Yes the Church of Scotland General Assembly has me on my knees at this point – and there are still three days to go.  I gave the PM a miss on Saturday morning – little knowing that I could have sat up in bed and watched him on the website.  And then we did the Garden Party and then the Buffet Supper and this morning the service in St Giles Cathedral and tomorrow is still only Monday.  Of course, the rest of one’s life goes on unabated – letting Poppy in and out, the arrival of the sucker-outers and the digger-uppers for the septic tanks tomorrow and so on.  But St Giles was interesting – best Anglican chanting I’ve heard in quite a while followed by St Patrick’s Breastplate because of Trinity Sunday and I was glad I wasn’t preaching.

I still carry the kind advice of my doctrine tutor in Trinity College, Oxford, who looked at me with kindness and compassion and said [or words to this effect] ‘I think that, at your level, it would be wiser if you did not attempt to think about the doctrine of the Trinity for more than three minutes consecutively’  He didn’t say, ‘Stick to Harvest.’  But I suppose that’s what he meant.

My Irish Times headlines by e mail this morning included one about growth in the Church of Ireland from Patsy McGarry, Religious Affairs Correspondent. Since I was not prepared to invest the 2 euro needed to find out what he said, I’ll have to surmise …

I expect he’s talking about the Church of Ireland in the Republic – which is just under 3%. I’m old enough to remember points at which there was real concern for the future, particularly in parts of rural Ireland. He’s probably pointing to at least two major factors as sources of growth – the inflow of migrants who now make up 10% of the population and the problems of the Roman Catholic Church. Take a look at St George and St Thomas in Dublin where the Rector is a former colleague, Katharine Poulton. They have a Discovery Gospel Choir and a U2 Eucharist ..

Beyond that I’m still pondering the future of churches in secular societies – like modern Ireland and Scotland. ++Rowan’s recent lecture in Westminster Cathedral included the interesting line that ‘we generally prefer these days to be patrons rather than subscribers’ We tend to assume that the churches which make headway in these conditions are conservative bodies of one kind or another. +Rowan suggests that our society now sees spirituality as good and religion as bad. Maybe there’s space after all for small, liberal churches which invite people to explore.

Meanwhile I’m off tomorrow to represent the SEC at the Church of Scotland Assembly. Once I’ve got over my agoraphobia, I hope to report back on what it’s like to be a big, big church!

It’s been a pretty easy-going weekend out at Blogstead.  The dead septic tanks are still a slight blot on the horizon, as it were.  But we’re promised movement in that area this week.

We set out for 11 am in Muthill this morning.  Beautiful day .. joys of spring .. faithful Passat in fine form .. temperature guage sticking to the Anglican via media.  Muthill is in the middle of beautiful countryside between Auchterarder and Crieff.  Last time I was there, the windows were boarded up.  Now the church is probably in better shape than it has been for years and the congregation seem in good heart too.  We celebrated Pentecost with admirable restraint and shared a lovely lunch in the local restaurant.

Yes there are toughish bits in what I do.  But this certainly wasn’t one of them.

So if you think that Edinburgh is the A720 and Hermiston Gait and all that, you’ve missed it. The alternative Edinburgh is set out on the excellent cyclists’ map provided by Spokes – the Lothian Cycle Campaign. Their website quotes President John F Kennedy as saying ‘Nothing compares to the simple pleasure of a bike ride’. Which takes us back to the simple pleasures of President George W Bush’s ‘waving or drowning’ moment at Gleneagles during the G8 Summit when he wiped out a local policeman.

Anyway – to go back to Spokes. Have you tried the Water of Leith Cycle route?

It runs from Balerno to Leith. And the fascinating thing is that it runs through the centre of Edinburgh – just below Charlotte Square – and you would never know. And then there is National Cycle Route No 76 which comes in along the canal – and suddenly you are in Haymarket.

And the remarkable thing is that, when we were there on Thursday afternoon, those cycle routes were alive with people.

I’ve spent the last two days at meetings in Edinburgh – it makes me thankful that I do less of that than many other people. I found myself in the middle of the Forth Bridge trying – and failing – to connect my Blackberry to Stagecoach’s free wifi. Don’t know why – but I have a bad track record at that stuff.

Two things. Surely it’s time we pushed much harder for an improvement in the miserable broadband speeds which seem common in rural Scotland. If there is one thing which would help us to make a serious attempt at video conferencing, it would surely be an improvement in broadband speeds. Every meeting saved is a huge cost and time saving.  Then I found myself reading about new video-conferencing technologies – like Flash Meeting. We talk about these things in our Information and Communications Board. We need to try some of it in a more determined way.

Like Kelvin, in the end I was glad I was there. I didn’t particularly look forward to it – too much angst and too many false starts for that.

So what did I learn? Hard to say really. I think the witnesses whom I listened to reminded me of the – in the best sense – ordinariness of faithful gay relationships. I remember thinking the same sitting in a restaurant in a gay district of San Francisco. Ordinary, everyday people getting on with their lives.

You can’t do everything in just one event. But there are at least two other aspects to this. One is the need to understand and find a way of responding to the anger, passion, hurt, sense of exclusion – yesterday was necessarily too cautious for that. The other is Malcolm Round’s point – agreeably made, I thought – that the fact that we have all been agreeable does not mean that we agree.

But for now – thanks particularly to the witnesses and to the organisers.

And I’ll go on trying to deal with some of the specifics through the comments on my Conspiracy blog of a while back.  I have learnt something else from that.  Face to face engagement is the only way of dealing with the feelings – Kelvin’s tears tell us that.  I’ve been shy of blogging about it because of who is listening in.  But the blog does give you the chance to reflect for a day or two on a reply – so there’s a chance of measured dialogue with a bit of space.  And the fact that we know one another means that it can’t be passion-free either.

Always enjoy a good headline.  There’s a famous example – maybe skewered by Myles of the Irish Times – lazy headlines beginning ‘Bid’.  Give thanks for that patriotic Irishwoman – ‘Bid to resolve decommissioning impasse – Bid to end world hunger, etc.’  Then there was the famous [and distasteful] ‘Gotcha!’ from the Sun as the Belgrano went down and took 1000 Argentinian conscripts with it.  And the cheery ‘What a burqua’ from the Mirror as the BBC’s John Simpson got a bit overheated about his personal role in the liberation of Kabul.

The Portadown Times joined that illustrious band this week – marking the sad closure of the former Metal Box factory – the place where Flora Margerine containers were made – and the consequent loss of jobs.

‘Blow as 95 jobs are lost’