I’ve spent the last 36 hours at a meeting of our bishops held in Scottish Churches House in Dunblane.  I emerge to a sort of snowstorm of E Mails and phone calls – I must be on rather more of a daily treadmill than I realised.  Scottish Churches House is an inter-church residential centre right beside the Cathedral – it is a wonderful, plain but sombre building.  I never look at it without thinking of the dreadful scenes of grief and distress which it has seen.  I can almost hear the cries as I look at it.  I made the mistake of continuing to read Susan Howatch’s ‘Scandalous Risks’ around [but not actually during] our meeting.  The stories of high politics and dark forces gathering around the more rarified levels of church life seem far from the mundane [sic?] realities of a bishops’ meeting ……

We’ve had friends with us for the weekend – so one sees one’s surroundings through the eyes of the visitor.  We managed to find our way to the bank of the Tay and to walk a fair distance towards Perth and Stanley.  It is, of course, extraordinary.  The river is massive and flows at a very impressive pace.  And it is possible to be sufficiently ‘away from it all’ that one can hear no cars and see no other intrusions of modern life.  Poppy has been slinking her way into this blog more and more – but I do have to mention that she disappeared for most of Friday evening.  We suspect that she was luxuriating in the attentions of the Brownies in the Guide House across the road.  Meanwhile, in our search for her, we interviewed some Danes who said they had arrived to shoot deer.  They said they had a licence to do so – could this really be true?  We’ve hardly got used to having deer around the place and now there are people turning up to shoot them.  What next, I wonder?

The reshuffle came at last – strange that it only came after punishment at the polls.  Some measure of accountability must be important – which reminds me that clergy and bishops are still a protected species in this regard.  No requirement to record everything in triplicate.  And no real measurement of performance or of failure.  Which is partly because it is still not altogether clear what we are expected to do.  That is a great privilege but it also provides hiding places which, in reality, we might be better off without.  I feel the need to be accountable but am not at all sure how.

How long does it really take to move  house?  Answer: about a month either side of the date and probably even longer than that.  Put Easter into the mix and it’s hard to find any settled rhythm of work for ages and ages.  But slowly it is returning.  I still haven’t got my voice over internet phone working satisfactorily – and the mobile doesn’t work out here properly either although there is an O2 mast just across the fields.  Meanwhile I went to another amazing concert in the new Perth Concert Hall – Ashenazy conducting the Philharmonia in great sweeps of Russian music.  I sat there wondering what it is that makes music so characteristic of different nationalities – this was wonderful but really too romantic and spilling over the edges for me.  I have a tendency to like my music tidy and economical.  Would that my desk was the same.  Poppy, by the way, having been allowed a taste of freedom in the steppes of central Perthshire, is restless and noisy again.

I imagine that most bishops spend a considerable amount of time dealing with matters financial – I certainly do.  And not well qualified to do it either.  Diocesan budgets have a sort of abstract quality which makes them difficult but relatively pain free.  The task of encouraging people to increase giving in congregations is more difficult – a sort of wierd balancing act in which one tries to make clear that ‘it is serious’ while simultaneously trying to avoid seeming to obsess about it – and one brings Prudence to the party while continuing to suggest that faith can move mountains.  Well, by Scottish standards, fairly modest ones anyway.  And all the time one searches for the Holy Grail of the rhetoric of stewardship which suggests that giving is not the same as fundraising – much more a sort of personal liberation from the ties of mammon.   I hear it too.

Interesting day yesterday.  Eucharist with 2 adult baptisms in Burntisland – there is life and there is hope.  Brunch with the congregation and on to do a hospital visit in Sauchie.  An hour to spare – so unfurled the Brompton folding bicycle and headed off on the Round the Forth Cycle Route from Clackmannan under the Kincardine Bridge and on.  Not the most beautiful place but the roads are flat and there were lots of families out for a cycle.  Then a service with senior citizens in Alloa – a very lively group and members of the congregation well involved in ministry.  And home in time to shove the last of the boxes out of sight before baptising the new house with hospitality for the Cathedral Chapter.  And it was a beautiful day … the scenery on the way home through Glendevon and Gleneagles ….

Spring has finally arrived.  This morning I drove 20 miles across this amazingly beautiful countryside for Confirmation Service at Glenalmond College.  Confirmation as it was – a rite of passage for teenagers – is fading away.  We now call it ‘Affirmation of Baptismal Vows – commonly called Confirmation.  But in a school like Glenalmond it is still a ‘big moment’ – a gathering of parents, godparents and families.  It’s personal choice for the young people involved – but there is a strong feeling of ‘another milestone on the way to adult life.’  I enjoy the challenge of such a diverse grouping – there is quite a strong feeling in the air of ‘I know this is important but I am not quite sure why’  I was interested when one of the staff said to me that he found pupils increasingly asking questions and concerned about the ‘randomness’ of life – one might have expected that they, of all young people, might feel secure, confident, etc.

I used to think that I didn’t really have roots.  Lived in too many places – I couldn’t have the same sense of place and belonging as my parishioners.  But then being in Armagh Cathedral last night for the installation of my friend Patrick as Dean put me back in dialogue with my roots.  It’s great to be with people who know me and my family two generations back – and to meet old friends with whom I have served in all sorts of places.  But, of course, there is another side to it which I pondered as I blundered onto the Stena early this morning.    It’s the freedom of being able to re-invent myself as I choose – if that doesn’t sound too spiritually treacherous.  In Scotland, I don’t have ‘form’ and, as yet, I don’t have history.  Great freedom in that.   Poppy, by the way, has had enough travelling for a while and is in voluble mode.  She didn’t get to fill in the customer survey on the Stena HSS but she did wonder why the number of customer satisfaction surveys one is given is in inverse proportion to the pleasure of the experience.

Took half a day today to get involved in some contextual Bible Study.  For those of us who are trained to start with the text and its context, it seems strange to start with our context and work inwards.  But, as always with this kind of thing, it is about the people you meet – and the fact that everybody has experience and insight to bring – and so everybody starts equal.  Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the JCB is continuing to move Perthshire around in what is steadily becoming our back garden.  Maybe we need a tree so that Poppy can get on eye level with the buzzards.  I also, for reasons which are too complicated to explain, bought a second hand car today.  Normally I avoid this because I lack the killer instinct in financial haggling and tend to think of the salesman’s children running barefoot.  But today, wonder of wonders, after the price had already been reduced by £1000, I did an Oliver Twist and asked for more.  And got another £400.  Is it the purple shirt, I wondered.  Unlikely.

We’re starting on a process of review and reorganisation tomorrow – first meeting of a new group with a consultant – I’m looking forward to encouraging people to be involved in a process of change.  Greatest sin?  To start out and lose momentum along the way.  Must keep reciting the prayer of Francis Drake: ‘not the beginning but the continuing until it be thoroughly finished that yieldeth the true glory’.  On the other hand, I’ve been at this long enough to know that there is no single answer to all problems.  I would like to think that we would at least reach the point where there is a good shared understanding of the issues and people feel that it is possible to make decisions and see change happen.