Well – Blogstead Episcopi has returned to its accustomed tranquillity after the latest of our social outings for clergy last night. The sound of community hymn singing has died away. The mistletoe hangs exhausted and neglected. The servants have restored the house to order and decency as befits a centre of ecclesiastical power.

Meanwhile you may be interested to know that Spice [Norfolk Terrier] returned last night and immediately presented his visiting card to Poppy [Brown Burmese]. She was definitely not at home.

Up in Aberdeen, today’s Episcopal Synod failed to elect a new bishop in succession to Bruce. It’s a sad moment for everybody involved – particularly for the candidates who have given all that they have and more to the process.

Tomorrow’s a nice ordinary day.  Visit to our congregation in Coupar Angus in the morning and then some family things in Edinburgh.  Then it’s an 8 am flight on Monday morning for a Colloqium in Stockholm on Same-sex Relationships.  Maybe I’ll get to meet Santa Claus?

I wrote this piece ‘Crowded Stables’ for the Scotsman – about growing church-attendance figures at Christmas and other times. It was to appear today but maybe there was no room at the inn and it will appear later this week
A CROWDED STABLE Scotsman 12.06.doc

It seems that even the tabloid papers are prepared to take Lord Stevens’ report as a sign that it is time to let the Diana conspiracy theories rest.  I suppose there is part of most of us which will wonder whether it really was an accident – as people still question the official report on the assassination of John F Kennedy.  On that level, it is surely a healthy part of a functioning democracy that we should not unquestioningly believe what we are told.  Healthy scepticism isn’t a bad thing.  The real conspiracy theorists, of course, will never let it rest.  They move through questioning doubt to the wacky to the obsessive.  Back in Northern Ireland, I used to meet anxious people like that quite often.  All events – however much they appear to be based on chance – are part of a bigger picture only part of which we can see.  Nobody’s motives for their actions are what they say they are.  Everything is leading towards a single ultimate end.  People like me are blind to the obvious and are relaxed when we should be on guard.

I never found out how to deal with that.

I was asked by a journalist today for a quote about the legalisation of prostitution.  What an impossibly difficult issue.  But here is what I offered him:

‘As we learn more about the risks to which the girls in the red light district of Ipswich are exposed, the arguments in favour of the legalisation of prostitution become compelling and compassionate.  The girls should be able to have physical protection, proper medical care and the kind of support which might help them to move on to other ways of supporting themselves and their families.  But that ‘oldest profession in the world’ way of thinking seems to me to invite us to be blind to the degrading reality of this trade.   Unhappy men are buying the services of desperate women, many of whom are selling not by free choice but to feed a drug habit.  Legalisation may provide a degree of protection but I cannot feel that in a free society it is ultimately right to protect something which is akin to slavery.’

This is the time of year when my days would have been filled with Primary School Nativity Plays and Senior Citizens’ Christmas Dinners.  But of course there’s none of that – it’s a bit sad really, although I complained enough when I had to do it!  I suppose I do miss the endless procession of children wearing tea towels – mainly because they were getting involved in the Christmas story for the first time.  Out at Blogstead, we’re gearing up for the second lap of our social whirl with clergy.  We’re looking forward to that – slight adjustments needed in our instructions to staff in the light of experience – but there is great interest in the new Bishop’s House.  I suspect that it’s a clergy ‘thing’.  We feel we learn so much about people from seeing how their houses are!  Must tidy the study again.

I found myself passing the BMW garage today.  It’s crammed with new cars – they must expect to sell lots over the next few weeks.  But who has the money – even in this solidly prosperous area?  After all, the truly rich around here change their cars about as often as they buy new tweeds.  On the other side of Perth, the vast new block at the prison takes shape.  It will be a big improvement.  But it will be filled, like all prisons, with young people, drug users, products of broken family relationships … all the things the Conservatives have been trying to talk about.  And then there is the horror of the young prostitutes being murdered in Ipswich.  For myself, I suspect that broken family relationships are as likely to be symptom of a dysfunctional society as cause of it.  And, as I drove around Perth today, I was looking at a society which is not so much dysfunctional as just lacking in any significant connections at all.

With my casual remark about the Abdication Speech, I didn’t realise that the anniversary was indeed last Friday and that the BBC is giving it quite a bit of attention during this coming week.  Its fascination for me is that this is one of those rare moments when the words spoken of themselves created the event.  Few expect the speeches of today’s politicians to have that power – but this speech did.  And to turn the focus onto faith and ministry for a moment, I suppose that those of us who lead worship or who give pastoral care do find ourselves hoping that the words which we speak – and the way we speak them and the way they are heard – will have spirit-filled and life-changing power in the hearts of people with whom we share our faith and our lives.

Brian Walden tried to give ‘today’s picture’ of the Abdication on Radio 4 this morning.  The King, product of a relatively loveless childhood, in thrall to Mrs Simpson .. behaving in a way like an addict.  A clash between the Victorian world of Baldwin and the establishment and a situation which they had no framework for addressing.  The political naivety of the King who thought that he could marry Mrs Simpson – his political naivety in visiting Germany so soon after the Abdication – his maybe lingering feeling that somehow Germany might one day restore him to the throne which he had given up.  Walden’s view in the end was broadly sympathetic – people acted with dignity as best they could in a situation which ultimately could not be resolved.

They’ve been electing a bishop for Aberdeen and Orkney today – to replace Bruce who will be taking up permanent residence here at Blogstead Episcopi when he returns from the US.  It brings back memories of the same process in St Andrews two years ago.  The SEC has an extraordinarily open way of electing bishops – they would not have ended up with me otherwise.  Indeed Canon 4 is a sort of hobby for the church – constantly fine-tuned and adjusted.  Still for today’s candidates – as it was for me – it was a fairly daunting task to go in and speak to over 100 people on the ‘future of the diocese and the role of the bishop’ – supported only by the Spirit and my minder’s efforts to ply me with sherry out the back.  One thing surprises me – I recently revisited what I said in my presentation and was surprised by how much of what I believed then about the diocese and its future I still believe now.  Which means, I assume, that either I knew what I was talking about – or that I didn’t then and still don’t.  Time will tell.

So we went round again this morning with Thought for the Day. So here it is. Meanwhile, having mentioned the Abdication Speech yesterday, I have had it going through my mind all day. Great script – not great syntax – and Edward Fox did it so much better than Edward VIII. It’s all in the pauses.

But you must believe me when I tell you that I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge my duties as King as I would wish to do without the help and support of the woman I love.

TFTD 6th December.doc

I was sitting in the BBC in Dundee at 7.20 am this morning – waiting to deliver my Thought for the Day to the nation.  And the moment came .. and they pressed the wrong button and played the back-up tape.  So I was left open-mouthed as it were.  Imagine if they had done that with Edward VIII and the abdication speech or whatever …