Month: September 2008

They were bringing in the sheaves at Blogstead today. You will of course immediately wonder what that is on the computer screen – some diagrammatic representation of a thrusting diocesan strategic plan, perhaps. Not so. I had just asked my old friend Multimap where I might find Lumphinnans.

You’ll be glad to know that my visit to Lochgelly fulfilled all my best expectations. My soon-to-be-published guide ‘Getting by in Bishopping’ mentions two greetings which strike fear into the heart of the Bishop as he visits a congregation. The first is, ‘We’re doing the usual’ – when you haven’t the faintest idea what the usual is. The second is, ‘We’re not using the readings from the lectionary.’ That’s the one I met today. Fortunately a marginal tweaking of the all-purpose episcopal sermon dealt with that.

They’re a small congregation but great fun to be with. With typical panache, they dealt with the difficult ethical issue of whether it is all right to go straight from the Eucharist into a raffle – what they call in Northern Ireland a ‘wee ballot’. The heating has stopped working and they have to raise money urgently. One of the Rectors with whom I served as a curate resolved this issue in typically gnomic style by saying that it was all right to have a raffle provided that the prize wasn’t anything which anyone would want. No need for such Jesuitical circumlocutions in Lochgelly. They have a beautifully-wrapped prize – but it’s always the same. Sometimes, indeed, the winner doesn’t even open it. It just goes round again and serves its purpose. And the money gets raised.

We ended yesterday at a wonderful concert for Organ and Brass in Dunkeld Cathedral.  But many of the audience will have been unaware that an equally great work of art is just outside – National Cycle Route No 77 goes along the south side of the Cathedral and then along the Tay for several miles.  We did some of it on Saturday morning but stopped short of Inverness.

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.

Haven’t done a Thought for the Day for a while – too busy with Lambeth and other stuff. So here is one about Sarah Palin.  We went to Glasgow last night and I became convinced that she was going to blow up and resign before I could get it delivered [ouch!] at 7.20 this morning.

One of the best things about what clergy and bishops do is that we move at all sorts of levels in society.  I know that much of what I deal with can be a bit shambolic.  What interests me is that every other level that I visit is equally shambolic.  Was she vetted?  Well they may have short-circuited the processes a bit.  How well did John McCain know her before naming her as his running mate.  Well they had spoken twice.

I know she is the darling of the Christian right.  But I think she will cost him the election.   Not – by the way – because of the sad story of her daughter or anything like that.  More because of that scary feeling that we may not yet know everything that there is to know.

I sometimes find myself saying that what I miss most about parish ministry is funerals.  Which seems strange.  But I suspect that most of the things which drew many of us into ministry in the first place are to be found there.

So I was interested to have the opportunity of taking part in the Pathways Through Grief Conference which was hosted yesterday and today by NHS Tayside.  It was an impressive event and I said a bit about the role of faith communities.  And you’ll find a bit in there about why I miss funerals.

Always interested in people’s reactions to authority.  When told to evacuate New Orleans, most people comply.  But there are always some who either think they know better or who just don’t do what they are told.  Shades of the Lambeth bed controversy.  For myself, I’d be on the second bus out.  I did have a chance to talk to the Bishop of Louisiana and found, as he said on the Lambeth Video Diary, that the post-Katrina experience had opened him up to all sorts of alliances and partnerships in working together for the whole community.

But of course .. if the Tay rose 500 feet and the call came to evacuate Blogstead [shades this time of the great septic tank controversy] there would be just one significant issue.  Poppy?