It makes you think … in retrospect, parish ministry seemed to be about being part of a community while retaining enough distinctiveness to be able to stand apart, challenge …  Bishoping seems very different.  It’s a very peripatetic lifestyle.  And then you come home to deal with a series of problems which you wouldn’t be trying to deal with if anybody else could solve them.  Then there’s the future to think about.
I still think that there are aspects of leadership which can be learnt and practised.  I mean things like heading towards conflict rather than away from it – without necessarily being combative in manner or determined to win at all costs.  Or bringing to a situation enough clarity of mind and analysis as to enable a resolution – but not so much clarity as to necessitate uncomfortable loss of face for others.  Or knowing that, even if you don’t know which option is right, it’s better to choose something rather than nothing.  And not taking it personally when people bang and shout – while hoping that they do the same for you.  And being firmly rooted with a trust that there is a grace-ful way forward – knowing that you won’t find it if you just stand still.

But then, while those things are in some measure functional, they are rooted in values and quality of mind and heart …

I forgot to mention one of the strangest things about the consecration – behind the video camera and an array of flat screen TV’s worthy of a World Cup Final was my old friend, Alex, of New-Way Video, Portadown.  I used to star in his wedding videos but he also had cornered the market in Drumcree – filming the parade and selling the result in large quantities to Orangemen.  How did he come to be in Christ Church, Dublin?  What skills did he learn as police and Orangemen laid hands on each other at Drumcree which would serve him well at a Consecration?
You may have noticed that Dublin Airport was closed for two hours by a bomb scare.  Ryanair responded by cancelling my flight.  I regret to say that I did what sensible parents do in those moments – rang Mark in Glasgow and he booked me a ticket on the last Aer Lingus flight to Glasgow before the queue had even formed at the Ryanair ticket desk.  But I still had the car park ticket for Edinburgh and was due to collect Poppy in Edinburgh before returning to the airport to meet Alison who was arriving from Belfast.  Meanwhile Anna arrived in Heathrow from Kuala Lumpur and found her flight to Dublin also long delayed.

So it’s feet [carbon free] on the ground for a while.  And, in the study leave so kindly provided by Ryanair, I read Steven Croft’s material, Focus on Leadership – and was suitably challenged by the suggestion that successful leadership in the church is much more about character and values than about skills – the journey to the interior being what makes possible effective engagement with the world outside.  I accept that – but I still believe that there are functional, skill-related aspects of leadership which can be consciously learnt and practised.  Of which more another time.

So at the end of two hours of episcopal ordination in Dublin, the question was, ‘Has O’Neills of Suffolk St changed under pressure from the new Ireland?’  To which the answer is, ‘Not really.’  When I asked for a pint of stout, the barman required simultaneous translation – behaving as if that was the first such request he had ever received.  Scottish accent?  But once we had got over that cultural and linguistic hurdle, things went just fine.  Indeed everything seemed just as normal – the only slight innovation being the presence of a Chinese girl behind the bar.  Even that most important facility in all Dublin pubs, the gents, seemed intact.  And admiring it, I remembered standing in there to relieve myself at some length and the customer next to me saying cheerily, ‘Sure it’s only rented to you.’

Meanwhile, I moved amongst friends old and new at the tea afterward the service and told them that I was really sorry to have left, that I was suffering major cultural dislocation, that the language barrier was insuperable, that I didn’t understand the jokes – but otherwise I was just fine.

We’re here for the consecration of the new Bishop of Cashel tomorrow.  Poppy wasn’t invited so has gone to stay with our Simon in his apartment in Edinburgh.  Reports suggest that city life suits her.  Haven’t found that authentic Irish pub yet – maybe we should follow some of the groups of hen party people in rabbit ears?  We walked down through Temple Bar and across the new Millennium Bridge and into a new area which is entirely Italian.  The new Luas tram system passing at the end of the street completed the impression of being in Amsterdam or Berlin rather than Dublin.

It is extraordinary here at this time of year.  We’ve just driven back from Glasgow, arriving just after midnight.  There is still plenty of light in the western sky and it is just on the dark side of twilight.  I know that it gets light just after 3 am.  It’s been wet today but normally it is dry almost all the time.  The great field of barley outside our back door is already starting to turn golden.  Of course, the polytunnel is everywhere here because of the long tradition of growing soft fruit.  So unlike the climate in mid-Ulster where I could never be sure that I would have time to cut the grass when it wasn’t raining – and that it wouldn’t be raining when I had time to cut it.

It’s been one of those whirlwindish periods.  Yesterday ended at an education awards ceremony in St Andrews which, by coincidence, included seeing Melanie Campbell receiving her award.  Regular readers of www.limpingtowardsthesunrise.blogspot.com will be familiar with her starring and executive role in that particular soap opera.  We must give some thought to our version of Father Ted’s Golden Priest Awards.  Today was a rapid trip to London for the 150th Anniversary AGM of the Mission to Seafarers.  The Princess Royal was there – the Archbishop of Canterbury preached about storm and calm – we got to sing a verse of Eternal Father, strong to save.  And then there are the noises off.  In the tube, I got a ‘Hi Father’ from an American who introduced himself as an IT Manager for EBay who lives in San Jose and is on his way to Fatima.  If I hadn’t had to get off at the next stop, I would have checked him out to see if he would run the Diocesan Website.  He was obviously ‘sent’ but three stations too late.  I was also fascinated to hear John Humphries on Today this morning interviewing the Moderator about his Public Meeting shared with the Cardinal as part of the campaign against the renewal of Trident.  To the southern mind, this was obviously a piece of Scottish eccentricity – no idea that there might be many people here who feel strongly about it.  And finally, today’s Independent charts another measure of the problems being experienced by the Irish tourist industry.  Basically, Ireland is not Irish enough any more.  The nicotine-encrusted Irish pub of old is now a sanitised international smoke-free zone with global warming patio heaters outside.  Certainly the Oyster in the main street of Dunfanaghy – where one New Year’s Day one of the patrons at the bar asked me what day it was shortly before he fell senseless off the barstool onto the concrete floor – is now an ‘out of the box’ Western saloon with plasma screens.  I shall check out my favourite Dublin pub – O’Neill’s of Suffolk Street – over the weekend.  It is a rabbit warren of snugs and bars in which it is said that Brendan Behan used to dodge his creditors.  I’ll report back.

KINROSS 3rd Sunday of Pentecost 25th June1.doc

TFTD 27.6.06.doc

I’ve been continuing to reflect on ministry after Tembu’s ordination and Michael Fuller’s sermon.  My thoughts moved on from my ‘super-rev’ tendencies to thoughts about all the times I/we make a mess of it.  Even tho’ I am an owl of owls, I woke this morning blessed with a blinding clarity about it all.  Unfortunately the clarity evaporated as quickly as the sunshine in which Alison and I breakfasted on our patio beside the ripening corn …. But it was something about our tendency to turn opponents into enemies because of our lack of boundaries and our personal investment in what we do – and about the fact that, in church life, everything stands for something else.  So, unless you ask in the right way, you never find out why somebody feels [unreasonably] strongly about something [apparently] insignificant.  It’s what I used to call a ‘Why are you shouting at me?’ issue.  And then it was about how the order in which you make decisions is as important as the decisions themselves.  And then about the nature of paralysis – where it is better to make almost any decision than none because it least it moves you to a different place and the landscape changes.  Simple!

My favourite line in Father Ted is Ted’s comment to Dougal, ‘It makes you think, Dougal’  So behind the cover of the cloud of incense today, I did a bit of thinking about the strange thing called vocation – on the 30th anniversary of my own ordination.  Mike Fuller preached about the marks which ministry leaves on you – and I thought about funerals and hospital chaplaincy and about the times I just couldn’t get people to do what I wanted and the times people just didn’t trust my leadership even though they couldn’t bring themselves to say so, and the moments of madness and hilarity and about the fact that it has never ever been dull.  And I looked through the cloud at Tembu and Mike and all the other people – particularly clergy – whom I have come to know, respect and trust this last year.  And I could see that vocation lives in them too.  There is no other explanation for what they do and how they do it.  Mark Russell, newly appointed head of Church Army, writes in the Church Times this week and describes it as a ‘churning of the stomach’.  May it continue to churn.