My struggles with the sermon call to mind one of the best and shortest ever - which my local Catholic neighbour, the great Father McGuinness, claimed to have preached in a time of some small local difficulty.
‘In nomine patri, etc., etc.
Could you tell me .. what purpose in the cause of Irish Unity or the [...]

The Gospel today was the story of the Unjust Steward.  Can anybody enlighten me with any kind of understanding of what it was about?  I did my best in Crieff this morning - linking it with Confirmation for good measure - but I don’t feel up to providing you with the link.  Indeed, my failure [...]

It was a great day in Aberdeen as, with a little help from the Spirit, we sent Bob on his way as the new Bishop of Aberdeen and Orkney. Provost Kelvin said that it looks as if there has been a bishop inside him all along - it looked right and it felt right. [...]

It’s tempting to write about the trivia of Blogstead and diocesan life - is that real life or is it not? But I’ve been continuing to read the news from the Bishops’ meeting of The Episcopal Church on Thinking Anglicans
The 30 September deadline - or is it a deadline? - looms.  It’s not that [...]

Those of you who aren’t part of the charmed inner circle of life in the close here at Blogstead might be surprised to know that I don’t spend much time at our Cathedral - St Ninian’s whose very day it is today.  It’s not that I don’t want to and don’t find it congenial - [...]

I drove back from Edinburgh on the M90 today listening to the reports of the dreadful crash and loss of life on the M4 at Newport - car pursued by police turns onto motorway heading in the wrong direction.  A couple of years ago, I was driving on the M1 back to Portadown from visiting [...]

Sorry I forgot to bring my camera to the 150th Anniversary of our congregation at St Ninian’s, Alyth, today. You haven’t been to Alyth? You don’t know where it is? It’s a most beautiful small town just to the east of Blairgowrie with a little river running through the middle and a [...]

I’m getting into the Alistair Campbell Diaries at present. What the diaries show, of course, is that leadership anywhere at any level is a fairly scrappy business and the ‘great leap forward’ is usually illusory.
But there are exceptions.  At the moment, I’m with Tony Blair’s move to scrap Clause 4 in his first Conference [...]

Sometimes I think about it … when my Easyjet flight is poised above the runway and about to land, for example. How would I feel, I ask myself, if this organisation was run by the Scottish Episcopal Church? Would I step on the plane? I think not.
Bit of that around at this [...]

People often ask about the new Northern Ireland politics. How can it be that the old enemies seem suddenly to be able to live and work with one another? I too find it extraordinary - and if now why not five, ten or fifteen years ago? So those of you who don’t [...]