Month: November 2006

Spent today in Edinburgh at an Inter-faith Conference in the City Chambers.  Glad I went – the inter-faith contacts don’t just happen so it was a useful place to be.  I was struck as always by the fact that one’s first assumption is that different faith groups will have different views on the same agenda.  But of course one also has to take account of that fact that some things matter hugely to some and hardly at all to others.  It was a warm, friendly event but we have a long way to go.

Ended the day in Perth’s beautiful Concert Hall at a concert by the Tokyo String Quartet – still, I think, the most perfect medium – intimate, balanced, mutually responsive – all the things church life would like to be but isn’t.  I reflected on the fact that JS Bach liked to play the viola in a quartet ‘so that he could be in the middle of the harmony’.  I suppose what he meant by that was that, rather than being the obvious leader, it was better to provide the mellow stuff in the middle, to provide the notes which announce the key changes and paint in the colours which bring richness and character.  Now there’s a model for church life and bishoping ..

Well – after my much-blogged-about excursion into Cosmo and Closer, I’ve taken the safer course of allowing myself to be read to.  I’ve been having another attempt to use Pray as you Go and the Daily Audio Bible – both downloaded into the MP3 player for use in the car.  It was a strange experience to drive home from Perth tonight with a rather breathy American voice reading I Corinthians 5 to me.  But I can’t help mentioning the fact that the content was no less spicy than Cosmo and Closer – although St Paul is a pretty forthright agony aunt.

Always an interesting question this.  Should one apologise for …. slavery .. the Irish Famine … terrorism.  I don’t think it is quite as simple as some would like to think.  Just to say, ‘It was five generations ago so it is nothing to do with me’ ignores the extent to which we are all the inheritors of our history and the way in which we still respond to one another in ways which are conditioned by that history.  On the other hand, our ancestry is so intermingled that it is hard to see how any of us is the direct inheritor of anything in that sense.  Maybe ‘apologise’ is not quite right – but I have no doubt that a carefully-timed and authoritative recognition of past hurts and indifference to hurts can have a significant influence on laying the past to rest.  And it needs to be received and responded to …

‘Good to have you with us, bish’ said the young people up at Tarfside. No higher praise – so I went down the mountain this morning content and glad to have been with them. I did take time out for a quick peek at the agony column in Cosmo – one has to keep up to date with these things – but reckoned without the instant technology which captured the image on mobile phone camera, bluetoothed it to David Campbell’s PDA and is even now lodging it on www.limpingtowardsthesunrise.blogspot.com

Still, that’s the price you pay for having a bishop who makes it his business to know about all sorts of things which one couldn’t discuss in polite company. How else is one to find out?
And on to lunch with the Trinity College Dublin Association – Scottish Branch – held in the Irish Consulate in Randolf Crescent – like sinking into a warm cultural bath of Irishness.

Exciting day tomorrow.  Starting with the passing of the torch from Charmian to Sheila – the handing over of provincial leadership of the Mothers’ Union for the next three years.  That’s an important moment – I wouldn’t risk saying anything else – but MU is actually one of the significant bits of infrastructure which holds the church together.  And they do positive things in the community – last night I listened to Sheila Brewer of the Fife Contact Centre describing the role which MU had played in setting it up – and they work in the prison – and …

And then it’s on to Tarfside – which is somewhere up a glen beyond the mobile phone signal – to take part in the Diocesan Youth Weekend.  Given the age profile of some of our congregations, that really is important.  Should be easy for me – after all, I am a former Youth Officer for the Church of Ireland.  Except that my youngest child is now about 6 years older than these young people will be …  But I’ll do my best and I’m sure they will take pity on me.

Visited Perth and Kinross Heritage Trust today and found a lively organisation where the desire to record and preserve the past meets a commitment to educate and enthuse people about the history of their surroundings.  Lindsay had sorted out a map of Blogstead Episcopi and its surroundings – including two earlier maps going back to mid-19th century – all available at the touch of a button on the computer screen.

I find myself increasingly interested in the rural community and the interplay between rural community and church community.  To find out more, read Sally Gaze’s book, ‘Mission-shaped and rural – growing churches in the countryside’

Our Press Officer asked me to write a comment for the website on the case of Ms Nadia Eweida – a BA employee who lost her appeal that she should be allowed to wear her cross at the check-out desk.  You’ll find my comment here:
The cross not displayed

St Luke Glenrothes 19.11.06.doc

Miss Dagurreotype challenges me to comment on the video embedded in a recent post on her blog http://dagurreotype.blogspot.com/2006/11/found-on-youtube.html

This is an English pastor addressing at some length the question above. I have some problems with his Type 1/2/3 analysis – it seems an odd framework to put around the question and the conclusion [that George Bush is emphatically not a Christian] seems to arise entirely from questions about the nature of his personal relationship with Jesus. But he leaves out all the other questions which might arise from asking whether the fruits of the spirit are present in George Bush’s life – the love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, etc.
I have spent too much of my life being myself reported as ‘not being a Christian’ in the Northern Ireland context – so I am very reluctant to get into the same stuff in relation to George Bush.

But – in response to Miss D – I am prepared to nail my colours to my crozier and say that there are two [only two?] aspects of what Dubya says and does which seem to me to be sub-Christian. The first is the demonisation of others – as in ‘axis of evil’. That general dehumanisation and demonisation of others is for me the absolute antithesis of what Jesus both taught [love your enemies] and did [eating and drinking with publicans and sinners]. The second is one of which I have no direct evidence – but it is widely reported. That is his refusal ever to admit to being wrong. Yes I do it too – guilty as charged! But it seems to me to be of the essence of the Christian soul that I acknowledge my individual responsibility for what I do and what goes wrong – and my part in the fallen-ness of humanity [Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you….]. That humility becomes the foundation of my ability to relate to others. How can anyone relate to those who believe that they are never wrong?  For they become sub-human.  Yet the heart of the discipleship journey is that we become more authentically human – closer to the image of God in which we were made.

According to Colm our painter whom I met in the shop this morning, ‘You couldn’t give a pub away at present.’ I was, of course, looking [in vain] for fresh croissants at the time, forgetting that this was Donegal not Dordogne. But we did ponder the remarkable success of the new Deli up the street – anchovies and all. Welcome again to the new Ireland. Maybe it will stop the Northern Ireland middle classes doing all their shopping in M&S before they come.

My other treat on this rapid trip to Donegal – to view the newly rebuilt boiler house – a veritable cathedral of thermal engineering – pity we didn’t have a key to get into it – was my usual random read from the pile of Arthur Ransome. This time it was Swallowdale – the time that Swallow gybed, broke her mast and was holed on the Pike Rock. Titty carried the telescope ashore above her head. Fortunately Captain Flint [Uncle Jim] hove into sight with nails, hammer and tarpaulin – ‘haven’t done this since I ran a gig ashore off the coast of Java’. So Captain John’s wounded pride was assuaged and Mate Susan was, as always, suitably calm, sensible and motherly.  Yes indeed.