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.
Month: June 2006
Sermon at Kinross 25th June
BBC Scotland – Thought for the Day – 27th June
Blinding clarity
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!
Tembu’s Ordination
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.
Catching up
Well I’m closer to catching up – a combination of the week of General Synod and a few days in Ireland. But a happy birthday spent churning through some of the backlog of letters and other stuff has dealt with most of it now. I can never decide whether it is better to just keep on top of it all the time or to take a break now and again. Meanwhile, the rest of life moves on. Alison has gone to a hen weekend and is presumably having a great time in Shrewsbury [yes – Shrewsbury] wearing a pair of rabbit ears. So Poppy and I are back on the bridge. She constantly wants to go out – but last time she disappeared totally into the corn field and I doubt if she would know her way back. I don’t know whether they do periscopes for cats. The world moves on in other ways too. Ruth Gledhill’s blog reports the new Presiding Bishop of ECUSA as saying in a sermon, “Our mother Jesus gives birth to a new creation and we are his children.” I must try that a few times and see if anybody notices.
Timeless
I don’t do anniversaries and stuff very well. Birthday tomorrow and, as I did some preparation today for our ordination service on Saturday, realised that it is 30th anniversary of my own. Amazing to look back and think of the book which I ought to be writing. And it rolls on – yesterday was one of those long, long days spent in the trench warfare of diocesan and congregational administration issues. When the roll is called up yonder, those of us who struggled together yesterday with the immoveable, the intractable, the incomprehensible and the unresolvable certainly deserve to be there.
And by the way, if any of you are passing St Mary’s College in St Andrews at 10 tomorrow [Friday] please tell David, who thinks for some strange reason that I am going to meet him there, that I am in Perth.
Family first
Yes of course. Who could say otherwise? But I get uneasy when politicians suddenly decide to put families and family togetherness up in lights – as if one should be patted on the head for doing what simply comes naturally. It seems to me that we live much of our lives trying to deal with competing visions, aspirations and responsibilities .. things where one ultimately cannot hope to declare a sort of ‘pecking order’. Working out of the relationship between vocation/ministry and family life is certainly like that – and so is much of the work/life/family life balance. And I’m happy with that. Happier too with people who moderately successfully struggle with those tensions than with people who single-mindedly do one thing and let everything else go. And so far as children are concerned, which is the better role model and preparation for adult life?
The ones that got away
Having written my Thought for the Day on spirituality in a secular age – or Catholic boot camps for beginners – I can now list the other things which have been part of today which I might have written about. Clifford Longley produced a very effective Radio 4 Thought for the Day which I heard as I was driving home – about prisons, what they tell you about a society, about what they might achieve. I also today received and signed an Oxfam petition against the arms trade. And of course the election of the new Presiding Bishop in the Episcopal Church of the USA, Katharine Jefferts Schori, is a momentous event – both because of her gender and because of the pivotal role of the leadership of ECUSA in shaping the future or non-future of the Anglican Communion. Interesting to note – when one assumes that everything in the US of A is absolutely enormous – that the Diocese of Nevada is not much different in size from the Diocese of St Andrews. Slight cultural difference between Leven and Las Vegas – and between Blairgowrie and Boulder City – but I did enjoy my visit to Las Vegas. Completely OTT in the most refreshing way.