Minutes’  No problem.  Sometimes it helps to be Irish.  It won’t happen again – the secret weapon is to hit Fn and one of the F keys.  Don’t ask which one.

Of course, I secretly enjoy meeting these groups.  After all, only a minority of the members will be members of the Episcopal Church – so it’s a useful opportunity to build some relationships.  I can also point out to all those loyal members of the C of S that bishops have a really useful function in the church – IT’S SOMEBODY TO BLAME

I’m still ploughing through George Lovell’s great tome ‘Consultancy, Ministry and Mission’.  Sorry to say ‘ploughing’ because it is not a light read – but it simply is the very best.  He suggests that it is of the nature of work which is rooted in vocation that it particularly benefits from time spent attempting to look at choices, to define, to shape ..  It makes me ponder one of those things which I suspect that I am not really supposed to think aloud.   – that working experience in other spheres is not all that readily transferable into the work of ministry as we might like to think.  Sometimes it undoubtedly is – to the great benefit of the ministry.  But sometimes the lack of working boundaries and the ill-defined relationships and the wide field on which the work is set out .. are just too much.  And the result is frustration and disappointment.

This is the view from the west wing of Blogstead na Mara in Donegal. When we were last here after Christmas, this hillside looked pretty much as it must have done for the last fifty years. Now a huge terrace has been created where nothing was before and three houses are going up faster than you could ever imagine. This photograph was taken this morning – the roof was on by teatime. The price? The locals say 650,00 Euro each. Just behind and to the left of the new house is a small cottage with half its roof gone. Mary who now works in the supermarket grew up there in a family of four. You may wonder where all this money comes from. And you may also ponder an economy where the Irish Construction Industry claims that up to 30% of the economy is in the construction industry. I suspect it is more in Donegal.

Meanwhile, now that the Irish/English thing has been sorted out so decisively in Ireland’s favour, I am glad to report that the Irish Times says that the dispute over which of the Aran Islands should host the Father Ted Festival has now been settled by a football match – in which the supporters shouted, ‘Go on, Go on!’

The Irish view of history is amazing.   We were sitting in McColgan’s pub in Dunfanaghy, Co Donegal, gently internalising some Guinness and watching RTE doing the build-up to the Ireland-England match.  They turned to ‘The Stats’ – which said, I think, that Ireland had beaten England four times between 1940 and 1949  ‘with a break for the Second World War’.  Good to have a proper sense of priorities.

Meanwhile, all attention has been focused on the playing of God Save the Queen at Croke Park – a truly eye-watering moment because of what it says about political movement and political maturity in Ireland.  Historian John A Murphy is quoted in today’s Irish Times as saying, ‘When our English neighbours are made warmly welcome next Saturday in such a splendid stadium in the capital of a mature and sovereign republic, the innocent Croke Park dead of November 21^st, 1920, will be honoured, not insulted.

 And change continues apace elsewhere.  The Northern Ireland Assembly Elections are coming close – Sinn Fein having declared support for the police.  I was interested to see that the election slogan for Ian Paisley’s DUP, ‘Getting it right’.  Could it really be that empty posturing about the Union is gone and people are being encouraged to adopt a pragmatic readiness to engage and share.

 And I should mention the astonishing economic dynamism of today’s Ireland.  It’s two months since we were here.  Within half a mile of our house, I think I can count 11 houses being built and the road west from Letterkenny is being transformed.  I see nothing like it in Scotland.  It’s as if we hadn’t been to Blairgowrie for a while and then found that they had moved it while we were away.

Josephine points to the ecstatic reaction to Poppy’s guest appearance here and, very properly, ponders the lesser reaction to other weightier matters.  And she’s right of course.  Measured in the great balance against … world hunger, global warming, protective missile shields, abused children, family breakdown … Poppy’s elegance hardly rates.  But I then move on to think about how I spend much of my time.  Saving the world?  Increasing the sum of human happiness?  Exercising a bias to the poor, the outcast ..  Thursday morning was spent at an averagely difficult meeting of our Administration Board.  I think spent two hours working with a small team on our Year of Stewardship Programme.  And I then chaired a meeting of the Mission to Seafarers Scottish Council at which we confirmed the decision to place a Chaplain at Grangemouth.  And I sent umpteen E Mails, wrote letters and tidied the rougher edges of my soul.  It always comes back to the classic Father Ted and Dougal exchange.  ‘Makes you think, Dougal’  Long pause.  ‘About what, Ted?’

Meanwhile, Karen has pointed me towards the new Lent site www.livelent.net which encourages us to do an act of kindness every day rather than undertake boring old self-denial.  Actually I think that’s great – and I really rather like the whole ‘random acts of kindness’ way of thinking.  Having looked at how I spend my days, a little random anything can only be welcome!

I’ve been reading and trying to understand the material which has come from the Primates’ Meeting in Tanzania. It looks as if the Primates may have come to the conclusion that to allow the division within the Episcopal Church in the US to widen in an uncontrolled way – intervention by Bishops and Primates from without/expensive and bitterly fought litigation within – in itself threatens the life of the Communion. Therefore the priority becomes that of trying to find a way of managing that division so that its power to damage the rest of the Communion is limited. Only time will tell whether that will be enough or not – and whether the liberal part of the Episcopal Church will be able to find it acceptable.

And, inasmuch as the divisions within the Episcopal Church are also present within each of our churches as well as between provinces, we all find ourselves facing the same questions. And it certainly has a familiar feel to me – much of what ministry in Ireland was about was the task of managing division over issues which could not be resolved – managing so that their power to destroy was limited and the hurts caused were mitigated.

Not much excitement here at Blogstead – no crowds or dancers ..

Come to think of it, the only excitement was the discovery of a friendly-looking but very dead mouse under the table in the family room. Poppy isn’t saying anything but we suspect – she must either have got it in the night or brought it in from outside.