For some reason, I don’t seem to be keeping up to pace these days in the great blogathon of life. Must do better.
Interesting time last night when Tim was instituted as Rector of Dunfermline and Rosyth. It was a good evening – as always the end of a long story. Full details are available on Max the Dog’s Blog. Dunfermline is growing rapidly, limited only by the capacity of the Forth Bridge to carry commuters into Edinburgh. So it’s a place of wonderful potential in ministry. I almost envied him – but not quite.
There were some classic moments – most of which are not for sharing on a blog. But I did particularly enjoy the moment when I was handed a thurible to cense the altar. It’s never a particularly easy operation for me if I have drifted off into Portadown mode. This thurible was manifestly dead, extinguished and not alight. I turned to Dom who was acting as my Chaplain and asked him what I should do with it. Although he was without his copy of Ceremonial of Bishops at that moment, he still give me his usual discreet advice.
So off tomorrow to Lochgelly which was recorded in 2007 as having the lowest house prices in Britain. This is one of the former mining communities of Fife and it’s struggling to climb out of a ‘pit’ of social and economic deprivation. I’m very fond of it because our small congregation there is sustained by a group of wonderful people who have a sort of Belfast-like determination about them. If, as they used to say in Belfast-speak, ‘the windeys was blew out’, they would just put them back in and carry on.