I’m looking forward to getting home.  Between holiday and this Celtic Bishops’ Conference I have been away most of the time since September 8th and I shall be away another two days next week.  In the good old days, one was just away.  Now I attempt to keep the basic administration going through the laptop and the VOIP phone – I’m getting better at it but it’s tiresome when it doesn’t all work just as easily as it does at home.  This hotel gets its broadband by satellite link – a fact lost on the staff members who attempted to sort it out for me.

Meanwhile, I have been forcing myself to think out from my own little patch and engage with the issues of the wider Anglican world.  It reminds me of the worst of Ireland – the times when one just knew that a crunch was coming and that there was almost nothing which would avert it.  But one passes through moments of crisis and life has a strange way of just moving on on the other side.

So what is this celtic identity which we share – 20 bishops going on a boat trip on the Shannon tomorrow?  I am having something of an idientity confusion because of representing Scotland at a conference in Ireland.  The Welsh seem to be the most celtic which is only what you would expect since they live in England’s back yard.  The Irish are not so sure and the Scots have a Welsh Primus.  So that seems clear enough then.

Meanwhile, I have the laptop hooked into the hotel’s satellite broadband and am carrying on virtual ministry as usual – E Mail and VOIP phone.

Back in Ireland – in Co Cavan – one of the most depressed parts of the old Ireland.  I’m now in an extraordinarily posh hotel, built in the middle of nowhere, which is being used for a meeting of the Celtic Bishops – the anglican bishops of Scotland, Ireland and Wales.  On one level that means ‘not the Church of England’.  But it also means that there is time to explore whether there are things which bind together the other nations of the British Isles – sense of humour; attitude to spirituality; or what?  Time will tell

Harvest Thanksgiving Dublin 1st October1.doc

Just to say what this is about ….. Katharine, the Rector, is a former Curate from the time I was in Portadown and we had a very long and happy working relationship.  This is a dying, inner-city Dublin parish which has been transformed by the economic migrants of the new Ireland.  It has an African Gospel Choir and Desmond Tutu preached here when he passed through Dublin recently.

Interesting to move overnight from springtime in South Africa to Autumn back home.  I’ve been writing a harvest sermon today – clergy joke about only needing one for your entire life in ministry.  And we used to ponder the fact that it is moments like Harvest and Mothering Sunday which tend to draw the crowds even though they seem rather theology-lite – while tougher moments like Good Friday can pass almost unnoticed by many.  Yet I am finding that Harvest actually has most of today’s issues there for the taking – wealth and poverty, the environment, justice ….  And most of all it seems to provide one of the moments at which one can see the difference between a secular society – which lives by values such as freedom, individual responsibility and self-sufficiency – and a society whose values are broader and deeper and where well-being and wealth are not the same things.  Interesting to hear Bill Clinton telling the Labour Conference that what mattered was that, when you gave up office, people were better off than when you began.  How inadequate a world vision is that?

We’re safely back at Blogstead and enjoying the peaceful and slow rhythms of life to which +Bruce refers.  It’s a sort of mixture between Big Brother and the Archers with an ecclesiastical flavour.  Poppy is still in Ireland and returns next week.

We had a meal with friends as we prepared to leave South Africa.  ‘Yes or No?’ asked James. It’s a question which nobody could answer – least of all a visitor.  There has been great progress – clearing of townships, building of schools, provision of water and sanitation, building and investment.  The miracle of South Africa remains – by that I mean the extraordinary way in which the leadership of Mandela, Tutu, de Klerk and others managed to overcome the race issue.  It is an example of the way in which spirituality and courage can transcend political limitations.  To my eye, South Africa’s problems are now to do with poverty and its links with race and colour.  The poverty is dreadful – somebody described the task of overcoming it as being like emptying the sea with buckets.  There is real concern about lawlessness and criminality.  There is a persistent belief that the government’s stance on HIV/Aids is a pragmatic recognition that it cannot meet the needs of the huge number of people who have no skills or education to bring to the new society and that Aids should be allowed to reduce the population.

But for all that there is a persistent optimism, generosity, flexibility and grace about the place.  The problems which lie ahead are daunting – but my answer to James’s question is a guarded ‘Yes’

We drove back to Cape Town today – listening to the talk radio discussing the question of the number of whites who have left South Africa since 1994.  Apparently it stands at almost one million – significantly weighted towards younger adults – and the major factors driving it are the high levels of violence and criminality – and employment issues which follow on the affirmative action programmes.

Well I have to report that a solitary policeman was guarding a Stop Sign against the rising tide of criminality in the middle of Humansdorp in the Eastern Cape yesterday.  I saw it as I went through it and went on my way 500 Rand poorer – but he was charming with it.

Meanwhile today at the Fairview Winery in Paarl [today is a Public Holiday in South Africa] a large proportion of the white population seemed to be out in family groups enjoying lunch in the early spring sunshine in the middle of the vineyards – and looking forward to a long summer and a long future.  Let’s hope so.

You will have noticed that I have a surprising affection for the Afrikaaners .. and the spirit of the Great Trek lives on, although in a somewhat debased form.  You’ll find it embodied in the person who owns the Internet Cafe at Knysna Quays …

After his computer had dropped its connection for the umpteenth time, I ventured to suggest that his connection might be a little fragile.  To which he responded as if I had questioned not his bandwidth but his parentage.  Indeed he had 1 meg of connection speed – the biggest and fastest connection in the whole of Southern Africa.  To put it in a nutshell, my connection couldn’t possibly measure up to his and I could take myself back to the hairdressers and girls blouses of the Cape.

Yes indeed.  Still trekkin’ – and going nowhere.

We’ve been in Prince Albert in the Little Karoo – 400k from Cape Town and 40k from the main road.

This is Afrikaaner country – part of the vast, dry interior of South Africa.  The Afrikaaners tired of the English settlers of the Cape, left them sipping their sundowners and took their rigorous approach to religion and culture out into the empty wilderness in the Great Trek of 1838 – 15000 of them in all.  The English, one suspects, were probably glad to see them go.  Until they found gold and diamonds.

Prince Albert sits just the far side of the mountains from the Garden Route – across 40 kilometres of the Swartberg Pass – precipitous and unsurfaced.  It’s a sort of model village of Cape Dutch architecture – laid out like a town in the American mid-west.  As the Rough Guide says, the silver spire of the Kerk reaches up into the endless blue sky.  For some reason – surely not love of the British Crown – the residents decided to name their town after Albert.  Queen Victoria responded by sending them a copy of Albert’s published speeches and writings – a work of such stultifying boredom that they put it in a glass case in the museum where it has remained ever since.

The charm of this place is the population of significant people and eccentrics – and sometimes both at the same time – who have chosen to live here.  We decided to give Cannibal’s Restaurant a miss and settled for the Karoo Kombuis – bring your own wine.  It’s run by a group of former staff of South African Airways – now probably slightly more wide-bodied than they were.  For the past 8 years, they have only had three items on the menu.  If you can’t choose, you can have all three.  Dinner for two – 186 Rand.

Meanwhile, back where we were staying – a beautiful house – we could discuss politics and world issues with our host and with the charming German Professor of Microbiology and his wife who were staying.  I tend to see life in fairly broad sweeps – his expertise has been in discovering and classifying microbes which can exist at temperatures above boiling point.  And not all ivory tower stuff either – he spent some time on a North Sea oil rig as part of his research.

Poverty not so much ‘in your face’ here – but it is still the subtext of every conversation here.  It’s the fear that the growing lawlessness and criminality which grows from the desperation of the poor will overwhelm this country before it has had a chance to solve its problems.  Of which more another day.

More South African contrasts.  We’ve just passed the most wonderful band playing outside the Waterfront – a group of young men playing with a naturalness, energy and exuberance that brings a lump to the throat.  On the TV this morning, they were [I think] marking the 10th anniversary of the Constitution with an event of such weighty boredom as would make the Eurovision Song Contest seem interesting.  Delegates from each of the provinces were reporting progress on equality, progress, freedom, justice … people were addressing one another with a studied respect … and the sound kept breaking down.  Not that it mattered.  But don’t knock it.  I always believed that a violent society was a place of short-cuts – bombs and bullets instead of listening to a point of view or valuing a different tradition or outlook; slogans and over-simplifications rather than struggling to understand; fear engendered rather than the kind of sympathetic space in which diversity can flourish.  Wholesome and participative democracy on a grand scale may seem worthy and dull – but it is precious, precious.