Author: David

‘Scotland all right?’ they ask.  And as we’ve whiled away the past few days doing nothing more strenuous than this and that … yes it is .. absolutely all right.

We dropped in yesterday to see Niall and Lynn’s Red Kites – at Argaty near Doune near Dunblane.  Amazing to see 20 or 30 of them coming to feed.  If you want to go and look, check out their Argaty Red Kites website.

And today we had a walk – with what seemed like hundreds of others – along the strand at St Andrews.  Cold .. but bright light and snow on the distant hills of Angus.

Meanwhile one slight change in my patterns this Christmas has been a quickening of the pace on Facebook.  My favourite Agony Column – Mrs Mills in the Sunday Times Style Section – posed the interesting question, ‘How does one respond to a Friend request from one’s former spouse?’  You will have read the answer for yourself, of course.  Meanwhile with Roseanna Cunningham’s group to support a St Andrews to Iona Pilgrimage Route – and with the emergence of a sort of post-troubles diaspora of Irish exports, I’ve been finding my Facebook activity busy enough for me to cope with.

Dawn at Blogstead today – the view from the episcopal four poster – looking towards the Sidlaw Hills and Dundee.  Poppy wanted an early morning safari but we’re cautious about that.  She doesn’t realise that there could be that sudden beating of wings, etc.

Happy New Year to you all.  I’m still barking, coughing and spluttering – as is half the population.  Two weeks of it now and Alison is just starting it.

We’ve had crowded churches this Christmas – increasing Christmas congregations have been a visible trend for the last ten years or more.  I was interested to see that Andreas Whittam Smith  in Friday’s Independent decided to link that to the case for maintaining the Church of England as an established church.  I was interested too that he somehow failed to mention that he is First Estates Commissioner of the Church of England – a game-keeper’s gamekeeper, as it were.  I can’t say that I found his argument convincing – tho’ I am properly agnostic on the issue itself.

Firstly he seems perilously close to John Major’s sentimentality about ‘spinsters cycling to holy communion through the morning mist’  I’m not at all sure that the sort of residual  belongingness which he describes really exists.

Secondly, what does he say to those non-established churches which have also found their buildings full at Christmas?  I’ve been watching this increase gathering in both the Church of Ireland and the SEC.  It’s a mission opportunity – I found myself telling a [full] Cathedral in Perth that this is a time when lots of people who might say, ‘I’m not religious but ..’ come to church.  If you want to read the full thing, it’s here.  And if it is a mission opportunity, how do we build on it?  It probably has some affinities with the work which ‘Back to Church Sunday’ is attempting to do.

Meanwhile back at St Ninians, I found myself in middle of one of those events where our small church appears many times larger than it really is.  An outstandingly beautiful building enhanced by new lighting .. wonderful music .. good liturgy.  There is hope.

‘Bring them on’ I say. None of this fashionable snootiness about the ’round robin’ Christmas letters from friends. My Christmas wouldn’t be complete without them. I savour them every one. And of course we send a Blogstead Bulletin to 580 of our closest friends. Somebody once said that these are letters written by those whose children are good at passing exams. If I was to be critical of our particular effort, I would say that it evinces a sort of bland cheeriness while sharing no more real information than it needs to.

It’s really about disclosure. I used to think that the charm – and the danger – of the sort of ‘rolling disclosure’ on blog and Facebook which some of us are into is that it is impossible to dissemble on a continuing basis. You will always reveal your true self in that idle moment when – as now – it’s 1205 and I haven’t a clue what to write about. But as time goes on, I’m less sure about that. Perfectly possible to be endlessly personable without being personal. And to those who say, ‘I read your blog so I know how things are with you,’ I say ‘Aha!’

But the ‘one off’ Christmas letter has none of that professional presentation. I love the sentences which begin, ‘Unfortunately … ‘ and go on to speak of some minor parachute-opening issue ‘. I love the lengthy references to named individuals whom one has never met or heard of – but the dark corners of whose lives one is being invited to share. Most of all – as a religious professional – I love the passages which speak of ‘God’s Unfolding Plan’ and marvel at what people are able to tuck away in that category. It always reminds me of the arms-outstretched realism of an old friend who said of the call to work in Lisburn that ‘You would need your hands pre-drilled to work there.’

Yes I’m something of a kill-joy in that department – not sure that it could ever be safe to speak of GUP other than in the context of suffering.

Well Christmas has crept along the lane to Blogstead.  Unfortunately we had to miss the first in a series of social events last night but there will be others.

My statement on Facebook that I was having my usual problem with a Christmas morning sermon brought a avalanche of helpful suggestions from clergy who were obviously wasting time on Facebook rather than writing Christmas morning sermons.  To a man, as it were, they recommended Ian Poulton on ‘For the Fainthearted’.  And if you’re stuck, you could do much, much worse.  Good Betjeman lines which I might pinch.

I’ve obviously been in trouble before because, when I opened what my former Rector, Hammie Leckey, used to call my ‘store of treasures old and new’ – meaning a file enticingly labelled ‘Christmas Morning St Andrews St Andrews 2007’ I found two pages of Christmas jokes and nothing else.  I must have said something else suitably weighty and episcopal but I haven’t the faintest idea what it was.   The record suggests that all I managed was ‘What did Adam say to Eve on the day before Christmas?’ –  Answer: ‘It’s Christmas, Eve’

Well tomorrow can look after itself.  For now, Bam Bam and Mark are home.  Poppy is luxuriating on the settee.  All is calm.  All is bright.  Happy Christmas to you and yours.

Time to mark the passing of Conor Cruise O’Brien, one of Ireland’s most extraordinary politicians, intellectuals and journalists. He was the person who began Ireland’s long tradition of service to the UN by acting as the Secretary-General’s representative in the Katanga crisis in the Congo in the ’50’s. When I was a student in Dublin in the ’70’s, he was a Labour minister in the Fine Gael-Labour coalition. He was the person who banned Sinn Fein from the airwaves. He despised the corruption of the Charles Haughey era and he detested the moral equivocation which Ireland allowed itself in dealing with republicanism and its associated violence. He ended up an an opponent of the peace process and an advocate for Northern Unionists. A remarkable man.

And the thing about the Moving Statues? Well, Ireland went through a period of over-heated religious fervour about moving statues at Ballinspittle – indeed like the Loch Ness Monster they regularly come back to life just to keep a reasonable level of interest. Since the Cruiser’s death, I’ve been searching hard for his comment following the death of a schoolgirl in childbirth in a cemetery in – I think it was – Granard in the midlands. I can’t find it but my recollection is that he commented, ‘Well the statues didn’t move to help her’

And the dreams? Well in my own over-heated state, I’ve been waking with absolute clarity about my dreams. Black and white, I’m afraid. I woke up on Friday saying to myself that, since it was now 40 years since men went to the moon, it was surprising that it had taken so long devise a Christmas tree stand which doesn’t fall over. I also found myself at the gates of Balmoral in the early morning attempting to take a photograph – but finding my camera stuck in ‘review’ mode. Am I a closet royalist? Or am I condemned to be for ever a spectator/commentator?

And finally, today’s Sunday Times tells me that Roseanna Cunningham has set up a Facebook Group called Campaign for the Pilgrim Way [Scotland] which is attempting to confirm a route from St Andrews to Iona. I’ve joined and you should too. I might even think about cycling it when the weather improves.  Interested?

A sad day yesterday.  We gathered to say our farewells to Andy who died long, long before his time.  We … we means Andy’s wife, Nicola, and his two little girls .. and the group of friends with whom Andy and Nicola went to university .. and the friends from the Mother and Toddler Group who wheeled their buggies into church .. and Andy’s parents Leslie and Maureen  .. and Nicola’s family ..

And because Andy grew up in Portadown, we sort of encountered a solid wall of Portadown at its best.  I don’t know whether Easyjet put on an extra flight.  But they were all there.  And I thought again about the specialness of a stable community. Forget the bad stuff for which Portadown used to be famous.  A settled community – big enough not to be claustrophobic and small enough for close friendships to be nurtured over 20 or 30 years.  And it is gifted with humour which makes no attempt to blunt the impact of a dreadful moment but somehow makes it bearable.  When you see that kind of unconditional friendship, there is nothing to compare with it.

To move sideways for a moment, this must be one of the first funerals at which both ‘Once in Royal’ and ‘The Fields of Athenry’ were sung.  But then one of the wonderful paradoxes of Ireland is that, while rugby is strong in the protestant community in Northern Ireland, it is an all-Ireland game.  So Portadown Rugby Club has been a model of cross-community enterprise.  And when Lansdowne Road reopens, they’ll all be there cheering for the men in green.  You couldn’t invent it.

So tomorrow is another day – and I’ll have a word about The Cruiser and the Moving Statue of Ballinspittle  

As I have been emerging from the sporadic feverishness of the flu, I thought you might be interested in some of my more interesting dreams – but maybe that will be too much information.

A Christmassy Thought for the Day this morning.  Dundee at 7 am just wasn’t for me since I am fighting flu.  Added to that .. one of my pleasures in life is doing live radio with the second hand and doing the time exACTly.  Which wasn’t helped when the second hand did the first lap just fine but stalled on the uphill path in the second minute.  Obviously felt pretty much like I did.

I’ve been interested in the establishment/disestablishment debate today.  A complex issue for another day, no doubt.  But I am always interested in the extent to which establishment makes the C of E seem bigger and more substantial than it is – and the amount of institutional energy which goes into sustaining that.  It reminds me of the delightful comment of Donald Caird, former Archbishop of Dublin, who commented that the church seemed exhausted because it was always walking on tip toe – trying to be bigger than it really was.  But I also noted comments today from Bishop James Jones of Liverpool who pointed to what I think is one of the real glories of the C of E – that in deprived areas of Liverpool and the other big cities of England other public institutions have gone away – but the church, its clergy and people remain.

I’ve gradually come to understand that, whether it is the world economic system, or our domestic economy …. it’s all the same stuff.

So the Irish Times tells me this morning that the Irish government hopes to share with private equity in recapitalising the Irish banks.  They plan to put in 10 bn euro.  Since they don’t have it lying around just like that, it’s going to come from a contingency fund to do with public service pensions.  Which seems to me pretty much like me raiding the car fund to go on holiday – or raiding the holiday fund to buy a car.  Reassuring or not reassuring?

And then the story of the Madoff billions.  It’s the oldest scam in the business – use the money coming in to pay the most amazing returns on capital.  And banks and financiers line up to commit millions and billions.  Yet if it’s too good to be true it must be too good to be true.

One would like to think that one or two of the masters of the universe will be pygmified by all this.  But I doubt it.  And the actuarial valuation of our Pension Fund is looming.  I don’t want to be the first nonagenarian bishop.

Looking for a Christmas tree and lost in the outer suburbs of Burrelton, we saw a sign.  And in a trice we were in the walled garden where several hundred trees were growing just waiting for us to choose …  But which one? We were accompanied by the lady of the house – a most wonderful character in a tweed hat – and the faithful John with chain saw at the ready.

Alison is a great one for searching for perfect tree.  It will, of course, be Anglican to the roots.  Or Goldilocks.  Not too tall or too short.  Not too bushy or too bare.  Even all the way round.  So we chose a nice one with a suitably eccentric kink in the top.  John stepped forward with the chain saw and the job was done.  I winced.