Sermon at Drumbeg Parish Church, Belfast
Culture
It’s a wonderful thing. One phone call and you’re back in it. I’m mitigating/offsetting my Easyjet flight tomorrow by taking bus to Glasgow and then bus from Belfast Airport to [London]derry – stroke city, so-called. But could I get the whole way to Dunfanaghy by bus? So I rang McGinley’s Coaches of Gortahork near the Bloody Foreland and they told me to talk to Gallaghers. They suggested I might take the bus back into Belfast and join them at 1730 outside Jury’s Inn. Or I could get a taxi from the Airport to the second roundabout before the Toomebridge bypass and they would stop for me. Wee buns – as they say in Belfast.
Time for a short blogiday, I think
Liposuction in Letterkenny
As the holliers approach, I’m pondering the idea that one might use this time more profitably. Found myself idly watching the sad tale of a lady who had combined her holiday abroad with liposuction, breast enlargement and something unspeakable to do with her eyebrows. Of course, it ended in tears – particularly no doubt the eyebrows bit. Indeed she spent the entire interview trying not to say that ‘It had all gone pear-shaped.’ Must check what is available to me in Falcarragh, Creeslough and Port na Blagh – I expect the bruising will have faded a bit by the time I got back to Perth. I wonder if they do Air Miles. A bit of stretching to give me that bit of extra height – a Donald Trump hair weave perhaps – a tuck behind the ears to take away the lines of character and give me that baby face, starey look. Perhaps better to bathe in fresh Atlantic sea water and apply the Guinness internally.
One day at a time – BBC Scotland
Forelog
I’m now heading rapidly into that cul de sac called ‘about to go on holiday’ – otherwise known as forelog. Characteristic of this period is the attempt to cram ever more into a diminishing resource of time – and a joyful and increasing tendency to chuck stuff overboard since I am never going to get it done anyway. It reminds me of that immutable law of pastoral ministry – they either die or they get better – and either way ….
It was all here before me and it will be here after me …. so let’s loosen up a little! Where did I put that bucket and spade so that I can do mitre-shaped sandcastles on the beach at Marble Hill?
Powerful helplessness
I remember standing outside Lurgan Hospital. It was Christmas Eve and I had been visiting a parishioner who was in the last stages of terminal illness. The retired priest who worked with us was with me and he said something like, ‘Can’t just be spectators in the face of suffering like that. You have to pray the prayer of faith.’ So I watch John Sentamu with admiration as he takes a week of prayer and fasting in the Minister and invites others to join him. We’re helpless. Others who allow themselves the luxury of seeing complex historically-rooted problems in simplistic ways can shape the agenda. Terrorists, who have cut loose from any sense of the personal or societal cost of their actions, make their plans. We’re helpless. Unless we take a stand on behalf of the redemptive power which is above … beyond
A moment of hope
Last night was one of those moments. Down in Dollar, we celebrated a new ministry as Jeremy arrived with Christine and their two children. As I’ve said before, I have been in ministry so long that I have lost any sense that I might be doing anything else. But Jeremy and Christine could be doing other things – and they have chosen to do this. And so last night was full of hope and expectation. As well as the Dollar choir, there was the choir from St Peter’s, Lutton Place, in Edinburgh and the choir from the Parish Church. Jeremy was welcomed into the area and the ecumenical gathering of clergy by Susie – a Southern Belle with a voice like a brace of barber-shop quartets – the local parish minister. The Church of Scotland amazes me by its breadth. We’ll come back to that another time.
Caesar’s Stuff
Tax – how I hate it. Don’t like paying it – but much more don’t like sorting it out. Caesar is welcome to it, so far as I am concerned.
Interesting how a week sort of takes a theme to itself. My own agenda, of course, but it’s interesting how it is spoken by a range of people … It often comes down to what is really the craft of priesthood. That always sounds a bit unworthy [crafty?] but it isn’t meant to. It’s about exercising authority in obedience and taking leadership in a way which facilitates the leadership of others and setting boundaries and dealing with those who cross them. There is something of the entrepreneur in it – with a certain amount of assertiveness. The only absolutes are the presence of love and the absence of fear.
Always on
I think I remember a time when everything went quiet in the time between Easter and Harvest – a sort of post-resurrection torpor in the life of the church. But it’s not like that any more. It seems just as busy in mid-summer as at any other time – but it’s been interesting. Confirmation in Aberfoyle on Sunday with a congregation which then divided itself among three venues for lunch. Then the opening Eucharist of the second of the Glenalmond Youth Weeks with a baptism and two confirmations. Spent yesterday clearing my letters and E Mails backlog. Today began with 7 am in Dundee for Thought for the Day where Jenny was standing in for Dot, pushing buttons in the studio and hoping that everything would come to life. Then breakfast in Tesco’s cafe – with the first Sudoku of the day – because I was going on across the Tay Bridge into Fife and the Bishop of London wouldn’t let me drive home in between – even tho’ the faithful Passat is a diesel miser. And an interesting day visiting clergy in Fife in the sunshine.
Poppy, by the way, is now in Belfast. She expects to have a brief holiday in Donegal at the end of the month but will not be returning to Perth until after I have preached at the 150th Anniversary of Mission to Seafarers in Belfast in October.