Another couple of Thoughts for the Day for my old friends in the BBC in Belfast last week – about my ‘out of this world’ experiences in Mosque, Monastery and elsewhere. You will have discovered by now that my thinking processes function only in 2 minute/325 word spasms.
Meanwhile a bit of a blogiday, I think, with sporadic antipodean surfacings.
Now into the next stage of pre-departure – where people behave as if one has already gone. ‘You still here?’ they say – with a slightly disappointed air. Meanwhile the diary simply skips across the space and we’re into April and May.
Haven’t decided yet whether to blog from Blogstead Downunder – although it would be tempting to give an ‘ouch by ouch’ description of swimming with jellyfish in a stinger suit. Not a pretty sight, I would think.
I’m about to go on holiday for a while. So the indispensability sub-stratum of my control-freakery kicks in. Clearly I need to arrange everything which will happen in my absence, second-guess all problems and provide solutions and generally behave as if my presence is essential for the sustaining of our friendly but slightly frayed ecclesiastical institution. However the light in the eyes of those around me suggests that I am not the only one looking forward to a break. And I am not going to be able to do everything before I leave … and maybe I could offload this or that onto somebody who might actually put it out of its misery …
Bit hectic this weekend as we welcomed the world-wide church to our small but hospitable diocese.
First we welcomed Bishop Richard Clarke with a group from Meath and Kildare in Ireland – we did all sorts of stuff with them including the Burns Night Supper in Stirling.
And then we welcomed Bishop Daniel of Kerala in the Church of South India. He came with me to the Christingle Service in Kirkcaldy. And in the fetching and carrying today, we did a bit of running around the diocese – over 180 miles of it in all. And it broadens the mind.
Don’t quite know what to make of this juxtaposition of the Conversion of St Paul with Burns Night. But we made good use of it with the congregations of Holy Trinity, Stirling, St Saviour’s, Bridge of Allan and St Mary’s, Dunblane. A good Burns Night had by all – with our friends from the Diocese of Meath and Kildare in the Church of Ireland. Bishop Richard tells me that we have known each other for 39 years so it is hardly a voyage of discovery. But our groups sat in a circle and talked today – and explored how much one can learn from a place with is like yet unlike.
It’s bishops to right and left at Blogstead this coming weekend. We are welcoming a group from our link diocese in Ireland with Bishop Richard tomorrow .. followed closely by Bishop Daniel from Kerala in India on Sunday. And in the middle a Burns Night in Stirling and the opening of the new Parish Room in Kinross. So what do you do ….
Still mulling over the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity .. of which I have seen remarkably little sign this week. My fault as well. I picked up a report on the teaching of philosophy as part of RE teaching and wrote Monday’s Thought for the Day about it. I could make a perfectly good case for faith schools and for teaching RE though a particular denominational framework. But it does seem to me to make a great deal of sense to approach through the great [and often unanswerable] questions of life and to offer faith as a way of putting a tentative framework of meaning around them.
I don’t know if you are into this stuff. But Francis Joyon has just broken Ellen MacArthur’s solo round-the-world sailing record by an amazing 14 days. You can read all about it here
What this means is sailing alone in a huge boat for 57 days at an average speed of 19 knots. In sailing terms, that is incredibly fast and, if you were to fall overboard …
Comes as a surprise to find that the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity is 100 years old this year. I’ve always been a committed ecumenist – in Northern Ireland it seemed particularly important to hang onto that vision and to use the Week as a pretext for doing things which might not be possible at other times. There were things we couldn’t do – pulpit exchange with Catholic clergy would have been difficult – but we used to exchange lay members of our congregations to bring greetings, read scripture and lead prayers. It was very important and life would have been much harder if we hadn’t been able to model better pictures of relationships in that way.
Regular readers will know that I am unhappy about the present state of ecumenical relationships. At the level of local churches, clergy and congregations, my experience of Scotland is that they are excellent. But at the institutional level, things are more difficult. I think that the sad reality is that churches are preoccupied with institutional survival in a challenging environment and the desire to move towards unity is fairly far down the list of priorities.
I suppose it’s worth mentioning that, having moved on from the Clergy Conference, I managed a twelve hour day in the Diocesan Office. Definitely time for the ‘get a life’ department. If you want to know: Standing Committee followed by Management Group for the Review of Journey of the Baptised followed by a contribution to the Ministries Reflection Course. I felt the Kingdom of God just rushing towards me all day.
Today I went to Edinburgh for a meeting – I managed some e mails and other stuff from the train on my laptop. The Blackberry stopped receiving them for a while but I surmounted that.
Best bit today was the Institution at Forfar. End of a long story. There wasn’t enough money to make an appointment but the Vestry gathered round and exercised some real leadership. The income rose by 125% and the rest is history. Welcome to Andy McCafferty and Norma. We hope you’ll be happy among us.
